This just isn’t true. At the core of DEI is the understanding that negative cultural biases make life worse for everyone. These cultural biases (which differ individually based on a million factors) are an unavoidable part of the human experience and impact all of us in different ways, so DEI initiatives encourage being mindful of them in order to limit their harm.
Critics, execs trying to CYA, and incompetent practitioners of DEI work focus obsessively on simplistic guidelines around race, gender, and sexuality, but legitimate DEI work aims to support everyone in the areas where prevailing attitudes are letting them down.
You’re never going to hear about all the DEI professionals capably doing that work because it’s uncontroversial and often very private, but it’s happening all the same and it materially improves employees’ lives every day.
In DEI's defense, SHRM generic policy is very generic indeed[1] and is unlikely to cause controversy. Just more corporate bureaucracy most people ignore.
<< This just isn’t true. At the core of DEI is the understanding that negative cultural biases make life worse for everyone. These cultural biases (which differ individually based on a million factors) are an unavoidable part of the human experience and impact all of us in different ways, so DEI initiatives encourage being mindful of them in order to limit their harm.
Hmm. I am currently participating in a group that uses a more, lets say aggressive, interpretation ( white supremacy is pervasive and all that ). It gets old fast.
<<You’re never going to hear about all the DEI professionals capably doing that work because it’s uncontroversial and often very private, but it’s happening all the same and it materially improves employees’ lives every day.
Maybe, but then good actors have some responsibility to denounce bad actors.
> Hmm. I am currently participating in a group that uses a more, lets say aggressive, interpretation ( white supremacy is pervasive and all that ). It gets old fast.
Go read my reply again, I namedrop the kind of people who fixate on this stuff. DEI is way, way more than "white supremacy is bad"; if that's all you're getting, they're letting you down.
> Maybe, but then good actors have some responsibility to denounce bad actors.
And they do, sometimes publicly, sometimes privately to the CEO who hired a grifter "DEI" consultant for a year-long engagement that only delivers experiences like yours.
That’s kind of my point: the work is mainly vulnerable one-on-one conversations, listening to people who are struggling, and then advocating for them in an environment that isn’t terribly concerned with worker happiness (corporate America).
There aren’t simple answers or one-size-fits-all solutions. Picking a representation metric for one demographic and pushing it up won’t fix things, even for that population. Many people are, at minimum, skeptical of DEI, and are inundated with clickbait news reinforcing their skepticism.
The people doing the real work understand all this and still show up every day trying to making things better for people.
Critics, execs trying to CYA, and incompetent practitioners of DEI work focus obsessively on simplistic guidelines around race, gender, and sexuality, but legitimate DEI work aims to support everyone in the areas where prevailing attitudes are letting them down.
You’re never going to hear about all the DEI professionals capably doing that work because it’s uncontroversial and often very private, but it’s happening all the same and it materially improves employees’ lives every day.