DEI Went Wrong with Its First Step
DEI Went Wrong with Its First Step
The DEI house was doomed when the first “valuing diversity” foundation block was placed.
Thankfully, the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mania is coming to a blessed end. Perhaps someday we’ll assess the damage that it did, but for now, our mission should be to achieve diversity blindness. But supporters of DEI refuse to give up easily, and are struggling to cope with its demise.
The New York Times recently sponsored a panel discussion : “Did D.E.I Go Too Far?” From the panel’s discussion, it’s apparent that the “experts” remain as clueless about DEI’s downfall as they were about its potential. The panel included: tech executive Bo Young Lee, Professor Michael Yassa, finance executive Disiree Fixler, and Professor Erec Smith.
That’s a pretty impressive collection of highly-paid help to figure out where DEI went wrong. I spent a few years of my career in the industry too, and I’ll happily answer the question for free. DEI went wrong with its first step.
The panel talked about quotas this, and objectives that, but missed the fundamental flaw. DEI was built on a false premise. Advocates claimed that diversity would make us stronger. They said it would make our companies more competitive. They insisted it would make our communities more harmonious. They were confident that it would make our society more just.
Based on those promises, we created an industry for the sole purpose of advancing diversity -- but forgot to measure if its claims were being fulfilled.
Naturally, every movement needs a rallying cry, and the DEI advocates came up with “Valuing Diversity” (and a number of variations) as theirs. Those two words appeared in stockholder literature, department mission statements, and executive bonus packages. The company that I worked at had it plastered on posters all over the plant. Unfortunately, “Valuing Diversity” became more than a catchy phrase -- it became the objective.
When people create things of value, those things become commodities for trade. When we placed value on superficial differences (i.e. “Valuing Diversity”), it was inevitable that people would trade on their differences. That “value” wasn’t abstract -- it was real. The DEI industry created a system in which identity differences affected education, employment, entertainment, and even politics (such as congressional districts). Hence, “Valuing Diversity” became a competition and created identity tensions.
Arguments over who’s more valuable in the intersectionality sweepstakes were both destructive and predictable. Rather than create harmony, our push for DEI created conflict.
- Black vs. white
- Male vs. female
- Homosexual vs. heterosexual
- Left-handed blondes with an overbite vs. right-handed redheads with freckles
“Valuing diversity” drove us to judge and reward people on the basis of irrelevancies. DEI, and its demon spawn intersectionality, didn’t end hate -- it created a barter system in which hate flourished.
The reality is that it isn’t our differences that give us strength, it is our shared humanity. Our strength as a people comes from the things we have in common. Things we value, such as
- Freedom over servitude,
- Order over chaos,
- Performance over participation, and
- Justice over bias.
Within that framework, our petty identity characteristics -- the things DEI values -- are mere distractions.
When traveling from coast to coast, from where my pilot’s ancestors hailed is a distraction. His genealogy might make for an interesting conversation. But when it comes to the business of flying an aircraft, it is a distraction -- and claiming otherwise does not make it so.
After decades of advocacy, DEI didn’t deliver harmony and proficiency. It delivered social unrest and ineptitude. DEI must die for society to survive -- and thankfully it is.
Professor Yassa described what happened at his employer when he left his DEI post.
As soon as I stepped out of that role, everything that we’d done disappeared -- all of the initiatives disappeared, the funding for it disappeared, and nobody cared anymore. It just went away, which tells me it was fragile to begin with. It was not set up as a foundational set of elements.
Um... no. Professor Yassa has it backwards, because he’s using a bad assumption for his analysis.
DEI didn’t fail because it wasn’t set up as foundational elements. It failed because diversity (the first word of its title) was its foundational element. DEI was fragile because it was a house of cards, built on a foundation of sand: the incorrect assumption that our identity differences are important -- when they are not.
The DEI house was doomed when the first “valuing diversity” foundation block was placed. The industry told us that diversity, equity, and inclusion were more important than character, merit, and fairness. Based on that false premise, everything that followed was a failure waiting to happen.
So, back to the NY Times panel question: “Did D.E.I. go too far?” Answer: Yes, with its first step.
Image: Quinn Dombrowski
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