Understanding the DEI Dismantlement

As an independent cultural anthropologist who has been researching and closely monitoring the DEI domain for the last few years, I would like to confront the question of whether DEI initiatives are divisive and ineffective. The answer is yes on both counts, but not for the narratives propagated by the American ruling class of oligarchs. Rather, we should consider how DEI initiatives have worked just enough to keep the status quo intact for those at the top, while planting the seeds of division between a significant percentage of marginalized and impoverished white people and every other marginalized and impoverished group in the U.S. and beyond. This angle, I argue, is both underestimated and understudied, and therefore needs to be brought back to the table.

The first problem with the word “diversity” is the word itself. Who is diverse in relation to whom? Anthropologically, all humans on the planet today belong to a single species—homo sapiens. Yet, as a single species, we are, without exception, diverse biologically, culturally, and socially in ways that are visible and invisible, static and fluid. However, the way diversity is often framed in institutional domains implies that some people are diverse in relation to others. That some need to learn diversity while others have it and bring it to the table. This framing, I argue, has from the start driven a wedge between a significant percentage of marginalized and disadvantaged white people and other marginalized and disadvantaged groups—groups that should naturally be allies, not enemies. The only group that benefits from this divide is a small percentage of privileged whites who use the structure of whiteness to their full advantage.

It took me a while to understand that the benevolence of privileged whites preaching “white privilege” was anything but benevolence. Instead, it was a way to masterfully hide behind the cloak of whiteness to prevent us from distinguishing marginalized white people from privileged whites. It is no wonder that I always felt suspicious about the inaccurate term “white privilege,” because many white people in America and elsewhere are equally disadvantaged, like billions of others around the world. By hiding behind the overarching term “white privilege,” the small percentage of privileged whites have ensured the following: first, they remain disguised behind the veil of whiteness and thus maintain the status quo. Second, they ensure that most marginalized white people remain defensive—and come to their defense—whenever their wealth and power are threatened. Third, through the structure of “whiteness,” privileged whites ensure that a large percentage of disadvantaged white people see other groups fighting against similar socio-economic ills as enemies, not allies to unite with in their battle.

As such, the first bold proposal I make, if we are serious about social change, is to replace “white privilege” with “privileged whites” to account for the many whites who are not privileged and distinguish them from those who are. The huge number of disadvantaged white people are allies in this battle against the privileged, wealthy ruling class who utilize countless “isms” and “phobias” as sorting devices, while using the term “white privilege” as a tool to prevent any potential allyship between many white people who are not part of their club, yet are misled to think that the problem is everyone else in society except the privileged whites. Some argue that “well, it should be obvious that by using ‘white privilege,’ we are not referring to every single white person.” I counter that with, no, it is not obvious at all. Precision in language makes a huge difference to ensure all social groups who need to unite and work together have clarity on what kind of changes are needed, and who exactly is blocking change and transformation.

Considering the above, it is hardly surprising to see why many DEI initiatives were at best a superficial band-aid aimed at keeping things the same for the privileged whites. Elites and ruling classes are masters in inventing initiatives intended to keep things unchanged. In a sense, people’s anger towards DEI initiatives is akin to the poor and working classes voting for billionaires (who became billionaires at their expense), thinking that those oligarchs will save them or make their lives better. After all, one of the things the ruling classes master best is framing their own needs and agendas as urgent public agendas or crises.

How should we, then, think about and understand the real challenges around DEI, and how can we distinguish genuine DEI problems and challenges from the misleading and false narratives promoted and circulated by the American ruling class today? I argue that we can only make meaningful and effective changes by carefully examining three layers:

1. Power: We need to zoom out and think about the question of power and how it shows or is disguised in the context of DEI initiatives.

2. Key Concepts: We need to zoom in on what the key concepts of DEI really mean to counter the misleading narratives propagated by billionaire-owned media and social media.

