February 26, 2025 • 52 mins
The current trend to discontinue and dismantle DEI motivated us to look into this suddently controversial issue. DEI will be another corpse on the pile of convenient corpses that were easy targets. But, what does Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion mean? What are the impacts it has had? What will happen when it's gone? The implications are further reaching than you might think.
Recommendations
Holidays (2/26/2025):
Recommendations
- Abraham: Put “DEI” into everything
- Shane: Captain America: Brave New World (https://www.marvel.com/movies/captain-america-brave-new-world)
Holidays (2/26/2025):
- Black Lives Matter
- Carnival Day
- Carpe Diem Day
- For Pete’s Sake Day
- Inconvenience Yourself Day
- Maha Shivaratri
- National Customized Wheel and Tire Day
- National Letter to an Elder Day
- National Personal Chef’s Day
- National Pistachio Day
- Pink Shirt Day
- Tell a Fairy Tell Day
- Thermos Bottle Day
- International Energy Week
- National Chip Week (UK)
- National Eating Disorders Awareness Week
- National Green Week
- National Invasive Species Awareness Week
- https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/05/17/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-in-the-workplace/
- https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/what-is-dei
- https://builtin.com/diversity-inclusion/what-does-dei-mean-in-the-workplace
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dc-plane-crash-black-hawk-crew-order-plane-investigation/
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/using-dei-strengthen-infrastructure-rural-areas-michele-heyward-eit-clauc/
- https://dailyyonder.com/commentary-eliminating-dei-hurts-everyone-rural-people-included/2025/02/03/
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/juliekratz/2024/12/29/history-of-dei-why-it-matters-for-the-future/
- https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/22/us/dei-diversity-equity-inclusion-explained/index.html
- https://hub.jhu.edu/2023/11/22/affirmative-action-debate/
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffraikes/2023/01/27/the-court-is-coming-for-affirmative-action-that-would-be-a-terrible-mistake/
- https://edtrust.org/blog/a-brief-history-of-affirmative-action-and-the-assault-on-race-conscious-admissions/
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/31/did-trumps-firing-of-aviation-officials-increase-likelihood-of-dc-crash#:~:text=Meanwhile%2C%20The%20Associated%20Press%20reported,Baird%20contributed%20to%20this%20report.
- Zeynep Arsel, David Crockett, Maura L Scott, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the Journal of Consumer Research: A Curation and Research Agenda, Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 48, Issue 5, February 2022, Pages 920–933, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucab057
- https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/spc3.12666
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why we Do what we Do. Welcome
to Why We Do what we Do. I am your
wise policy host, Abraham, and I'm your infuriated host Shane.
(00:25):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about all of
the things that humans and non human animals do, and
sometimes we talk about good ideas that get belittled as
bad ideas even when they're good ideas. And that's the
thing that we do here as a show.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Now, Yeah, so today we're going to talk about DEI. Now,
I would say at the beginning of this that DEI
is a very big topic to uncover, and it's a
polarizing topic right now in the world, at least in
the United States.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Where buttholes are about it.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
So I think what I would say is that we
are going to probably talk a lot.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
About kind of the general idea, what the EI is.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
And there will be several episodes after this that are
going to cover specific topics inside of it, policies, procedures,
things that we do, belief systems, all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
We're going to talk about this quite a.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Bit given the current landscape, because you know, if we're
getting banned by our government, then we're probably doing something right.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Fair enough. Yeah, we're here to unpack some of this.
We're going to dive into the history of it and
all that sort of thing, and so hopefully, hopefully you're
here for all of that. Hopefully you will learn something
you did not know and walk away with a better
understanding and better arms to come to the table with
arguments and facts and reason and that sort of thing.
But if you are joining us for the first time, welcome,
(01:46):
happy to have you here, hope that you are into this,
you get as much out of this episode as we
intend for you to get out of it, or some
approximation of that. And if you do end up liking
what you hear today and you would like to support us,
you can head over to Patreon and join us there.
You can pick up some merch at our merch store,
leave us a rating and review, like subscribe, tell a friend,
do all those things. I'll talk more about that at
(02:08):
the end of our discussion today. And you are joining
us here on actually before I even say that, And
if you are a returning listener, thanks for coming back.
We're happy to have you here, and we hope that
you continue to find value and all the things that
we talk about I always welcome our new listeners, and
I sometimes forget that I need to continue to welcome
back our returning listeners, which we hope there are many
(02:28):
of you. And yeah, thanks for being here. As I
was saying, it is February twenty sixth, which means it
is a holiday. In the holiday that we're going to
talk about, which is very relevant to today's topic is
Black lives matter.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, and it should be every day. Yeah, you know,
they do matter every day. They do matter every day
and will always matter. It's also Carnival Day. It is
Carpe DM day. I feel that with this topic again.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, seize the day day.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
It's for Pete's Sake day, whoever Pete is sure.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
It is Inconvenients Yourself day. Okay, Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
It is also a Maha shiv I should have practiced beforehand,
Maha shivar Ra tree.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
There we go, Okay, moving on. It is national customized
wheel entire day, sure, National letter to an elder day. Okay.
It is National Personal Chef's Day. Oh I would love
I would love a personal cheft that way. That would
be fantastic, same same and I would be so nice
to them. Eh right, Yeah, it's National Pistachio Day, speaking
(03:32):
of personal chefs. Yeah, bring on those pistachios. It is
a pink shirt day. If you weren't already wearing one,
now you can.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, your shirt looks close right now. It's not pink,
but it's in that family.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, it's like, yeah, in the redish color. It's within
that hue. It's a tell a fairy tale day, which
it is fun. Yes, it is Thermos Bottle Day, Blou.
I like that. It is National Energy Week and National
Chip Week in the UK, which I'm assuming means fries,
like yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Come on, get it right, UK, it should be National
Fry Week. It's National Eating Disorders Awareness.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Week, okay, and National Green Week.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And it is National Invasive Species Awareness Week. One of
my favorite episodes of The Simpsons is Bart versus Australia
and he brings the bullfrog and it was like my
first introduction to understanding what an invasive species was.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
So thank you Simpsons. I remember that one that was.
I think he was also on a mission to discover
whether toilets flush the opposite direction. That's how she started
in that episode. Yeah, okay, it started with that.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
There's a long distance call and then he ended up
racking up a whole bunch of money, and then Australia
was mad at him that he owed so much money
on a collect called Australia Fun.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
That's right, that's right, yeah, Simpsons, good stuff. Well, we
are actually not here to talk about Simpsons, and really
not even here to necessarily unpack the background of all
of these holidays, although it's possible some of them will
become episode top topics at some point, sure who knows.
But instead, our actual purpose of today's discussion, as we described,
(05:06):
is to unpack the history of diversity, equity and inclusion,
or maybe more popularly talked about in the news as
d EI, which is what those letters stand for initiatism. There,
do you have anything else before we dive into our
topic here? Now, I think this topic is going to
(05:28):
be big, so let's go ahead and dive into it. Okay,
very good, Yes, I agree. Okay. So DEI has been
making the news lately as one of the recent political
straw man being attacked by conservatives in the search for
another culture war boogeyman. And I think as we unpack this,
we'll really try and highlight I think the point will
(05:49):
become clear. But I want to I think say upfront
that I don't think that the initiatives against this are
actually I don't think they care about DEI that much,
but they tend to go after anything that has an
anti racist slant to it, that has a name, and
(06:12):
then they just make that a fear mongering talking point
among those politicians. So wokeism again, like we did an
episode on this, it's not what they are talking about
it as and even they like greatly misconstrue it. And
it's like essentially the idea, of course is similar to
with DEI affirmative action. Yeah, wokeism, DEI. It doesn't matter,
(06:37):
Like if there is a name and it has anything
to do with anti racism, then they are attacking it.
