DEI was never for us anyway

“Why are you attacking the good guys?”

More than once, I’ve received this question when pointing out problems with diversity initiatives. The well-meaning messengers posing this query mean to protect fragile work addressing issues of race, but they implicitly send another message. The message is that people of color should be happy with any effort ostensibly directed at them, whether or not that effort yields positive results in the long run. While I was once responsive to their frustrations, I no longer heed them. This time of upheaval around diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)  policies presents too great of an opportunity to shift the status quo. When so many workplaces have broken faith by doing away with DEI commitments they claimed were central to their core values, I am encouraging employees of color too to say good riddance to current workplace diversity programs, in favor of organizational justice and workplace equity.

I’ve spent the past 10 years researching the negative unintended consequences of diversity initiatives. This perspective has allowed me to recognize that DEI wasn’t built with me, or other people of color in mind. My work began in an unlikely place, the church. 

20 years of focused work toward diversity has resulted in a tripling of racially diverse congregations in the U.S. I was long an advocate for these efforts; however, I became increasingly troubled that while the complexion of churches began to change, the promised racial justice didn’t materialize. A 2021 report from Barna Group revealed that white practicing Christians remained unlikely to recognize past or continuing racial discrimination, cross-racial relationships continued surface level and Black congregants experienced racial slights in these multiracial spaces.

 Pastors of color also experienced difficulties in multiracial churches. And they couldn’t as readily go to another congregation because church wasn’t just a place of worship, but also one of work. As I spoke to Black pastors at churches that promoted diversity, I was shocked and angered to hear their stories of burnout, lack of opportunities for advancement and unceremonious firings. From this starting point, my investigation expanded beyond the church to incorporate other types of workplaces, finding the same struggles I saw with Black pastors in Latina professors and Asian marketers.

Through interviews with Black, Latino and Asian employees working in diverse organizations, I became convinced that there was a serious problem with the idea of workplace diversity. Not the demographic reality of having people from different backgrounds come together, but ideas of diversity people hold, the actions taken in the name of those ideas and the effects of those actions on employees of color. 

I believe the root of the problem with diversity is that many workplace programs focus on external appearances, what I term diversity displays. The superficiality of these displays is revealed by how easily  corporations havewalked back their commitments since Donald Trump won the 2024 election. 

Diversity displays take two primary forms. First, there is the simple presence of numerical diversity. Many companies talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, yet their primary measure is how many people of each group are presented. This counting can say nothing about the work environment folks encounter or whether these numbers are arrived at by a revolving door of hiring and attrition. The second form is activity around diversity done without regard to its effectiveness. For example, mandatory diversity trainings have long been known to be ineffective, yet they are still the most frequent program put into place. 

Workplaces are rewarded for these diversity displays because they receive benefits for just appearing to be diverse. These benefits include appearing more legitimate to potential customers and funders, and insulation from charges of racism. Workplace incentives for diversity have often been summed up by the business case for diversity. It is “the proposition that a diverse workforce is essential to serve a diverse customer base, to gain legitimacy in the eyes of a diverse public, and to generate workable solutions within a global economy.”  Put simply, hiring different sorts of people will help your company make money, be reputable and create. Shareholders embraced the business case because there was no murky morality involved; it simply focused on the bottom line. 

But there’s something important missing from the business case for diversity- the employees themselves. The benefits of monetary success and reputation accrue to the corporation, not to the workers on whom diversity relies. 

Because of this mismatch, I argue that diversity displays don’t just neglect employees; they’re actually costly for employees of color. While workplaces receive the bulk of benefits, employees of color receive the burdens of upholding the image of diversity, with serious costs in terms of additional work, questions about our capabilities, and the need to fit the appearance of diversity that our workplaces desire. Diversity programs, as they currently exist, shouldn’t be thought of as a gift to employees of color when the primary beneficiaries are organizations that are typically white-owned and led. 

As I spoke to employees of color across churches, universities and corporations, I found four primary ways that they paid in order for their workplaces to gain the benefits of diversity. In what follows, I share each cost and one employee’s account of it.

First, they experienced heavy work burdens. Employees of color often must attend meetings, pose for pictures, or even go on trips just so their department won’t show up with only white employees  Beyond the use of their images and bodies to display diversity, employees of color are often made responsible for diversity committees, work in addition to their job description that often goes unlauded and unpaid. The final work burden comes not from the work itself but the satisfaction of the work. Work that gives responsibility for an issue without authority to change it feels especially heavy for employees; this is the case when most employees of color are dealing with issues of race with no real authority to fix the problems they face.

A Latina marketing manager told me about the stress of being brought into pictures of teams that she wasn’t even on. It was so that the company could complete for contracts for which diversity was one of the metrics. She was also invited to sales meetings even though she was not on the sales team. Her role in those meetings, along with a Black colleague, was to give the diversity portion of the presentation. Her employer was not coy about the reasons for her presence, saying in the planning meeting, “Let’s get Teà and Lamont in here for some diversity.”

The second cost of diversity derives from how employees of color perceive the rightness of their employer’s actions, otherwise known as legitimacy. These employees see how their workplace purports to be diverse to outside parties yet doesn’t meet that standard in daily reality. The distance between the image and the facts on the ground creates feelings of guilt for employees of color, disillusionment from being part of something that isn’t quite true. 

