The Hidden Damage of DEI

DEI undercuts competent minorities of all flavors, making them too easy to dismiss as DEI hires. It’s time to unwind DEI and make competence, ability and experience matter again.

Originally published in The Alabama Gazette

We’ve known for some time that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is a DEIsaster.

Bad puns aside, common sense and the evidence of our own eyes has been telling us that for years.

DEI policies were touted as the answer to all manner of ills both real and imagined, usually tied to some vague notion of “social,” “environmental,” “climate” or some other modifier-word “justice.” I say vague notion because I’ve never been able to pin down a formal definition of these not-regular-justice “justices” that didn’t fall into circular arguments, Marxist talking points or some form of Ibrim X. Kendi’s “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Yeah, no. Even the New York Times slammed Kendi’s “two wrongs make a right” argument, not to mention it’s a highly racist idea that completely disregards the basic principle of equality under the law.

Ah, well. Logic, coherent thought and adherence to the nation’s founding principles rarely intrudes on the feelings and desires of these Warriors for Something-or-other Justice. Thus, their love for DEI—it makes them feel soooo good!

DEI policies have been a typical response of companies that went woke—before they went broke. Boeing bragged about how they were a leader in DEI…until parts falling off their planes in midair became a running joke, and at least one booking app started letting you pick flights to avoid Boeing planes. Netflix and Disney have seen their audiences abandon them in droves, again because the DEIfication of their shows has become a running joke. Finally, the best, most recent example of “go woke, go broke” can be summed up in two words:

Bud Lite.

Now Boeing is one of 48 organizations (corporations, universities and government entities) that have dismantled or reduced their DEI programs since 2023. Disney just pulled a transgender storyline from a family-oriented animated series. Bud Lite sales have yet to recover, and their recent commercials are anything but woke. Netflix hasn’t taken any concrete steps away from DEI yet, but with long-term subscribers abandoning the platform and multiple direct competitors nipping at its heels, it will either follow the cultural trend to the right or go the way of Blockbuster.

DEI is just the latest label to be slapped on an old concept—the idea that we shouldn’t fill positions based on merit and ability, but should make color, gender, orientation or some other factor the most important criteria for hiring and promotion. Beginning in the 1960s, Affirmative Action gave us quotas, even if we weren’t allowed to call them that. These days, we call them DEI hires without any hesitation, and it’s meant to be as pejorative as it sounds.

Therein lies the hidden damage that decades of anti-meritocratic policies have done to our nation and our people.

These days, when you see a woman, or a Black or Brown or Red person, or a gay man or lesbian in any leadership position, the default assumption is that they were a DEI hire. Is this prejudice? Absolutely, in the most literal sense. We’re prejudging them based on their appearance, sex, orientation or whatever. Sadly, this pre-judging is based on painfully acquired experience and observation.

Don’t believe me? Okay, I hope you’ve got a nice place under that rock where you’ve been living. Let me give you just two examples we’ve had to endure these last four years: Kamala Harris and Karine Jean-Pierre.

Want some more? The nose-ring-wearing FBI spokeswoman in New Orleans who refused to call the New Year’s truck assault a terrorist attack, and the DEI-obsessed LA Fire Department. To be fair, the current LA Fire Chief may actually be competent despite her focus on DEI hiring. She’s in the horrible position of having been surrounded by an entire city and state full of DEI hires, operating on purely Lefty policies, and it shows.

The true hidden cost of DEI—the toll it exacts from competent minorities of all flavors—is that it degrades their abilities in the eyes of the public. That’s sad, tragic and wrong. It’s also undeniably true.

The LA fires horribly inadequate responses aren’t solely due to DEI, but the level of damage they’ve caused has been greatly increased by years of liberal inanity. In the mind of the public, DEI bears a large share of the responsibility for the city’s dismal handling of the fires.

Pretty on the outside, bone dry on the inside—one picture that perfectly captures the calamity of the LA fires

DEI has now been shown to be an abysmal failure, in case after case. Those who say otherwise are delusional, or are citing old studies from McKinsey & Company that have been shown to be garbage. Yes, that’s right—all those wonderful studies from 2015, 2018, 2020 and 2023 couldn’t be replicated. In fact:

“…McKinsey’s studies neither conceptually (in terms of the correct direction of causality) nor empirically (in terms of their set of large US public firms) support the argument that large US public firms can expect on average to deliver improved financial performance if they increase the racial/ethnic diversity of their executives.”

As I said: garbage.

All those corporate DEI initiatives that were supposed to increase productivity and profits? All those Pentagon programs to diversify the military? All were based on faulty studies using cherry-picked data to support a preordained conclusion.

Gee, where else have I heard that recently? Something to do with “safe and effective,” maybe?

The public’s mood is increasingly turning against “progressive” policies that have left large swaths of Los Angeles a charred wasteland. The perception is that DEI is a large part of that, and as is usually the case where policy is concerned, the perception is the reality. Fortunately, there is now ample evidence that DEI is a complete flop, so now is the time to use that perception to rapidly unwind hiring systems that put ephemeral, inconsequential factors above ability, competence and experience.

We need to know that when someone steps up to that podium in an emergency that they are the best person available for that particular job. Their sex, race, how they put Tab A into Slot B or whether they prefer boxers or briefs shouldn’t matter in the slightest.

It’s time to restore confidence in our organizations and our leaders. To do that, we need to restore competence as THE major hiring criteria. That means we need to get rid of DEI at every level of our institutions as rapidly as possible.

It probably wouldn’t hurt to apply those same standards to our elected officials, too…but that’s probably asking too much.

If you want to read the paper that’s the final nail in DEI’s coffin, here’s “McKinsey’s Diversity Matters/Delivers/Wins Results Revisited” by Jeremiah Green and John R. M. Hand, ECON JOURNAL WATCH 21 (1) March 2024:5–34: https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1296/GreenHandMar2024.pdf?mimetype=pdf

@Timestwo13, @MythinformedMKE, @America_2100, @dailymail, @nytimes, @Newsweek, @FDRLST, @Not_The_Bee were all referenced in the above piece

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