And again I think it's just because they can get
people riled up about it. Critical race theory is another one,
like it just has a name that they can turn
to and get people fired up about it without people
understanding what they're worked up about. So it just gives
(06:57):
them that culture war boogeyman to en flame and then
sense people about.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Right, I think now is a good time to unpack
the history of DEI so we actually understand what it
is how it works, and what will happen when it's gone. So,
as Abraham said at the beginning of the episode, DEI
stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's an informal name
for a series of initiatives that have gradually evolved over decades,
following John F. Kennedy's nineteen sixty one Executive Order one
(07:25):
ZHO nine two five, which mandated that federal contractors should
take quote affirmative action to ensure that applicants are treated
equally without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin
end quote.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah. So this was right during the Civil Rights era,
and at the time, money and power was primarily concentrated
in the hands of able bodied men with just very
little melanin in their skin who appeared to be of
European descent. Sure, and if that sounds like an absurd
way to decide how to concentrate power, it is. Before
there were laws against doing so. Employers, colleges, landlords, hospitals,
(08:03):
the military, the government, and other institutions could refuse employment, admission,
medical support, safety, fair treatment, and promotions toward people who
had more melanin in their skin or appeared to be
not of European descent or who were not men essentially.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Right, And that's not to say that things have gotten
better since then. Those problems still exist, but at least
there are currently some protections in place, at least to
some degree, to prevent that from being as overt.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
As it might have been previously.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
And we've still got a lot of work to do,
but I think it's important to note, like we have
come quite a ways since then. Yeah, I think it's
just kind of important to that we're not there, We're
not where we need to be. We have gotten we
have moved forward a little bit.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah, I think it was taken for granted that that's
just how things were. That was just like, that's the
power was concentrated in the hands of those people, and
that is just how things were. And this sort of
switch to say, like, it's probably useful to have other
ideas in these spaces, and to have people who come
from different backgrounds and who have different histories and who
(09:12):
have lived experience who can also participate in the sort
of decision making and innovation systems in our culture. And
so there were these policies that essentially said like, let's
include them too, and as you said, I mean would
I would make the case I think that it has
improved tremendously since the nineteen sixties, but we've never actually
(09:33):
gotten too equality. We've like made some progress, we've made
some steps and will unpack those, but we've never actually
gotten to the point where like it is a level
playing field, right exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
So there are a couple I think important acts that
came out that were initiatives that helped prohibit some of
these discrimination issues. One was the US Civil Rights Act
of nineteen sixty four. There was also the Vote Voting
Rights Act of nineteen sixty five and the Equal Opportunity
Act of nineteen seventy two, And all these initiatives were
designed to prohibit discrimination and employment colleges, housing, hospitals, in
(10:06):
all other institutions. So basically, these were anti discrimination acts
that were designed to protect folks that were historically being
discriminated against.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, And so before these types of laws existed that
would prohibit that kind of discrimination, businesses, colleges, et cetera.
They could choose to not hire people based on their
skin color, or based on their sexual orientation, or their disability,
or their gender, or their sex or other heritage. They
might have, and it was completely regardless of their qualifications
(10:37):
for participating in those institutions, Like even if they were
extremely qualified, if they were a woman, they might not
be allowed. And they if they were someone who was gay,
they might not be allowed to participate in those spaces.
And even if they were hired in those spaces, those businesses,
those institutions, they were not required to pay those people
fairly or give them the chance at promotions. Here, so
(11:00):
women were denied entrance to colleges or graduate programs because
of what was between their legs. Even if they were
like top academic performers, they were prevented from entering a
higher education. People of color struggled to find employment because
of the melanin in their skin, were regardless of whether
they had years of experience and training and demonstrated high
(11:22):
amounts of aptitude. So there were laws that essentially there
were not laws that prevented that kind of discrimination, and
there were strong candidates who could not participate because there
were not laws that protected against that kind of discrimination.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Right, so even in the rare places in which a
minority group had managed to gain power, they could also
discriminate against able body of white people. Who were just
looking for work, not that that happened very often or did,
but they could if they wanted to, without laws preventing
them from doing so. So basically, in these employment spaces, college,
even people applying for health insurance could be denied based
(11:58):
on any number of these factors that were simply just
factors that somebody were they were born.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Having, Yeah, great catch because yeah, even access to basic
things like insurance or hospital care like people hospitals.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, they would be turned away because they because of
their color the skin are, because of who they were.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Or because they brought ads. We don't turn away from
the ads. Here, we apparently let them in, and maybe
we should rethink that policy, but here we are all right.
So essentially, here what we have is that the people
(12:36):
who had the power, they feared losing that power, and
they feared losing it to people who thought differently from them,
or even if they didn't think differently from them, they
just looked different from them, and so they railed against
these new laws. They falsely accused these acts of forcing
them to hire unqualified candidates. They preached that once these
(12:58):
groups who at least appeared difference to them, gain any power,
that those groups would continue to strip away the power
from these non disabled white men in charge and replace
them with people who they believed were incapable of succeeding
in those roles. So it essentially here was just people
who were born with an advantage, maybe into a wealthy family.
(13:22):
They were whites, They were like in an area that
was had a lot of resources. They essentially were afraid
that by letting other people in they would not have
those advantages anymore, and instead they would be flipped. They
would then end up with the disadvantages the wrongside of
the tracks, if you will, that they would be the
(13:43):
ones who were like suffering in those spaces. So it's
kind of almost ironic that they're acknowledging the systemic problems
that exist and fighting to keep them in place so
that they don't land on the other side of them,
while arguing at the same time that they don't exist. Right.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, that's that's the whole thing that always gets me,
is like, well, what's the problem?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Why is why would that be so bad? Oh?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Is it because you've taken advantage of all these folks
for all these years and you've maintained power and with
and like suppressed large swaths of people, large groups of people.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Oh, is that what it is?
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Oh, you don't want to admit that, But that's the
amount of mental gymnastics that somebody has to go through
to make the argument for that is astounding to me.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah, you basically have to admit that it's a problem
to acknowledge that you're concerned about ending up on the
short end of that stick.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah, exactly, exactly all that to say, I think it's
important to point out that this is a bedrock principle
of conservativism. It's not the only thing in conservativism, but
it is a core value a thing. Yeah, it is
a thing, and it is a core value to reduce
the diversity of ideas and opinions and to constret power
in the hands of very few. We see that when
(14:58):
they dismantle university programs and say that universities in education
will indoctrinate people. Yeah, education doesn't indoctrinate people. Education educates people,
and it just so happens that more educated people tend
to vote differently than conservative views. That's a different story
in a different day. A common strategy is to advertise
some scare tactic that minority groups are to blame for
things going wrong, even in situations that have nothing to
(15:20):
do with these marginalized groups.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's just to prevent any kind
of diversity of ideas from existing. Right, is to try
and promote homogenization toward a small group of people's idealized
version of what a system of community should look like. Now, Nevertheless,
(15:42):
these marginalized groups, they organized and they fought for rights
and for protections. They protested, they wrote to their representatives,
They ran for office, and they argued that they at
least deserved a chance to participate in that in jobs
and education, the military, to have access to medical care.