3. Institutional Application: We need to carefully examine how institutions and workplaces have (mis)applied and even abused DEI initiatives, and the failures that resulted from their (mis)application, upon which the ruling class and social media billionaires capitalize to completely dismantle the productive sides of DEI work.

Equally important, we must in good faith confront the mediocrity and poor work produced and conducted by many DEI experts and practitioners in the field. Either way, for DEI initiatives to really do what they are supposed to do, serious changes must be made. If we fail to confront and tackle these three layers together, we risk not only losing the gains made by DEI initiatives thus far but also the risk of the current oppressive structure becoming even more oppressive and harder to change as it spills over into all other domains, including the legal protections we have in place.

Before diving into these layers, it is crucial to emphasize that I in no way wish to dismiss the important achievements made by many DEI scholars and practitioners or initiatives. Furthermore, the angle I focus on is not meant to negate the massive impact of racism and exclusions that exist in most domains of American life, which are a result of “whiteness” and “white supremacy” as a structure.

Power

Many social scientists agree that power is at the center of any social question we study; that we can easily locate power relations in any social question, no matter how masterfully disguised. Bertrand Russell perfectly summed it up in Power: A New Social Analysis when he wrote: “The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics” (4). A key characteristic of power is that it never lasts if it is only destructive. Power has both productive and destructive sides. Its destructive side cannot survive without the rewards and perks that come from the productive one.

I state this to emphasize that we should consider analyzing the pushbacks against all and anything DEI by taking into consideration that the ruling class is threatened by the productive aspects of DEI initiatives that have been accomplished or can potentially be achieved, despite the many serious shortcomings that exist within DEI practices. It is not a secret that most American and Western institutions and workplaces are very much like mountains: the higher one climbs, the whiter they become. But this whiteness at the top should not be seen as representative of all white people. We must distinguish between the white people who are as marginalized, silenced, and impoverished just like many other groups, and the specific ruling class that is white and that in fact also includes a big percentage of people who only started passing as white in recent history. The latter fact is crucial to understand why the small percentage of privileged whites at the top don’t mind the narratives that bracket all white people together, because in doing so, they continue to use all whites as human shields, while benefiting from framing everyone else as an enemy of white people at large.

While the ruling class never intends to have those marginalized white people join their club, they have every intention to capitalize on their rage any time they wish to govern and regulate the bodies, behaviors, freedoms, and rights of all other marginalized groups. This keeps a big percentage of marginalized white people under their grip, because, well, the enemy is every other marginalized group like refugees, trans people, LGBTQIA+, Islam, and on goes the list of manufactured enemies to be hated and blamed for all the problems, crimes, and plundering committed, directly or indirectly, by the ruling class itself. It never occurs to most people that the only enemy is the one trying to convince them that they have enemies. In this sense, the marginalized white people are losers in this battle as much as all other marginalized groups. They are intentionally being turned against many allies from other marginalized groups by siding with those with whom they have nothing in common but race or skin color. It is only when we begin to understand the intricacy and the nuance of this layer that we may begin to ask the right questions and turn the entire DEI work around.

Key Concepts

One of the key challenges most people encounter when attending DEI trainings is the vagueness and misrepresentation of DEI concepts in institutional and public discourse. This can be attributed to two main reasons: first, the failure of many employers and institutions to clearly spell out what DEI terms really mean and what exactly they are supposed to do. Second, the intentional misrepresentations circulating in billionaire-owned mainstream media and social media.

