The Future of DEI?
I read this article by Porter Braswell in Fast Company last week: “I’ve worked in DEI for a decade – it won’t survive beyond 2025.”
I wanted to bring this piece to your attention because I think it is timely, important, and does a good job of pointing people back to the meta goals of a modern-day DEI movement.
Rather than get hung up on the machinations and political sound bites associated with DEI in an American election year, this article reminds us to go back to the point – what on earth DEI was ever designed to be about – wholesale material and cultural change towards more equitable outcomes. Put plainly, we believe people should stop being treated like crap because of the biases, assumptions, and barriers thrown at whole sets of identity groups and communities. Radical, I know (please imagine my eye roll right here).
Recognizing that the article’s title was designed to be provocative (I mean, it got me to click through!), what I love about it is that, in very plain-spoken language, it reminds us that now is not the time to give up on DEI; it’s actually time to double down.
In making the ongoing case for the relevance and need for DEI initiatives in America, Braswell reminds us,
“None of the issues that gave rise to the need for DEI policies are going away anytime soon: 350 years of legalized slavery, Jim Crow laws, generational trauma, economic racism, segregated education, housing discrimination, land discrimination, genocide, the prison-industrial complex, conscious and unconscious bias. They won’t simply disappear from our collective conscious and lived realities.”
This is long-haul work, work that started long before you and I were on the planet. We will very likely pass the baton to those coming up after us. This is and always has been a multi-generational effort. Each surge forward has been met with an energized and obsessively funded and lobbied backlash.
The political pendulum can feel maddening. One step forward, two steps back – that truism can feel incredibly disheartening.
On my good days, it reminds me that struggles towards equitable treatment of men and women, People of Color and white people, U.S. born folks and new Americans – well, it requires fortitude. It requires consistency. And it requires moment-to-moment creative problem-solving. When something doesn’t work, we pivot, redouble our efforts, and try again.
This article does a good job of painting a broad picture of what has and hasn’t led to success in our efforts thus far. To be clear, most of our ideas were good ones (ex. Employee Resource Groups), but not all of them have led to the impact we have sought.
Rather than give up or keep trying the same thing even though it’s not working, we get the opportunity to evaluate as we go and shift towards whatever will get us closer to our goals in ways that align with our values.
This article, written four years after the murder of George Floyd by police reminds us how crucial it is to both put our money where our mouths are and to thread and embed DEI values and approaches throughout our organizations rather than treat equity as some sort of time-stamped checklist we can use and then move away from.
“But I soon realized the corporate actions that emerged out of the tumult of 2020 weren’t strategically designed to address the root causes that make DEI in the workforce necessary. Often they were simply designed to check publicity boxes. As a result, DEI remains a siloed department within many corporations, rather than an integrated function in which every employee and manager plays a part.”
I started this entire essay project last December talking about Ronald Reagan – partly because he’s such an odd figure in American politics. Reagan was associated with the concept of “trickle-down economics” – which is complete and utter bullshit. The truth is actually the opposite – America’s current billionaires have become rich on the backs of working people – wealth actually trickles UP.
I share this digression because there was a parallel and incorrect belief. We need change at the cellular level of our organizations and cultures. Yes, of course, we need leaders to give a shit about inequity, and thus equity. But also, at every level, across every department, we eventually need enough people to care to create and enact the sea change we seek.
A few days ago I was listening to Caleb Hearon’s podcast, “So True,” and in his episode with fellow comedian Mary Beth Barone a portion of their conversation particularly resonated with me. Caleb is a white, progressive, gay, cis male comedian and actor from Kansas City, Missouri. He talked about how sometimes he feels child-like, and then childish when he thinks about the kinds of “fixes” he’d like to recommend to the world. For example, why don’t we just melt all the guns and never make any more?
Yes. I resonate. Suggestions like these can feel nuts because they are so simple. Something a child might recommend. But yet, so possible and so wise. Truly.
From a DEI perspective, I think these kinds of thoughts all the time:
Just pay women equal to men
Just hire, pay, and promote Black, Indigenous, and People of Color
Just enact pay transparency
Just stop having unpaid internship programs
Just start fertility, parental leave, and gender-affirming care health supplements
Just build out single stall bathrooms
These things are not complicated, they are just complex. Culturally, they feel hard because behaving equitably and inclusively would simply be new. New doesn’t have to be scary, it can also be exciting.
As you can probably tell, I strongly encourage you to take 5 minutes to read Braswell’s article in full. It includes several recommendations that feel rooted at this moment and our opportunity to keep moving forward, despite how hard some assholes are threatening to push us back:
“The companies that have already integrated DEI sensibilities and initiatives into their organization—be it in their talent, product, innovation, supplier, leadership, strategy, marketing, or finance teams—will continue to be the most successful, with more diverse companies consistently outperforming less diverse ones by as much as 36% in profitability.
In the face of this reality, it’s time for organizations to do what CDOs [Chief Diversity Officers] themselves have been pushing for decades now: seamlessly integrate DEI into every part of an organization. This will be no small feat—it’s a long-term process that requires organizational and cultural transformation from the top down and the bottom up.”
I’m proud of us for continuing what, to me, feels like a very basic campaign to get people treated properly. After you give the article a read, I’d love to learn what part of it resonates with you most – let me know – trina@trinaolson.com.
Grateful to be in this with you,