What crazinesses this, And with bipartisan effort over decades working
(16:09):
on these issues, they did make progress toward this end. Right.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So, in the nineteen seventies we saw rights expand for
women and the first employee resource group was created at Xerox.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, in the nineteen eighties that was there. It started
to include a recognition and initiatives to protect people in
the LGBTQ plus community. But not only that, it was
also people in religious communities who may have otherwise been
discriminated against, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Christian like ye Mormon even
(16:41):
like those were also people who benefited from initiatives to
include people from various communities and protect them from like
bias and discrimination, right.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
I mean, that's the thing that I think people miss is, like,
you know, when there are like anti discrimination policies in
place that protect religious freedoms, it doesn't just protect people
who are different than you. It also protects you who
might identify as Christian or Catholic, who is like maybe
somebody who feels like, you know, the world is maybe
out to get you and that Christians are being persecuted
on like some absurd level. But it is a protection
(17:14):
as well, Like somebody can't say, oh you're Christian, Oh
I see that you have a cross tattoo, you can't work.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Here, right, Like they can't do that to you too.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
So it's a protection for you, the person in power,
and it's important to recognize that anyway, it's funny that
people can't see that type of thing. So in the
nineteen nineties, companies started creating specific positions dedicated to creating
policies tailored to their company's needs in support of providing
equal opportunity and inclusion for marginalized groups, and the Americans
with Disabilities Act started finally improving accessibility for the millions
(17:44):
of Americans with various disabilities, including injured veterans. Now, I
also want to point out when we talk about this timeline,
this is within our lifetime. Yeah, this is within our
lifetime as we're talking. This is not historical. This is
not Beef Skinner teaching pigeons to guide smart missiles during
World War Two in the forties. Like, this is in
our lifetime.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, this is not even boomers, this is this is
millennials essentially, because yes, most of what we've described so
far has happened since we were born. And we're not
that old. I mean, we're kind of old, but we're
not that old. Not that old. No, I mean, I'm
getting gray hair, but I started getting gray hair in
my late twenties. So yeah. Anyway, Yeah, So, as these
(18:23):
programs grew and they started to spread more, people became
increasingly aware of other issues that might exist in some
of these shared spaces, and it became important to start
considering things like a higher need for sexual harassment policies
so that it was less likely that people could be
sexually abused when with power imbalances that exist. They started
(18:46):
recognizing it was important to be considerate of other cultural practices,
that people from other places might think and do things
a little bit differently, and that as long as that's
not harming anybody like that should be okay. And that
includes again, like even people with religious backgrounds who maybe
need a they would like to have a prayer room
or something, and so they would set aside a place
(19:07):
for them to worship if they wished. Just in general,
being aware of our biases to help us treat one
another better and be treated better ourselves like that was
another outcome of some of the push that was happening
during this time.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Right so in the twenty tens, businesses actually started using
DEI processes even more, and those businesses that were using
DEI outcomes and objectives and different systems were actually out
competing others and saw real benefits.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Of a diverse work group or workforce.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
I should say, there were improvements in morale, creative problem solving, innovation,
and broader appeal to a greater number of consumers. Their
workforce and their pool that they were able to hire
from expanded exponentially. Workplaces thrive with diverse crews of employees,
with diverse people working in these spaces.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
And in the twenty twenties, where we find ourselves now,
at least at the time, thus recording this who knows
when you're listening to it. As attacks on marginalized groups
had been sharply increasing and a global pandemic nearly crippled
the entire world economy, Desperate social movements such as hashtag
me too and hashtag times Up and hashtag black Lives Matter,
(20:17):
they were sort of attempting this grassroots campaign to bring
further awareness to the increased division and the apparent rise
of bigotry to power. And I think that the fact
that there was so much momentum behind these policies should
have actually been a red flag to everyone that fascism
was just on the doorstep of many countries, especially in
(20:40):
the United States. Like the fact that we even had
need for something like that showed that we were not
out of the woods on these issues, and in fact,
we were rapidly retreating toward the dark ages.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah, people were radicalizing, for sure. So in twenty twenty five,
as fell in con artists Charlotte and Nazi and rapist,
Donald Trump was sworn into office again, DEI has been
rapidly dismantled in situations around the country and institutions as
well around the country, so in a move to avoid
political targeting, several major businesses began canceling any and all
(21:15):
DEI initiatives that they had created. These companies include, but
are not limited to, PEPSI, Disney, Google, GM, Meta, Ford,
ge Target, Chipotle, and PayPal.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
And also probably by the people who are paying for
these ads. Okay, so we're sort of walking through the
history here of all of the ramp up, through various
initiatives that are sort of form the basis of DEI
(21:47):
and what has happened more recently, so we're sort of
now up to the present here. On January twenty ninth,
twenty twenty five, just nine days after being sworn into
office and just a week after firing the entire Aviation
Security Advisory Committee, a black Hawk helicopter collided in mid
air with a passenger plane in Washington, DC and this
(22:09):
killed I saw various numbers on this, so I'm not
one hundred percent clear on the numbers, but the one
I saw the most often was that it killed all
sixty seven people that were aboard both aircrafts, and the belligerent,
dumbass Trump attempted to blame the crash on everyone he
didn't like, blamed it on Democrats, on Joe Biden, on
Barack Obama, and on DEI, saying, quote, we are all
(22:33):
searching for answers. The FAA is actively recruiting workers who
suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and
physical conditions under a diversity inclusion hiring initiatives. That was
almost exactly quote. I messed up a little bit in there,
but like he did, the incorrect article there, and when
(22:54):
pressed for evidence of this, he reported its common sense.
So they asked, how do you know it was DEI,
and he says common sense. To be clear, DEI initiatives
did not cause this crash. And as I mentioned, he
had recently fired the entire Aviation Security Advisory Committee as
well as many other airline officials that had belonged to
(23:16):
various aspects of air travel, and people had resigned because
of him and his policies who were also in that space.
There was a tweet that claimed that they had fired
three thousand employees. It looks like that has not been substantiated.
So I'm not clear on that part. But there was
a lot of laying off, and it was already very
(23:37):
short staffed, like they were struggling to have enough people
to work as it is in air traffic control. That
many people leaving obviously did not help. But here he
is blaming it on people with disabilities.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Right, honestly, Like it's just disgusting. So I think that's
where I can leave that part. I mean, there's gonna
be more information that comes out about this. I'm sure
about causes and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
But it is not DEI. Yeah, argument that they seem to.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Be making, and we'll talk about counter arguments stuff like
this later. What they're saying, essentially is they're hiring unqualified people.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
What makes them unqualified is their disability, and that is
not at all what is happening. No, that is not
at all what is happening. They're hiring people who are
qualified and also have a disability. They may have something
else going on, and so I think it's really important
to kind of clear that out.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
No, that is a great catch. Yeah, you're exactly right
that it was. The underlying assumption here is that these
are people who could not do the job correctly, and
it was because they were unqualified, and they were unqualified
because they had some disability of or one another, you know,
of some or some they were in some other way unqualified.
(24:41):
But that's not at all what was actually happened. Not
even close, not even close.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
So this brings us to the point where we've been
talking about DEI and kind of what it means at
this point in time, but we haven't really kind of
unpacked exactly what it means. When we talk about this,
diversity refers to the participation of individuals with a variety
of backgrounds, including people who have traditionally been marginalized or underrepresented.
Equity refers to equal access, so that opportunities for people
(25:06):
are fair, just, and impartial. An inclusion means that people
in that environment are treated with respect and dignity and
are accepted. So dei's primary purpose can be characterized as
ensuring that every qualified person in an organization, company, school,
or office is treated fairly and has the opportunity to
fully participate, regardless of their background or identity. And if
(25:26):
you are concerned with DEI, which part of that do
you strongly disagree with? I mean, that's The point that
I would make here is like, do you disagree that
people should have fair opportunities? Do you disagree that people
should be treated.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Kindly and with respect and dignity? Like? What part of
this is the is the actual issue here? Right?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Because I would imagine that the issue is not DEI.