When I spoke to a Black PR manager who used the same Black employees in publicity videos over and over again, she portrayed these exact feelings of guilt. First, she explained away her use of these employees. “There are a couple of women that we use a lot. They got a little irritated, like they're tired of being used to put up there. But they're good-looking women, very smart, and African American, so we want to use them.” Then, she explained away her own feelings about her actions and her employer’s. “I think that I see what they're trying to do, so I don't feel bad about portraying them in that way. And I just hope that then it gets there, and I think it will. So yeah, I don't feel bad. Is that what you asked me? If I felt bad?”  That wasn’t the question I asked, but that was the question at the forefront of her mind.

Third, employees of color experienced having their capabilities undermined. The barbed insult of “diversity hire” or “DEI hire” made them feel as though they didn’t quite belong despite their qualifications. As a result, these employees worked harder and didn’t allow themselves room to make mistakes, so that they would never confirm the worst suspicions about them. In the workplace, where efficiency is valued, spending extra time on this sort of perfectionism was detrimental to their overall performance. Yet, they couldn’t take the risk of error. As one Latino professor told me, “There’s definitely stress. Going through the interview process, and even now as faculty, I personally feel the need to disprove the belief that I’m a minority hire or that I was being interviewed because of my minority status. I feel the need to show that I am deserving, capable, my science is good. And I’m not a diversity hire.”

Finally, employees of color experience their identity being subsumed to what their employer needs for the image of diversity. This often entails employees being visibly non-white enough to display diversity, but not so non-white as to make their coworkers uncomfortable through speech or standards of dress. This intrusion into identity makes it difficult for employees of color to develop a holistic professional and personal identity. 

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A Latina radio personality was asked to use a voice very different from her own while on English-speaking radio. She recounted, “I was told to be very happy and smiling and sound very much not like myself.  I sound naturally more laid back, more chill. A lot of Spanglish. My friends hear me on the radio; they're like ‘who is that? Like, you sound super white,’ and deep down I'm like, oh, ‘Why, I can't be myself even in my job,’ you know?” Her sense was that she could be “professional” or herself, but not both.

The employees I spoke to attributed physical, emotional and family issues to these costs of diversity. Fully nine out of every 10 pastors and professors I spoke to, and three out of four corporate professionals, reported physical and emotional signs of stress that they directly attributed to their organization’s diversity efforts. One Black pastor told me about the symptoms he experienced after being called an “affirmative action hire” by former congregants. “I did not know how unhealthy I was until I was diagnosed. I was having neurological problems, loss of balance, memory issues, substituted words for other words. I began to have massive headaches. I went to a counselor, and he said to me, this is chronic stress. So chronic stress is not event-based. It's years of your stress hormones being always on and feeling out of control, and that you have no way out. It is always a fight and flight. It is always constant anxiety. And when he said that, I realized for a good while I had been living every day anxious, worried about what was going to happen.”

To add insult to injury, employees of color experience these detriments while receiving substantial backlash. When non-targets of diversity initiatives believe DEI is a zero-sum game, with “others”  winning at their expense, they can become antagonistic toward employees of color. The result of this antagonism is employees being pitted again each other, preventing the improvements in workplace climate that result from joint perceptions of fairness and unfairness.

These examples make clear that neither the abandonment of workplace DEI initiatives nor the maintenance of them as they exist will result in all employees having what they need to succeed. Instead of defending the status quo of DEI initiatives or ignoring workplace climate altogether,t a new way forward can be found through organizational justice, a system whereby there are fair processes, fair outcomes and fair interactions within the workplace. 

Unlike DEI, which tends to obscure racial inequality, organizational justice requires that imbalances in advantages and burdens borne by individuals and groups in society be dealt with to arrive at fairness in processes, outcomes, and interactions. What’s more, the foundations of organizational justice are moral, rather than financial. It requires that workplaces do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. There are better outcomes for the business that come along with organizational justice, but profit is not the key driver, resulting in a commitment that can withstand changes in public opinion.

Organizational justice practices also result in people-centered management. Environments that focus on organizational justice reward leaders who use inclusive practices providing focused, supportive, and fair treatment of all employees. These practices do not stop at the presence of women and people of color; they provide a means for these groups to contribute fully to the workplace by reducing stereotypes. Inclusive leadership also makes all employees feel more respected by increasing trust with supervisors and improving communication.

Unlike diversity displays, organizational justice benefits workers through improved well-being, job satisfaction and commitment. It also benefits workplaces through reduced employee turnover and increased employee capacity. And it doesn’t increase backlash. It is the definition of a win/win that doesn’t happen without equity or inclusion, but it doesn’t stop there. Organizational justice is both morally laudable and financially smart because it includes all of us.

In the current attacks on DEI and the broader attack on civil rights, there has been a sharp dichotomy in terms of corporate responses. Some companies have doubled down, with shareholders affirming diversity as necessary to business success. Others have backed away from past commitments. When I say that even the actions taken by companies staying the course aren’t enough, it may sound like attacking the good guys. It is really holding workplaces accountable to what they say they want to do, and what I believe they want to do, which is create an exceptional environment where both their workers and their business can thrive. 

The current era of DEI is ending. Replacing current initiatives with organizational justice offices that assess management on inclusive practices, track all employees’ assessments of fairness and dignity, and make targeted changes, would be a welcome new beginning. It’s time to stop defending the status quo with the same old rationale and move forward to the employee-focused solutions we each deserve.