It is impossible for most people to disagree on the importance and value of clear and simple definitions of DEI terms as we know them today. For example, diversity, in short, is an undeniable fact of life. Although all humans on the planet today are homo sapiens, as a single species, we are incredibly diverse in our languages, thoughts, values, religions, perspectives, and countless other components that, if examined closely, are sources of enrichment, not threat. Likewise, equity doesn’t mean everyone getting the same resources or treatment. It means providing access through the removal of all barriers (e.g., political, organizational, structural, etc.). If we examine most humans on the planet, it is not hard to conclude that most people—except the wealthy, of course—have many barriers that alienate them and prevent them from being fulfilled in the way they define fulfillment. But that is not the narrative propagated by the ruling class. Instead, we hear how diversity and equity are about lowering standards or doing away with them altogether. If DEI initiatives do the work they are supposed to do, they should not be lowering standards. Rather, they should revise and change standards in ways that take into consideration all groups who were never considered when these standards were made.

In brief, the misrepresentations and fallacies are too many to be addressed in this article, but based on years of research, practice, and monitoring, I can safely say that, aside from the malicious algorithms of social media, there are three factors that feed and amplify these fallacies.

First, we must confront the fact that many DEI researchers and practitioners have done a poor job in writing about, promoting, and even doing training in this area. I have lost count of all the poorly written books and articles I have read in the field. I have equally lost count of the many trainings I have watched, attended, or observed, littered with poor, repetitive content lacking in depth and nuance. Oftentimes, it is precisely the content of DEI courses that alienates people and makes them feel that such mandated trainings are being shoved down their throats, hence resulting in divisiveness, resistance, and suspicions about the value of such trainings.

Second, I have observed that many employers, regardless of their intentions, were more invested in checking boxes than making serious structural changes that can truly show the value of DEI initiatives for all marginalized and excluded individuals and groups, without exception. Many DEI initiatives are not as inclusive as they claim—they still marginalize and erase many diverse voices in the spaces they are applied. In other cases, DEI initiatives are more invested in generating success stories to be displayed in brochures than making serious structural changes. The latter, unfortunately, ends up backfiring and serving the ruling class, because serious structural changes would pose a serious threat to their very existence.

To share some concrete examples, some of the most recurring questions I have received in trainings I have done in the past, which happen to come almost exclusively from white men, are questions like “Are DEI initiatives done in other cultures and countries, or are they just imposed on Americans?” The answer to the question is twofold: first, it is fair to say that, in most countries around the world, people know more about other cultures and countries than Americans do, and therefore, there is absolutely no harm in opening America to the world in the same way the rest of the world is open about America and other cultures. Second, the more general answer is that learning more about other cultures and how other people think, do, and sense is a promising opportunity for growth, not a threat, especially in a country with so many diverse groups of people. It is something that anyone anywhere in the world can benefit from, and therefore, the fact that others may not be culturally curious and aware doesn’t mean that we should reciprocate ignorance.

Another recurring question is: “Don’t you think that such trainings further divide people and make them overly cautious about speaking to each other for fear of offending someone or saying the wrong thing?” The response here is when DEI work is done right, it shouldn’t divide people and make them afraid of engaging with each other. It should do the exact opposite. Effective DEI work is supposed to make people mindful of the intention that comes across when they engage with others, and the impact their words or behaviors may have on others. Being aware of intention and impact doesn’t equate to not being able to say anything to anyone for fear of offending them. Still, and I know I am taking a risk in declaring this, many DEI trainings and narratives have indeed enabled or produced types of people who seem to be looking for excuses to be offended and to construe, sometimes genuine human slips, as intentional micro and macro aggressions. Even worse, the way things have been done has resulted in people who are quick to play identity cards anytime they are confronted with totally unrelated matters like being incompetent in doing their work or other unrelated professional and personal matters. I am in no way condoning or denying the existence of racism, sexism, and countless other forms of exclusions, marginalization, and even violence against so many vulnerable groups and individuals, but I also can’t in good faith ignore the darker side of this coin. For one side to be true, it doesn’t negate the other darker side. In many workplaces and university campuses, we have armies of people who overuse and even abuse the language of “feeling violated” over things like someone mistakenly not referring to them as “they,” but they remain completely silent and unmoved by countless injustices on campus or at work, let alone about atrocities and genocides in the outside world. We have a type that wastes so much time giving themselves and others the “permission” to indulge in selfish acts of complicity, indifference, and silence under the guise of “self-care.” These types of people are a subject of a full separate article to be written one day.