The issue is that you are not qualified enough to
compete with a diverse workforce.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Right, Yeah? Yeah, I mean you hear this and it's
like the as we mentioned this, not only like an
outcome of this could mean that there are people who
are black or indigenous people, or from other countries or
who speak different languages not participate in those bases, but
could also mean that there are places where people who
(26:12):
there might be someone who is atheist who runs a
company who then hire someone who's Christian and does not
make them feel like they don't belong there because they
are Christian. It could mean that they onboard people who
are from rural communities even though they're in an urban setting,
because they want to have the opinions of people who
also live in urban areas. Like these initiatives also support
(26:33):
that they include people from all backgrounds and walks of
life and protect all of them and so it's not
just that it is people of color to the exclusion
of other people, and particularly of qualifying candidates. It is
find the most qualified candidates don't be distracted by the
fact that they have a name that is different from
(26:54):
one you might otherwise recognize, or you know, other features
of who those people are. Yeah, so I think there
are some counter arguments. There are kind of there's a
lot they kind of overlap with one another. We've mostly
said what they sort of are, but will I think
unpack a little bit some of the kind of arguments here. So,
(27:15):
I think unfortunately initial attempts at affirmative action, they didn't
know what they didn't know like they I think they
didn't necessarily know what they were always incentivizing. And so
there were a couple of missteps that happened early on, specifically,
without clear direction, many places took affirmative action to mean
x percent of your workforce must be minorities, and the
(27:37):
resulting consequence was that they essentially would have what they
were sort of colloquially described as racial quotas. That was like,
we need to have, you know, five percent of our
employees be black. So just like higher up until you
get to that ninety five percent and then the last
five percent make sure they're all black. And there were
(27:57):
several court cases that began to come out of this
these sort of policies, and that more clearly shaped affirmative
action policies and discouraged this whole idea of like racial quotas.
The whole idea of racial quotas have since been prohibited
by the Supreme Court, but also like it's just helped
direct better, more appropriate ways of thinking about affirmative action.
(28:20):
And DEI and I didn't really plan to talk about this,
but like one of them is, they have tried to
take on some types of hiring practices where they don't
see the name first, they just see a resume, and
then they just look through essentially what their qualifications are,
and then they decide based on that whether they're going
to bring them in for an interview, and so they
don't actually know anything about their race, or their sex
(28:43):
or anything else. They just see what their qualifications are.
And that alone reduced inequality so much that they wouldn't
even need something like racial quotas, because there were really
qualified candidates who were otherwise not being chosen because they
had a name that sound did like a minority name,
or it was a woman or something like.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
That, right, I mean, I think we talked about that
on the on an episode. We talked about it on
the Names Matter episode. There's one we did. We talk
about that a little bit. Yeah, because that was a
pretty pretty important study. It was pretty wild, good reference.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Others argue that affirmative action resulted in discrimination against white
or otherwise advantage groups, and there very well may have
been some instances in which white people who have had
a hiring advantage due to being white, but had been
outperformed by a person of color or a different sex
and felt that they were being discriminated against.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
That that could have happened.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
But the whole point is that the hiring practices are
fair and inclusive, and DEI policies frequently spell out strategies
for finding qualified employees without being distracted and dissuaded by
the fact that they may have come from a different background.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, exactly. So you know, the idea is to try
and level the plain field. And we talk I think
we use we talk a lot about hiring practices as
this pertains to business. But again, this actually is across
the various elements of society, because it is it is
inclusion for acceptance to schools, it is access to medical care,
it is access to financial services like getting loans by banks,
(30:11):
getting insurance, like, there are so many different places where
this could be a factor that affects the extent to
which someone would be facing problems because not of anything
they've done, or in any lack of things that they
have done, but because they are in some group, right
that those people have some bias against for whatever reason,
like maybe they're profoundly against the Irish, you know, and
(30:34):
so they see O'Malley come through and they're like, hmm,
I don't know about that person. We're not hiring that, right.
So another counter argument that I saw, so I think
largely those kind of represent the bulk of them. It's
usually things like it ends up being that they just
focus on hiring people because they're black or Hispanic or whatever,
which is that has been done away with many a
(30:56):
long time ago. And then there is the argument essentially
that they are high unqualified people, which most which is
not true, like that mostly there's no real evidence that
that has happened. That mostly seems to be a scare tactic.
And then the other one that's sort of unique from
those two is that some argue that with how society
has gone, that these types of measure measures just aren't
(31:17):
needed any longer. They're unnecessary, we are past the point
where they matter, despite the fact that if you look
around at all, the majority of CEOs, doctors, and professionals
at the highest levels are still primarily white, straight, cisgender men, right,
not exclusively, but primarily, And like even the initiatives that
(31:38):
exist in places like hospitals still find that with those initiatives,
they're still struggling. And I say struggling maybe isn't the word.
They're not really fulfilling on the promise of ensuring that
there are a relative distribution of qualified professionals that represent
different backgrounds, including just like white professional Christian women are
(32:00):
not as well represented as white cisgendered.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Men, right, And so you're going to see that across
the board. I mean, we both work in behavior analysis,
and you could see that in any in most of
the programs that we see for conferences and who's working
in research spaces like, you see that quite a bit,
that there is a discrepancy where it is you know,
a lot of I always kind of say, it's like,
there's a lot of older white men that are doing
a lot of speaking engagements, and so it is it's
(32:25):
just important to note and to maybe kind of figure
out some ways to do better with that.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
It was a long time ago, but when I started
my master's program, it was mostly women, and when I
started my doctoral program, it was mostly men. Yeah, and
so I think that speaks to where the allocation of
people sort of existed, and like, I think there were
(32:50):
a lot of reasons for that, and I do not
necessarily I do not blame the people at the institutions
who are making those decisions, but I think that there
had sort of truly been a push toward what maximum
level of achievement was suitable for certain people that sometimes
they internalized that idea, thinking well, this is as far as
I need to go because I'm a woman, or sometimes
(33:12):
it was just me. It was so difficult that like,
only people who had the most advantages were likely to
try and push through the obstacles that existed. I don't know,
there are a lot of reasons, I think, and I don't
think there was a lot of intentionality behind the people
who made the decisions there, but those were the spaces
where I found myself and I just thought it was
an interesting thing to observe where I'm like, we we
(33:33):
went in this space predominantly with women at this level,
but at the next level up it completely.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Flips like literally the opposite, right absolutely, Speaking of intentionality,
here's an ad that we intentionally are taking a break
for so you can hear.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Okay, we have been talking about, well, we were just
sort of unpacking some of what might be considered counter arguments,
I guess. But let's start digging into I think the
those sort of real world impacts and consequences and what's
going on here. And I think we'll start by understanding
what happens in places where DEI is specifically included, and
(34:17):
the research has been done to look at what happens
when you do that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Right, This is probably my favorite part of the episode
because I think that you and I probably we share.
I mean I say probably we share. I would say
the same values almost across the board, like almost.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Entirely, except I like mustard, you don't like, Yeah, you
like mustard, I like muster.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
That's that's it, entirely, that's that's the division of our podcast.
I do you think it is important to know that, Like,
what we're going to try to do here is actually
just explain actual peer reviewed literature that explains why this
is a good thing, not from our personal perspectives or
our biases, but understanding what the research is actually saying
about this. So that's that's where we're going next. And
so this is what really happens with DEI. So in
(34:58):
a paper two thousand twenty three paper Edmunds, Flammer, and
Glossner in the National Bureau of Economic Research conducted a
study of companies boasting as being among the best to
work for. They reported the firms with DEI were financially stronger,
were more growth oriented, had higher future earnings, higher evaluations ratios,
(35:19):
and tended to have greater representation of women in leadership positions.
DEI did not change stock market performance either up or down,
and research and development professionals with DEI policies had higher
and improved innovation than those with less or no DEI.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah, so they implement these policies and these businesses are
more financially well off and more competitive. That was the
thing that happened right there. Was a twenty twenty three
Pew Research survey that was just asking people about how
they felt about DEI, and they found that the majority
of workers surveyed supported generally DEI initiatives. They regarded them
as helpful, important, and necessary. However, they also reported that
(35:58):
these opinions did tend to skew in a partisan way,
and they were generally viewed more favorably by women and
people of color.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Oh weird, you know, like I could see a bunch
of yeah, a bunch of white these going no, I
don't like it.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, So that's kind of shoot out. Yeah, another thing
that's happened. Really again, we're sort of talking real world
consequences here. So the current push is eliminating DEI. That's
like what the current administration is pushing for. What's going on.
