DEI… Been in the news a lot and it’s a favorite target of trump and his people. But what is DEI, and why do the political right hate it so much,
After all, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and that is what DEI stands for, don’t sound like bad words. I mean a mix of people of different backgrounds, all working together on a level field toward a common goal isn’t a bad concept, right?
Let’s start with the history of DEI and work forward, c’mon, I’ll make it fun, I promise!
Back before most of you were born, there was thing called a civil rights movement. This movement happened because, well, believe it or not, there was a time in America, where people weren’t all treated equally or fairly.
For instance, black people couldn’t drink out of the same water bottle as a white person.
Imagine that shit…
The term, DEI, grew out of that civil rights movement and the concept of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion laid the framework for the civil rights act of 1964. That said, DEI was not the foundation for affirmative action, and for those who are a bit undereducated, I’ll have to explain what Affirmative action is..
Affirmative action is a policy that you can’t be discriminated against because of your race, gender, creed, color or sexual orientation.
While similar concepts, DEI differs in that it’s just a much broader concept…
And I’ll be the first to admit, they seem more alike then different, but I’m not the one writing the google definitions.
Now just for shits and giggles, I asked google how our government approached diversity, equity and investment before the civil rights movement… and the answer isn’t all that surprising.
It fucking didn’t!
Like those minorities serving in our armed forces didn’t get equal treatment till Truman’s executive order ordered that equality in 1948.
Kinda funny that equality has to be ordered, don’t ya think, or if not funny, maybe tragic is a better word.
So, once the concept of giving everybody a level playing field was introduced into American culture, a lot of people also started arguing against it.
How did it affect the average American. Rather the average white American.
Those in the south were pissed, especially in the deep south, in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. And when I say pissed, I mean Pissed.
There were a lot of pissed of white folks up my way as well. While the northern response might have been a bit more subtle than our southern friends, they weren’t necessarily happy about those black folk that wanted to get their foot in the door where we all worked.
All Pissed over giving people a level playing field!
From a personal perspective, in the 70’s a mere decade later there was still a lot of pissed of people talking how the black man was coming for the white mans job, and again, I live in the north.
And that was basically because minorities had started suing people under the civil rights act, and they were winning, changing the American work force.
What came along with people suing under the new civil right acts was training, training in how not to get sued, especially. Almost all the training in the 1960’s was toward how not to racially discriminate in your hiring practices and was often a list of do’s and don’ts.
In the 70’s that training was more confrontational, confrontational in the sense of encounter groups, which were an actual thing, you know get a bunch of black folks in a room with a bunch of white folks and let ‘em go at it, you know, talk shit out.
Now none of this is a bad thing, leastways that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it, but know the new attitude of all out equality here in the us of a, just didn’t apply to blacks, but also to gays, lesbians and others as well
and come the 80s and 90s, well, maybe that’s when shit started to change for DEI.
And that’s because training models shifted from a list of do’s and don’ts and encounter groups to all out education in attempting to understand different cultures, what bias is and the advantages of working together.
Now before we get to the last 25 years of diversity, equity and inclusion, know that dei has never been easy in this nation, facing opposition in 1984 by Ronald Reagan who wanted to abolish it, or at least do away with affirmative action, then there was the moral majority of the 90’s who were just against anything and everything that wasn’t… white!
So here we are at the turn of the century and suddenly people are looking around and noticed that we’ve become a multicultural nation, a nation of many…!!!
And with multi-culturalism, DEI training became broader and might be where the wheels started to fall off.
To meet the challenge of a growing multicultural society, dei seemed to morph away from education about understanding and accepting other cultures
to creating inclusive cultures in their workplace. In essence meaning training was more action orientated in that they, who ever they is, wanted to include that systemic change into their workplace…
Which to me sounds like ripping a Christian poster off the wall and replacing it with a Muslim poster.
I don’t know, but with the rise of Black Lives Matter, and the growing support of the trans community, a lot of white people started asking, hey, what about me!
And I haven’t even talked about DEI has helped women in the workforce,