The Death of DEI in Business?

The abbreviation DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) has become a common way of signaling goals in both education and business, particularly since the death of George Floyd four years ago. DEI has two primary foci: race and sexual identity/orientation. In other words, the goal of DEI programs is to have broader representation from different races/ethnic groups and the LGBTQ community.

This may seem like a laudable goal to some, but the word “equity” merits a closer look because of its similarity (at least in spelling) to “equality.” Historically, when people talked about equality, it meant equality of opportunity; however, over time it has come to mean something closer to equality of outcomes. Equity-focused initiatives take this a step further, seeking to not only increase people of “color” and people from the LGBTQ community in the workplace, but to have a “chief diversity officer” as part of companies’ executive-level managerial teams, for example.

A year ago, the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision effectively did away with race-based university admissions, and it appears that businesses have also taken note. Here are some examples of businesses distancing themselves, at least to some degree, from DEI over the past year.

• By mid-2023, DEI-related job postings had declined 44% from the same time a year prior, according to data from job site Indeed.
• Devika Brij, CEO of Brij the Gap Consulting, which works with tech companies’ DEI efforts, said that some companies had cut nearly 90% of their DEI budget by mid-2023.
• At least six major U.S. companies, including JPMorgan Chase, revised their diversity policies last year after receiving multiple public shareholder letters that said their DEI programs constitute illegal discrimination and breach the directors’ duties to investors.
• Mentions of DEI in S&P 500 earnings calls took a nosedive from 34 in the fourth quarter of 2020 (seven months after George Floyd’s death) to just 4 in the fourth quarter of 2023 (six months after the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision).
• Google fired ~50 employees two months ago in connection with their sit-in protests at two of its offices. They were protesting Google’s cloud-computing contract with Israel.

You might question whether the last example is about DEI. I would say that it is because 1) Members of the terrorist group Hamas, which attacked Israel, have darker skin than Israelis; 2) People who favor DEI programs tend to be Democrats, and the protesters against Israel since the invasion by Hamas last October have been heavily Democratic.

Fundamentally, DEI programs and initiatives have as their goal preferential treatment based primarily on skin color and sexual orientation/identity, not on ability and skills. Some have called it a form of reverse discrimination in the same way that people have talked and written against affirmative action for decades. When Florida governor Ron DeSantis banned DEI initiatives at public universities, for example, he said that what DEI stands for is “Discrimination, Exclusion and Indoctrination.” Your politics may or may not align with DeSantis’s, but I think most people would agree there is a lot of truth in his statement. Furthermore, DEI has become an object of mockery thanks to the Internet meme “Didn’t Earn It,” recently popularized by Ian Miles Cheong, a conservative journalist, and Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist. Like it or not, that meme also conveys a good deal of truth.

Thanks to the Supreme Court decision last year, we have reached the point in the U.S. where we should be able to put affirmative action in the rearview mirror. I think that eventually, we will be able to say the same of DEI. Six months ago, Elon Musk said, “DEI must DIE.” I agree, and the sooner the better.