So there is recently, just like maybe a week ago,
a list of trigger words that people who are writing
(36:34):
grants should avoid using lest their grants be audited and
potentially rejected. And the list here is crazy. So when
just for people who aren't aware, when you're trying essentially
to get a grant, you are going to write what
you're trying to do with that grant who the grant
is for, how it's going to succeed. Just what is
(36:57):
the whole point of that granted? Right, So, like when
when you're writing these grants, like you just you just
have to describe what you're doing. You're usually like it's
some kind of grant that usually includes people in some way,
and so you you're going to talk about it, and
important note here about maybe like government censorship and what
that should be because a lot of these are research
(37:17):
grants that are funded by the government that they fund
a lot of different things, research, medical research, social science research,
all kinds of things. And so here's a list of
words that you should not say lest your grant be
targeted and potentially rejected. It is activism, advocates, advocate advocacy,
barrier barriers, biased biases, bias towards BIPOC, black and Latin X, disability, disabilities, diversity,
(37:48):
diverse community discrimination, equality, equal, equitable, history, historical, female gender diversity.
Oh I said that one hate speech excluded minority, Hispanic inclusion, equitable, inequitable, LGBT, marginalized, multicultural,
(38:13):
like race, Like, you can't say words like this in
grant applications, Like that's insane. That's insane. A lot of
those are words that, out of context, have nothing to
do with politically charged topics, like you can use them
in a lot of different ways. But also they're just saying,
like what you can write is white man's penis and
(38:33):
that will be fine. Anything else we will not accept.
Yeah yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
For an administration that has spent a lot of time
talking about freedom of speech and all the stuff, they
certainly don't like people saying certain words.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah. Yeah, they are very against speaking freely. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
So despite the effort put toward increasing DEI initiatives, many
researchers have found that the actual implementation of DEI has
been limited and that many spaces simply check the boxes
for DEI on their paperwork without actually having to invested
time or energy into any of those programs. So basically,
it was they were throwing up a green flag saying yes,
we're doing this, but they weren't actually being intentional about
(39:11):
any of the changes or any of the systems that
they had promised it to engage with. They weren't doing
any of those things, which is kind of an unfortunate thing.
That's not all places, but there are some places that
just kind of checked the box and accepted the grant
money or accepted whatever it was, and just kind of like, yeah,
you know, marketed that they were doing DEI, but weren't
actually doing it.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Yeah. I think the performative activism piece without actually doing
anything about it is just as bad as supporting like
anti DEI initiatives, right, because it it dilutes what that
initiative is intended to do and represent anyway so substantially
that it actually almost backfires in a way. Right, that
is definitely problematic. Okay, again, real world consequences here, quick
(39:53):
facts that most people in the United States will know,
but I'm going to say it anyway in case you
just to make sure you're really clear. To set up
the next point, we're going to make rural communities in
the United States almost universally support the Republican candidate, and
they were instrumental in putting Trump back into office the
(40:15):
second time and in putting him into the office the
first time. And ironically, rural communities will suffer greatly with
the elimination of DEI initiatives. Right.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
So, DEI initiatives pushed universities, including Ivy League colleges, which
we talked about on our Ivy League episode. They pushed
these Ivy League colleges to accept people from rural communities
who did not come from wealth, who did not have
access to private preparatory academies, who did not come from
a legacy of Ivy League alums. Even though wealthier people
in urban areas had more resources and greater access to
(40:48):
education that technically made them stronger candidates for Ivy League colleges,
DEI programs saw benefit in including people from rural communities
with different backgrounds and so specifically ensured that they also
recive opportunities for education despite not necessarily being as competitive
as candidates who had greater resources.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
So what we are.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Saying here is that DEI initiatives are not solely race
or gender. They also include socioeconomic factors to eliminate issues
of classism. Yeah, people who would never would have had
the opportunity to go to even a community college have
access to these colleges as a result of what can
(41:28):
be described as DEI initiatives that ensure people of all
socioeconomic backgrounds can also have a fair shake at getting
into education systems and further advancing their careers.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
That's the equity part of diversity equity inclusion, yeah, and
I mean arguably the inclusion part as well, but I
mean like the part where we're making it as available
to all as possible. And there's more to that too,
which is that world communities, almost by nature, they tend
to have fewer infrastructure supports like roads. They have a
(42:00):
couple of main roads or highways or whatever, they have
less access to services sometimes, such as medical care and
DEI programs have invested in programs and institutions to ensure
that they could send doctors to reach rural areas or
have them be available via telehealth. They made sure that
they had access, they had access roads, or they even
(42:22):
just improved the roads in general so they were more
resistant to extreme weather, and that supported transportation infrastructure that
allowed for more emergency vehicles to make it out to
those communities. They would also build partnerships within those communities
between them and the more urbanly located providers and those
rural communities to ensure that they had access to just
(42:45):
basic basic services that they should have a right to.
And so without those programs, without these DEI initiatives, people
in rural areas are likely to have less access to
very basic things as simple as groceries, education, medicine, and
emergency supports. And they largely voted for this. They voted
(43:05):
for this. That outcome right.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
The majority of voters over the age of fifty also
supported Trump's reelection in November twenty twenty four. Older people
also have a history of being pushed out of employment
or struggling to find employment due to their age, and
DEI programs specifically aim to include older folks in the
workplace and support them in other areas without DEI initiatives
and DEI protections. That's another way to look at this too.
(43:31):
It's not just initiatives, it's also protections. Businesses are free
to use discriminatory hiring, promoting, and firing practices and kick
older people out of employment just for being older what
they deem to be quote unquote too old. They can
just remove people from their positions because they are too
old for that position. DEI policies would have protected and
(43:52):
included older people, and they also voted it away.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, so, I guess as a takeaway, if you ever
wanted to fire or just not hire someone for being
a Republican or being a Trump supporter, now you can yeah,
this discrimination against Republicans brought to you by Donald dip
Trump and the Republicans in Congress. M Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
So DII programs do not just benefit small minority groups.
They benefit everyone that's involved, anyone that participates in the system,
in these organizations, in these institutions, And when everyone is
treated equally, when people are given an even playing field,
everyone benefits. Everyone, Every single person benefits from this. We
succeed as a species when we could lift each other up.
(44:35):
And DEI is not the problem. It is the solution
to all of the things that are going on inclusion,
making sure that everybody has a seat at the table.
It's so or the majority of people. We talked about
this on the episode. Maybe Nazis don't get a seat
at the table, but like everybody else can have a
seat of the table. And it's really important to be
able to have all of that together so that we
can actually uplift the species, uplift our communities, and uplift
(44:57):
our neighbors and our friends and the people that we
care about.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
And yet DEI is not necessarily perfect, like there are
there is room for improvement here and ideally, moving forward
it will be better and better, but you can't improve
it if it's gone. And what they're trying to replace
it with is just nothing, bigotry. I guess like it's
it is. It is replaced by a big nothing burger, right,
(45:21):
And what happens in that space are the things that
were problematic that resulted in those programs being initiated in
the first place. So like, this is just the direction
that would make sense to go, is to like, if
there's a problem with DEI, we bring people to the
table to discuss how we improve the system, and we
want to have like voices at the table, Like that's
(45:42):
that's the whole thing. Yes, And the opposite of that
is kick voices out of the table. One rules all
and everyone shut up and listen to that person. And
I don't I don't want to live in that system,
which is historically never worked.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
No, it never happens. It's historically never worked. We have
seen it demonstrate in time and time and time and
time and time again. Dictator and people like consolidating power
into a single person has never worked.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
Yeah, we talked about this in our episode on Royalty.
And it's just like these these are unsustainable systems. They
collapse under the weight of their hubris and the fact
that they are built on a lack of diverse ideas.
