Fast Company downplays unraveling of DEI in corporate America
March 14, 2024
Fast Company brings us the news that DEI—diversity, equity, and inclusion—is failing. That’s not quite how they put it, but it is what they are saying, which, to us, is good. For we hold that unfashionable view—even a view that some tell us all is evil—that it’s not the color of the skin that matters but the content of the character.
The magazine had a conference about DEI, and in that conversation, we got this:
DEI needs to get back on track—these leaders have solutions – Fast Bites: Recapping highlights from the panel “The Fight for DEI” at the 11th annual Fast Company Grill at SXSW.
This might need a slight translation from journalese. If things are going swimmingly, the phrasing is, what do we need to do next to achieve ever greater-gloried success? If things are going badly, then the phrasing is as above. What do we need to do to get back on track? How do we fail less badly?
“Last month, Zoom laid off 150 employees in a move to invest in what the company described as ‘critical areas for the future.’ Apparently, one of those areas isn’t diversity, equity, and inclusion. Of the employees who were laid off were those working on DEI at the company.
“But Zoom is hardly alone here.
“In the years since corporate America rushed to implement DEI initiatives following the summer of 2020, many companies have dramatically slashed those efforts.”
We think that’s excellent news. It’s part and a parcel of our complaints – shown by our undercover investigations – into DEI in school systems. The very idea itself is an aberration, a failure to understand the American ideal. We are all individuals, and we should be considered – as MLK said – as such, not members of a group.
It’s also possible to be much more vicious about what was said at this little media conference. Most of which were DEI executives wondering about, trying to think about, how they manage to still get paid for doing what shouldn’t be done in the first place. But we’d not be that vicious, of course not. No, not us.
We agree with the basic analysis being made here, though. DEI was a mistake, something driven to prominence by lockdown and, if we wish to say so, George Floyd and the subsequent BLM demonstrations. But DEI was the efflorescence of a particular time and place—one of those madnesses of crowds that overtake human society from time to time. We all do wake up eventually, and here it is. DEI is dying.
Good.
The task now is to ensure that it doesn’t live on in odd corners of the woke and progressive world, like the school districts. We’re perfectly happy to agree that sometimes mistakes are made. We also insist that the great joy of a free society—free speech, free association, you know, freedom—is that it closes down the mistakes faster than any other system.
Mistakes like DEI.