We need more DEI hires, not fewer
There's a winning argument for keeping DEI that no one is making
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For the last two weeks straight I’ve been wanting to write about how I’m planning on surviving the next four or however many years. I’ve studied the requirements of happiness and the necessity of joy. I’ve corresponded with thinkers and done some thinking of my own, because the last Trump administration was no picnic. It’s important that I don’t hitch my emotional well-being to algorithms jiggered to throw me in the clothes dryer with the news cycle set to rage. I can’t spend the next four years reacting to hourly atrocities, and neither can I ethically check out. Spending the next four years morally upright and happy is something worth digging into.
I really, really meant to write about happiness and joy. I really did. But bad news keeps cutting the line. First, I felt like I had to write about how Donald Trump forfeited the Cold War and turned the United States into a subordinate ally to Russia—a week before Trump demonstrated which end of the puppet strings were his in that fiasco in the White House. I have never gotten something so right or wanted so badly to have been wrong.
And then I saw White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt answer a question in January about about safety at the Federal Aviation Administration in the most nakedly racist way one can be without wearing blackface and dropping N-bombs. This one’s on me. I saw the old clip while doomscrolling social media even though I knew it would make me more distracted, enraged, and unhappy. I’ll spare you my initial reaction to Leavitt’s comments; suffice it to say they did not fill me with joy.
Here, judge for yourself. Asked if cutting the federal workforce at the FAA could further endanger air travelers, Leavitt began with incongruous balderdash—somehow “immediately terminating DEI hiring practices at the FAA” demonstrated that he was “intent on ensuring that we are increasing staffing at these agencies”—before dragging us back to the 1960s, and not in a good way.
“When you are flying on an airplane with your loved ones, which every one of us in this room has, do you pray that your plane lands safely and gets you to your destination, or do you pray that the pilot has a certain skin color?” Leavitt told reporters in the White House briefing room. “I think we all know the answer to that question, and as President Trump said yesterday, it's common sense.”
First of all, you never want to go full Spiro Agnew. I’m a fan of bad guys in movies as much as the next guy. Who can’t understand the appeal of a Hans Gruber? You get so caught up in Michael Corleone’s story that it’s easy to lose sight of what a murderous criminal he is. I mean, pretty hats aren’t the only reason people root for the New York Yankees, and those guys are awful. But you never go full Agnew. You don’t buy that? Ask Sean Penn.
Obviously, staffing levels in air traffic control, and not hiring practices in the military, were likelier to have caused the Army helicopter to collide with the American Airlines plane in January. Or—stay with me here—maybe someone just screwed up. They don’t call it human error for nothing.
But to immediately blame DEI for the crash revives an argument I first heard as a boy against affirmative action, that by requiring the hiring of minorities or women it meant standards were being lowered. And that’s only true if there’s something inherently superior in white men in contrast to people of color and women, but that was always left unsaid. Leavitt called that “common sense,” but there’s a better word for it.
Saying that word out loud makes people—OK, it makes white people—uncomfortable, so affirmative action and quotas fell out of favor until stakeholder capitalism in the late 2010s gave us Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, which now has become a dirty word. Inherent in the opposition to DEI is the belief that it “often lowers performance standards to meet metrics,” in the words of one Silicon Valley founder.
This isn’t just the inevitable cycle of white backlash that has always followed racial progress in America. This one has the power of the state behind it from the White House to the states. Universities and corporations are complying in advance to avoid credible threats of prosecution from attorneys general.
Get this: After 97% of Apple shareholders voted recently to reject an anti-DEI proposal, Trump posted, “Apple should get rid of DEI rules, not just make adjustments to them. DEI was a hoax that has been very bad for our country. DEI is gone!!!”
So, of course, Apple CEO Tim Cook capitulated. “As the legal landscape around this issue evolves, we may need to make some changes to comply, but our north star of dignity and respect for everyone and our work to that end will never waver,” said Cook, who is apparently the exact same guy who in 2013 told Yale’s graduating class, “You should rarely follow the rules.” Unless and of course it comes to protecting shareholder value, that is, even if the shareholders want the complete opposite.
Diversity’s defenders are in full retreat to pre-empt a crackdown that looks quite serious. But a funny thing happened on the way to dismantling, once again, the instruments of inclusion in our society. No one is even pretending to make the best argument for keeping DEI programs.
No, I’m not talking about how expanding opportunities to historically excluded communities expands the workforce and gives businesses, academia, and government access to deeper hiring pools filled with more talent. Or that fostering more inclusive workplaces produces businesses better able to change, better able to recruit top talent and more successful at holding onto it, resulting in higher profits than less-diverse companies.
Bottom line, in 2012, McKinsey found that U.S. companies with diverse executive boards had a 95% higher return on equity than those that lacked diversity. That’s a heck of a bottom line.
Consider the gender gap. This isn’t just about social justice. According to the UN, closing the gender gap would diversify the economy and unlock $7 trillion dollars in global economic activity.
So, yes, DEI would create a more prosperous world, which is nice. You’d love to see it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the best argument for keeping DEI.
Remember what restaurants were like in America before we relaxed immigration rules in the ‘80s? It was like every Chinese food restaurant shared the same recipe for wonton soup. In this pre-fusion era, no one had ever heard of Thai, Venezuelan, Vietnamese, or Salvadorian food. It was a dreary time to have a curious palate.
Same holds for diversity in the workplace. You know what you get if you’re not reaching out to those who have been traditionally shut out? You get the same people in the room who have always been in the room: white dudes.
And don’t get me wrong, as a white dude, I am in favor of us. I’m a big fan of me and other white dudes, even those who don’t play for the Baltimore Orioles.
But do you know what you get when you only have white men in the room?
You get New Coke.
You get Pat Boone’s cover of Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti.
You get square dancing being taught in gym class, not to mention all kinds of hoo-hah being taught in history class.
You get Major League Baseball without Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson in their primes.
You get the Jim Crow South.
You get social media that leads to teen girls cutting themselves.
You get AI that encourages a boy to commit suicide.
You get facial recognition software that leads to false arrests because it can’t distinguish between Black faces.
You get audiences clapping on the one and the three.
You get workplaces that make more mistakes by copying poor decision-making.
You get people who say, “We’ve always done it that way.”
You get a game show host as President, a Fox News host as Defense Secretary, an anti-vaxxer as Health Secretary, and a Russian asset as Director of National Intelligence.
You know what you get when you don’t have DEI? You end up with British teeth.
The problem with white supremacy is that those who assert it never demonstrate it. Getting rid of DEI is going to hurt the economy and cost a lot of people time, grief, pain and money. But to my mind the biggest cost of DEI is that it’s going to make this country a worse place to live. Homogenizing power not only excludes talent but encourages stupid decision-making among those who are left behind.
We need more DEI hires, not fewer. The UX of America is about to get all kids of janky.
Jason Stanford is a co-author of NYT-best selling Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. His bylines have appeared in the Washington Post, Time, and Texas Monthly, among others. Follow him on Bluesky at @realjasonstanford, or email him at jason31170@gmail.com.
Further Reading
We set up a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. Show the world that you’re part of The Experiment.
Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself.
“You get audiences clapping on the one and the three.” Up until a couple days ago, I’d never heard this term. Now this is twice in two days. Which made me understand it’s a thing to be looked up. So I did. Good one. Will add to repertoire. Thank you—for the whole piece.
Amen