That you have one person who's not being questioned, who
makes terrible decisions because they only surround themselves with yes
(46:27):
men and people who refuse to criticize anything they do.
They quash dissent, they squash innovation, they squash criticism, and
those systems fail. They fail because they cannot succeed without
people pointing out the flaws. And so that is what
happens when you take those those guardrails down exactly. Okay,
(46:47):
well that is what we have to say about DEI
for right now. And so here is an advertisement that
is happening. All right, we are back. And so when
(47:07):
we record, we like to wrap our episodes up by
recommending some things. Sometimes it's movies or music, or books
or TV shows or activities or life hacks. Who knows.
We just recommend something that we feel like we want
to recommend, and it often is unrelated to our topic
at hand, and sometimes it is related. But before I
do that, I need to get through the credits. And
(47:28):
again I would like to say, if you are joining
us for the first time, I hope you've made it
all the way through, and I hope that you enjoyed
what you heard today. And if you did and you
would like to support us, you can join us on Patreon.
If you do that, you'll get access to behind the
scenes content at free content, some additional bonus goodies, all
that kind of thing. I also will read your list
on these full length episodes that we publish that come
(47:49):
out every Wednesday and say big thank you to the
people who help continue to allow us to be a show.
And that is Mike, m Megan, Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian,
Asha and Kiara. Thank you so much. Yeah, we love
you so much. We love you to the moon and back,
indeed the very real moon. Also, thank you so much
to my team of people who help make this happen.
(48:11):
Writing in fact checking from Shane and myself. Our social
media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our musical and sound
producing engineer person in the chair as Justin, who is
very very good at this and it helps make it
sound like I am not in a ball full of marbles,
which is I guess what it sounds like when I
record sometimes.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Ah well, I mean I don't think you sound like that,
but just does a great job of making sure that
never happens.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
Indeed, indeed, anyway, if you would like to tell us
about your thoughts about DEI or anything else that we
have talked about, or if you just want to reach
out and say, hey, you guys are great, We're good
with all of that. You can email us directly at
info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com. We're also on the social
media platforms. I'm particularly checking out blue Sky right now
(48:56):
is where I'm spending my time. Although I do feel
like I can maybe go over to Meta and just
make some wildly inaccurate claims about Mark Zuckerberg because apparently
you can say whatever you want over there. Now, there's
no rules. There are no rules. There are no rules,
which means there is no value. But let's go. Let's
go make fun of them for that. Yeah. Otherwise, you
can reach out to us. We'll try and talk to
(49:17):
you on those and those places, and we're happy to
hear from everybody, and we like hearing from you. But
before we move on today, let's recommend some things. Yeah, recommendations.
I'm going to recommend a thing that is relevant to
the topic at hand. I have been trying to, as
(49:38):
I post things on social media, include hashtag DEI and
everything I post, regardless of what it is. I am
hoping to just kind of mess with the people who
would see these kind of things and flood the flood,
the ethernet, the sphere, the Internet, the ethersphere, I don't
know what to call it, and the flood the zeitgeist
with the word DEI so much that they can't even
(50:01):
get their heads on straight. So I'm recommending you joined
me in that. Just whatever you post, it doesn't matter
what it is, just include DEI, just to troll them
a little bit, just to most of them, because they
deserve it, because they're being jerks. They're being jerks. You're right,
You're absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
I'm gonna recommend something that is getting a lot of
criticism for being considered DEI, but it's absolutely not. It's
just a good movie. And that is Captain America's Brave
New World. This is the new Captain America movie. I
saw it yesterday. It includes Anthony Mackie as Captain America,
which is he's great in it, and I.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Love it because he is.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
He's so good in it and he is. You know,
he's a Captain America without a super soldier's herem so
it makes him even more relatable. Right, Harrison Ford is
great as Thunderbolt Ross in this There's a lot of
really good surprises in it that are really cool. I
just thought it was a lot of fun. It was
just a really great political thriller that also included monsters
and space things.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
Fun. Yeah, as all good political thrillers. Duh, duh, all right, fun.
I'm excited to check that out. Well, if you decide
those check those things out or attempt to take on
posting DEI and everything, you can let us know about it.
We're happy to hear from you. My also didn't say this,
but you can leave us a rating and review wherever
you listen to podcasts. That helps people find us click
(51:15):
on those five stars. That just makes the algorithm like
us a lot. And then of course leaving a review
means that more people see that and they're like, ooh,
I'll check that out. But if you don't have time
for that, I understand, it's totally okay. Most of the time,
I think people find podcasts via word of mouth, So
if you'd like to share us, you should just tell
somebody and then they'll go check us out and then
all all the good things, and we appreciate it. But
(51:36):
I think that that is all that we have to
say about this topic for now and about Captain America.
Is there anything you would like to add or anything
that I forgot before we wrap up today? Be good
to each other. Indeed, yes, be good to each other.
I agree, yeah, good good closing words. All right, Well,
thanks for listening. This is Abraham and this is Shane.
We're out.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
See Yeah, you've been listening to Why We Do what
We Do.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWD WWD podcast dot com.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome
day
You're listening to Why we Do what we Do. Welcome
to Why We Do what we Do. I am your
wise policy host, Abraham, and I'm your infuriated host Shane.
(00:25):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about all of
the things that humans and non human animals do, and
sometimes we talk about good ideas that get belittled as
bad ideas even when they're good ideas. And that's the
thing that we do here as a show.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Now, Yeah, so today we're going to talk about DEI. Now,
I would say at the beginning of this that DEI
is a very big topic to uncover, and it's a
polarizing topic right now in the world, at least in
the United States.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Where buttholes are about it.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
So I think what I would say is that we
are going to probably talk a lot.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
About kind of the general idea, what the EI is.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
And there will be several episodes after this that are
going to cover specific topics inside of it, policies, procedures,
things that we do, belief systems, all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
We're going to talk about this quite a.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Bit given the current landscape, because you know, if we're
getting banned by our government, then we're probably doing something right.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Fair enough. Yeah, we're here to unpack some of this.
We're going to dive into the history of it and
all that sort of thing, and so hopefully, hopefully you're
here for all of that. Hopefully you will learn something
you did not know and walk away with a better
understanding and better arms to come to the table with
arguments and facts and reason and that sort of thing.
But if you are joining us for the first time, welcome,
(01:46):
happy to have you here, hope that you are into this,
you get as much out of this episode as we
intend for you to get out of it, or some
approximation of that. And if you do end up liking
what you hear today and you would like to support us,
you can head over to Patreon and join us there.
You can pick up some merch at our merch store,
leave us a rating and review, like subscribe, tell a friend,
do all those things. I'll talk more about that at
(02:08):
the end of our discussion today. And you are joining
us here on actually before I even say that, And
if you are a returning listener, thanks for coming back.
We're happy to have you here, and we hope that
you continue to find value and all the things that
we talk about I always welcome our new listeners, and
I sometimes forget that I need to continue to welcome
back our returning listeners, which we hope there are many
(02:28):
of you. And yeah, thanks for being here. As I
was saying, it is February twenty sixth, which means it
is a holiday. In the holiday that we're going to
talk about, which is very relevant to today's topic is
Black lives matter.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, and it should be every day. Yeah, you know,
they do matter every day. They do matter every day
and will always matter. It's also Carnival Day. It is
Carpe DM day. I feel that with this topic again.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, seize the day day.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
It's for Pete's Sake day, whoever Pete is sure.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
It is Inconvenients Yourself day. Okay, Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
It is also a Maha shiv I should have practiced beforehand,
Maha shivar Ra tree.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
There we go, Okay, moving on. It is national customized
wheel entire day, sure, National letter to an elder day. Okay.