Yet another recurring question is: “Don’t you think that there is more harm than good in political correctness?” Political correctness was never supposed to happen. Ever. The problem with politically correct language is already in the term itself: it corrects the language, and in doing so, it politicizes it through such imposed corrections. The problem with political correctness is that it corrects the language without correcting the conditions that produce and enable that language. In doing so, we lose two battles: the battle for correcting the conditions that produce the need for the language of political correctness, and the battle for creating awareness among those who think that using politically correct language is going to make any meaningful changes.

These questions and many others are not totally invalid, and they are not to be dismissed as simply “racist” or “ignorant.” Rather, the questions themselves speak volumes about how people perceive DEI initiatives; the questions raise questions about whether these initiatives are doing the work they are supposed to do; and lastly, the recurrence of these questions tells me the questioners’ assumptions and fallacies are certainly being fed and amplified by social and mainstream media. Thus, DEI practitioners have much work to do to confront this reality.

Institutional Application

It is hard to write this section without heavily drawing on Sarah Ahmed’s critical book, On Being Included, which I consider as one of the most powerful books on how racism and diversity operate in institutional life. In it, Ahmed confronts two crucial questions: What does diversity do? What are we doing when we use the language of diversity? We are confronted with what it means when the space made for diverse people is created by those governing the space and the structure under which we live and function. In doing so, it also gives them the right to control that space or dismantle it whenever they choose, which is exactly what we are witnessing today. Many DEI officers/professionals I have spoken to over the years have confirmed to me that they don’t feel they have any power to change the structures of the workplaces in which they work. They are given just enough power – along with a fancy job title – to appear as though they are making changes, but once and if they dare to confront real problems, they are often replaced or disciplined by the privileged whites who remain at the top of every institution and organization. As such, diversity workers, Ahmed writes, “are institutional plumbers: they develop expertise in how and where things get stuck” (32). For Ahmed, there are serious problems and pitfalls in being a diversity person as a person of color, not only because one has to simultaneously work at and on the institution (22), but also because one embodies diversity by providing an institution of whiteness with color, yet one is also appointed by whiteness, even if the appointment is supposed to be for the sake of “countering whiteness” (4). In this way, Ahmed observes, we should not assume that this is an equality regime aimed at the overcoming of an inequality regime, but to recognize that “an equality regime can be an inequality regime given new form, a set of processes that maintain what is supposedly being redressed” (original emphasis, 8).

The very idea that “diversity” is about those who “look different” shows that it is ultimately more about keeping whiteness in place. “If diversity becomes something that is added to organizations, like color, then it confirms the whiteness of what is already in place” (33). Ahmed goes further to interrogate problematic statements we see on many job posts stating things like women, minorities, etc., are encouraged to apply. She argues that, in explicitly stating who is welcome to apply, what is left disguised is those doing the welcoming – namely the privileged whites who hold the power of doing the welcoming. In this sense, Ahmed sees diversity akin to hospitality in which the host is whiteness (those already at home and doing the welcoming) and the guests are the others. “People of color in white organizations are treated as guests, temporary residents in someone else’s home. People of color are welcomed on condition they return that hospitality by integrating into a common organizational culture, or by ‘being’ diverse, and allowing institutions to celebrate their diversity.” (original emphasis, 43) Thus, diversity operates more as a “containment strategy” (53) and a “lip service” model that ends up keeping things the same by not working effectively – keeping things unchanged by paying lip service to the urgency of the need to change things. “When diversity becomes a routine description, what is reproduced can be the routine of this description. Statements like ‘we are diverse’ or ‘we embrace diversity’ might simply be what organizations say because that is what organizations are saying.” (57-8). This, I contend, results in DEI fatigue, resistance, and indeed, opposition because both the “diverse” people for whom such initiatives are supposedly intended, and the white people who feel such initiatives are being “shoved down their throats” begin to question the entire regime for different reasons and motives, which is exactly where we are today. Ahmed notes, this produces tiredness and sickness with the repeated use of the old terms, which then can be seen as a symptom of institutional reluctance: “you have to repeat the terms because they are not doing it; they are not doing it because you are repeating them” (61).

