Architects of DEI Agree The Initiative Now Needs an Overhaul

Backlash started when companies turned diversity into a corporate fad

- CALLUM BORCHERS

Culture warriors aren't the only ones applauding big businesses' rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Quietly, so are some of corporate DEI's architects.

They haven't wavered on the principles, but they say DEI needs an overhaul after companies turned it into a buzzword ripe for attack. Like "innovation," "sustainability" and other business principles-turned-corporate fads, DEI piled on some of workers' least favorite things: extra consultants, more awkward human-resources sessions and new chiefs with lofty titles and fuzzy mandates.

Some of the most visible steps that businesses took after George Floyd's murder in 2020 turned out to be ineffective, according to Harvard sociologist Frank Dobbin, whose research on racial and gender disparities in management is often cited as evidence for robust diversity programs. Those pledges companies made to fill certain percentages of leadership roles with women and people of color? Besides being legally risky, the goals seldom materialized, he says.

And the unconscious bias training that was supposed to produce antiracist allies? Turns out people hate being told they have hidden prejudices.

Dobbin's research with fellow sociologist Alexandra Kalev found that diversity-training programs commonly involve unconscious bias tests for employees-rapid-fire word-association exercises with white and Black faces, for example.

Instead of feeling energized to improve, though, participants often respond with shame and anger.

"They tend to walk away from it thinking they've been accused of something they're not really guilty of, which is the whole history of the United States when it comes to race and gender," says Dobbin. "It really pisses people off."