It is National Personal Chef's Day. Oh I would love
I would love a personal cheft that way. That would
be fantastic, same same and I would be so nice
to them. Eh right, Yeah, it's National Pistachio Day, speaking
(03:32):
of personal chefs. Yeah, bring on those pistachios. It is
a pink shirt day. If you weren't already wearing one,
now you can.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, your shirt looks close right now. It's not pink,
but it's in that family.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, it's like, yeah, in the redish color. It's within
that hue. It's a tell a fairy tale day, which
it is fun. Yes, it is Thermos Bottle Day, Blou.
I like that. It is National Energy Week and National
Chip Week in the UK, which I'm assuming means fries,
like yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Come on, get it right, UK, it should be National
Fry Week. It's National Eating Disorders Awareness.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Week, okay, and National Green Week.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And it is National Invasive Species Awareness Week. One of
my favorite episodes of The Simpsons is Bart versus Australia
and he brings the bullfrog and it was like my
first introduction to understanding what an invasive species was.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
So thank you Simpsons. I remember that one that was.
I think he was also on a mission to discover
whether toilets flush the opposite direction. That's how she started
in that episode. Yeah, okay, it started with that.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
There's a long distance call and then he ended up
racking up a whole bunch of money, and then Australia
was mad at him that he owed so much money
on a collect called Australia Fun.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
That's right, that's right, yeah, Simpsons, good stuff. Well, we
are actually not here to talk about Simpsons, and really
not even here to necessarily unpack the background of all
of these holidays, although it's possible some of them will
become episode top topics at some point, sure who knows.
But instead, our actual purpose of today's discussion, as we described,
(05:06):
is to unpack the history of diversity, equity and inclusion,
or maybe more popularly talked about in the news as
d EI, which is what those letters stand for initiatism. There,
do you have anything else before we dive into our
topic here? Now, I think this topic is going to
(05:28):
be big, so let's go ahead and dive into it. Okay,
very good, Yes, I agree. Okay. So DEI has been
making the news lately as one of the recent political
straw man being attacked by conservatives in the search for
another culture war boogeyman. And I think as we unpack this,
we'll really try and highlight I think the point will
(05:49):
become clear. But I want to I think say upfront
that I don't think that the initiatives against this are
actually I don't think they care about DEI that much,
but they tend to go after anything that has an
anti racist slant to it, that has a name, and
(06:12):
then they just make that a fear mongering talking point
among those politicians. So wokeism again, like we did an
episode on this, it's not what they are talking about
it as and even they like greatly misconstrue it. And
it's like essentially the idea, of course is similar to
with DEI affirmative action. Yeah, wokeism, DEI. It doesn't matter,
(06:37):
Like if there is a name and it has anything
to do with anti racism, then they are attacking it.
And again I think it's just because they can get
people riled up about it. Critical race theory is another one,
like it just has a name that they can turn
to and get people fired up about it without people
understanding what they're worked up about. So it just gives
(06:57):
them that culture war boogeyman to en flame and then
sense people about.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Right, I think now is a good time to unpack
the history of DEI so we actually understand what it
is how it works, and what will happen when it's gone. So,
as Abraham said at the beginning of the episode, DEI
stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's an informal name
for a series of initiatives that have gradually evolved over decades,
following John F. Kennedy's nineteen sixty one Executive Order one
(07:25):
ZHO nine two five, which mandated that federal contractors should
take quote affirmative action to ensure that applicants are treated
equally without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin
end quote.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah. So this was right during the Civil Rights era,
and at the time, money and power was primarily concentrated
in the hands of able bodied men with just very
little melanin in their skin who appeared to be of
European descent. Sure, and if that sounds like an absurd
way to decide how to concentrate power, it is. Before
there were laws against doing so. Employers, colleges, landlords, hospitals,
(08:03):
the military, the government, and other institutions could refuse employment, admission,
medical support, safety, fair treatment, and promotions toward people who
had more melanin in their skin or appeared to be
not of European descent or who were not men essentially.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Right, And that's not to say that things have gotten
better since then. Those problems still exist, but at least
there are currently some protections in place, at least to
some degree, to prevent that from being as overt.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
As it might have been previously.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
And we've still got a lot of work to do,
but I think it's important to note, like we have
come quite a ways since then. Yeah, I think it's
just kind of important to that we're not there, We're
not where we need to be. We have gotten we
have moved forward a little bit.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah, I think it was taken for granted that that's
just how things were. That was just like, that's the
power was concentrated in the hands of those people, and
that is just how things were. And this sort of
switch to say, like, it's probably useful to have other
ideas in these spaces, and to have people who come
from different backgrounds and who have different histories and who
(09:12):
have lived experience who can also participate in the sort
of decision making and innovation systems in our culture. And
so there were these policies that essentially said like, let's
include them too, and as you said, I mean would
I would make the case I think that it has
improved tremendously since the nineteen sixties, but we've never actually
(09:33):
gotten too equality. We've like made some progress, we've made
some steps and will unpack those, but we've never actually
gotten to the point where like it is a level
playing field, right exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
So there are a couple I think important acts that
came out that were initiatives that helped prohibit some of
these discrimination issues. One was the US Civil Rights Act
of nineteen sixty four. There was also the Vote Voting
Rights Act of nineteen sixty five and the Equal Opportunity
Act of nineteen seventy two, And all these initiatives were
designed to prohibit discrimination and employment colleges, housing, hospitals, in
(10:06):
all other institutions. So basically, these were anti discrimination acts
that were designed to protect folks that were historically being
discriminated against.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, And so before these types of laws existed that
would prohibit that kind of discrimination, businesses, colleges, et cetera.
They could choose to not hire people based on their
skin color, or based on their sexual orientation, or their disability,
or their gender, or their sex or other heritage. They
might have, and it was completely regardless of their qualifications
(10:37):
for participating in those institutions, Like even if they were
extremely qualified, if they were a woman, they might not
be allowed. And they if they were someone who was gay,
they might not be allowed to participate in those spaces.
And even if they were hired in those spaces, those businesses,
those institutions, they were not required to pay those people
fairly or give them the chance at promotions. Here, so
(11:00):
women were denied entrance to colleges or graduate programs because
of what was between their legs. Even if they were
like top academic performers, they were prevented from entering a
higher education. People of color struggled to find employment because
of the melanin in their skin, were regardless of whether
they had years of experience and training and demonstrated high
(11:22):
amounts of aptitude. So there were laws that essentially there
were not laws that prevented that kind of discrimination, and
there were strong candidates who could not participate because there
were not laws that protected against that kind of discrimination.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Right, so even in the rare places in which a
minority group had managed to gain power, they could also
discriminate against able body of white people. Who were just
looking for work, not that that happened very often or did,
but they could if they wanted to, without laws preventing
them from doing so. So basically, in these employment spaces, college,
even people applying for health insurance could be denied based
(11:58):
on any number of these factors that were simply just
factors that somebody were they were born.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Having, Yeah, great catch because yeah, even access to basic
things like insurance or hospital care like people hospitals.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, they would be turned away because they because of
their color the skin are, because of who they were.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Or because they brought ads. We don't turn away from
the ads. Here, we apparently let them in, and maybe
we should rethink that policy, but here we are all right.
So essentially, here what we have is that the people
(12:36):
who had the power, they feared losing that power, and
they feared losing it to people who thought differently from them,
or even if they didn't think differently from them, they
just looked different from them, and so they railed against
these new laws. They falsely accused these acts of forcing
them to hire unqualified candidates. They preached that once these
(12:58):
groups who at least appeared difference to them, gain any power,
that those groups would continue to strip away the power
from these non disabled white men in charge and replace
them with people who they believed were incapable of succeeding
in those roles. So it essentially here was just people
who were born with an advantage, maybe into a wealthy family.