Another critical symptom of institutional exhaustion and reluctance produced by the DEI regime is the exhaustion of writing documents, which in fact applies to many other parts of most institutional work cultures. When it comes to DEI, there is a sense for many practitioners that “writing documents” is the work they spend most time doing. One interviewee in Ahmed’s book puts it perfectly: “you end up doing the document rather than doing the doing.” Ahmed poignantly captures the implication of this description: “while doing the document is doing something, it is also a way of not doing something: you do the document rather than ‘doing the doing,’ where this other sense of doing would require doing something more than the document” (86). Ultimately, this is the difference between doing and paying lip service to doing. Ahmed rightly observes that many institutions are more invested in “looking good” than “doing good”. To “look good” is, among other things, a matter of “showing process”, which Ahmed argues, is not the same as having a process. Showing process is more about “producing auditable documents” that make the institution auditable, and therefore makes it look like it “did well” on DEI matters (and this can apply to many other institutional matters beyond DEI). In this sense, Ahmed concludes, the document itself becomes “not only a form of compliance but of concealment,” and in the same token, “just as changing the perception of an organization from being white to diverse can be a way of reproducing whiteness, so, too, being judged as good at equality can be a way of reproducing inequalities” (102).

In the end, Ahmed sees, and I agree based on my own experience, that diversity, as practiced in most institutions, is more a “technology of happiness” than a tool that can bring about serious and meaningful structural and social changes: “through diversity, the organization is represented happily as ‘getting along,’ as committed to equality and antiracism. If your arrival is a sign of diversity, then your arrival can be incorporated as good practice” (153). This, she astutely observes, forces DEI hires and officers working in such capacity to “inhabit a category” and to constantly question themselves on whether they are “it” –i.e. fitting that category. Ahmed adds that when we don’t fit the category, we necessarily hit an “institutional wall” that blocks our mobility: “There is an implicit relation between categories and mobility that we can make more explicit. When a category allows us to pass into the world, we might not notice that we inhabit that category…We need to rewrite the world from the experience of not being able to pass into the world” (176).

Thus, to remedy many of the DEI institutional failures is to take seriously Ahmed’s sharp observation noted earlier that the most slippery aspect about this type of work is the fact that practitioners must at once work at and on the institution, which necessarily creates a conflict of interest. Nevertheless, if allowed to do this work sincerely, this conflict of interest is inevitable and an effective tool of checks and balances. It is a prerequisite for creating healthier and more inclusive workplaces and communities at large, which we know today is essential for belonging and thriving for all people. Many people have asked me recently what I make of all the workplaces who were so quick to roll back on their DEI practices. My answer is that these are very likely the kind of workplaces that have abused, misapplied, and co-opted DEI initiatives all along. It is proof that they were never serious about such initiatives in the first place. For them, DEI work was just playing the game, and the game they play is quick to change when the rules of that game are changed. In the end, we are left with this painful conundrum: we only need DEI initiatives because we don’t truly have a society that values diversity, we don’t have equitable workplaces and communities, and we don’t practice inclusion in the deep sense of the word. The day we have them weaved into the fabric of our human awareness is the day the need for such initiatives will cease to exist. Yet, to forcefully do away with DEI is a way to forcefully govern, discipline, and put each marginalized body and group of people in their right place – a place of servitude – through a culture of fear and terror spread by the privileged white oligarchs at the top. This is precisely why silence and retreat are much costlier than resisting not only what is being done to DEI, but how DEI has been done all along.

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