(13:22):
They were whites, They were like in an area that
was had a lot of resources. They essentially were afraid
that by letting other people in they would not have
those advantages anymore, and instead they would be flipped. They
would then end up with the disadvantages the wrongside of
the tracks, if you will, that they would be the
(13:43):
ones who were like suffering in those spaces. So it's
kind of almost ironic that they're acknowledging the systemic problems
that exist and fighting to keep them in place so
that they don't land on the other side of them,
while arguing at the same time that they don't exist. Right.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, that's that's the whole thing that always gets me,
is like, well, what's the problem?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Why is why would that be so bad? Oh?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Is it because you've taken advantage of all these folks
for all these years and you've maintained power and with
and like suppressed large swaths of people, large groups of people.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Oh, is that what it is?
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Oh, you don't want to admit that, But that's the
amount of mental gymnastics that somebody has to go through
to make the argument for that is astounding to me.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah, you basically have to admit that it's a problem
to acknowledge that you're concerned about ending up on the
short end of that stick.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah, exactly, exactly all that to say, I think it's
important to point out that this is a bedrock principle
of conservativism. It's not the only thing in conservativism, but
it is a core value a thing. Yeah, it is
a thing, and it is a core value to reduce
the diversity of ideas and opinions and to constret power
in the hands of very few. We see that when
(14:58):
they dismantle university programs and say that universities in education
will indoctrinate people. Yeah, education doesn't indoctrinate people. Education educates people,
and it just so happens that more educated people tend
to vote differently than conservative views. That's a different story
in a different day. A common strategy is to advertise
some scare tactic that minority groups are to blame for
things going wrong, even in situations that have nothing to
(15:20):
do with these marginalized groups.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's just to prevent any kind
of diversity of ideas from existing. Right, is to try
and promote homogenization toward a small group of people's idealized
version of what a system of community should look like. Now, Nevertheless,
(15:42):
these marginalized groups, they organized and they fought for rights
and for protections. They protested, they wrote to their representatives,
They ran for office, and they argued that they at
least deserved a chance to participate in that in jobs
and education, the military, to have access to medical care.
What crazinesses this, And with bipartisan effort over decades working
(16:09):
on these issues, they did make progress toward this end. Right.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So, in the nineteen seventies we saw rights expand for
women and the first employee resource group was created at Xerox.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, in the nineteen eighties that was there. It started
to include a recognition and initiatives to protect people in
the LGBTQ plus community. But not only that, it was
also people in religious communities who may have otherwise been
discriminated against, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Christian like ye Mormon even
(16:41):
like those were also people who benefited from initiatives to
include people from various communities and protect them from like
bias and discrimination, right.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
I mean, that's the thing that I think people miss is, like,
you know, when there are like anti discrimination policies in
place that protect religious freedoms, it doesn't just protect people
who are different than you. It also protects you who
might identify as Christian or Catholic, who is like maybe
somebody who feels like, you know, the world is maybe
out to get you and that Christians are being persecuted
on like some absurd level. But it is a protection
(17:14):
as well, Like somebody can't say, oh you're Christian, Oh
I see that you have a cross tattoo, you can't work.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Here, right, Like they can't do that to you too.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
So it's a protection for you, the person in power,
and it's important to recognize that anyway, it's funny that
people can't see that type of thing. So in the
nineteen nineties, companies started creating specific positions dedicated to creating
policies tailored to their company's needs in support of providing
equal opportunity and inclusion for marginalized groups, and the Americans
with Disabilities Act started finally improving accessibility for the millions
(17:44):
of Americans with various disabilities, including injured veterans. Now, I
also want to point out when we talk about this timeline,
this is within our lifetime. Yeah, this is within our
lifetime as we're talking. This is not historical. This is
not Beef Skinner teaching pigeons to guide smart missiles during
World War Two in the forties. Like, this is in
our lifetime.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, this is not even boomers, this is this is
millennials essentially, because yes, most of what we've described so
far has happened since we were born. And we're not
that old. I mean, we're kind of old, but we're
not that old. Not that old. No, I mean, I'm
getting gray hair, but I started getting gray hair in
my late twenties. So yeah. Anyway, Yeah, So, as these
(18:23):
programs grew and they started to spread more, people became
increasingly aware of other issues that might exist in some
of these shared spaces, and it became important to start
considering things like a higher need for sexual harassment policies
so that it was less likely that people could be
sexually abused when with power imbalances that exist. They started
(18:46):
recognizing it was important to be considerate of other cultural practices,
that people from other places might think and do things
a little bit differently, and that as long as that's
not harming anybody like that should be okay. And that
includes again, like even people with religious backgrounds who maybe
need a they would like to have a prayer room
or something, and so they would set aside a place
(19:07):
for them to worship if they wished. Just in general,
being aware of our biases to help us treat one
another better and be treated better ourselves like that was
another outcome of some of the push that was happening
during this time.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Right so in the twenty tens, businesses actually started using
DEI processes even more, and those businesses that were using
DEI outcomes and objectives and different systems were actually out
competing others and saw real benefits.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Of a diverse work group or workforce.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
I should say, there were improvements in morale, creative problem solving, innovation,
and broader appeal to a greater number of consumers. Their
workforce and their pool that they were able to hire
from expanded exponentially. Workplaces thrive with diverse crews of employees,
with diverse people working in these spaces.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
And in the twenty twenties, where we find ourselves now,
at least at the time, thus recording this who knows
when you're listening to it. As attacks on marginalized groups
had been sharply increasing and a global pandemic nearly crippled
the entire world economy, Desperate social movements such as hashtag
me too and hashtag times Up and hashtag black Lives Matter,
(20:17):
they were sort of attempting this grassroots campaign to bring
further awareness to the increased division and the apparent rise
of bigotry to power. And I think that the fact
that there was so much momentum behind these policies should
have actually been a red flag to everyone that fascism
was just on the doorstep of many countries, especially in
(20:40):
the United States. Like the fact that we even had
need for something like that showed that we were not
out of the woods on these issues, and in fact,
we were rapidly retreating toward the dark ages.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah, people were radicalizing, for sure. So in twenty twenty five,
as fell in con artists Charlotte and Nazi and rapist,
Donald Trump was sworn into office again, DEI has been
rapidly dismantled in situations around the country and institutions as
well around the country, so in a move to avoid
political targeting, several major businesses began canceling any and all
(21:15):
DEI initiatives that they had created. These companies include, but
are not limited to, PEPSI, Disney, Google, GM, Meta, Ford,
ge Target, Chipotle, and PayPal.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
And also probably by the people who are paying for
these ads. Okay, so we're sort of walking through the
history here of all of the ramp up, through various
initiatives that are sort of form the basis of DEI
(21:47):
and what has happened more recently, so we're sort of
now up to the present here. On January twenty ninth,
twenty twenty five, just nine days after being sworn into
office and just a week after firing the entire Aviation
Security Advisory Committee, a black Hawk helicopter collided in mid
air with a passenger plane in Washington, DC and this
(22:09):
killed I saw various numbers on this, so I'm not
one hundred percent clear on the numbers, but the one
I saw the most often was that it killed all
sixty seven people that were aboard both aircrafts, and the belligerent,
dumbass Trump attempted to blame the crash on everyone he
didn't like, blamed it on Democrats, on Joe Biden, on
Barack Obama, and on DEI, saying, quote, we are all
(22:33):
searching for answers. The FAA is actively recruiting workers who
suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and
physical conditions under a diversity inclusion hiring initiatives. That was
almost exactly quote. I messed up a little bit in there,
but like he did, the incorrect article there, and when
(22:54):
pressed for evidence of this, he reported its common sense.
So they asked, how do you know it was DEI,
and he says common sense. To be clear, DEI initiatives
did not cause this crash. And as I mentioned, he
had recently fired the entire Aviation Security Advisory Committee as
well as many other airline officials that had belonged to
(23:16):
various aspects of air travel, and people had resigned because
of him and his policies who were also in that space.
There was a tweet that claimed that they had fired
three thousand employees. It looks like that has not been substantiated.
So I'm not clear on that part. But there was
a lot of laying off, and it was already very
(23:37):
short staffed, like they were struggling to have enough people
to work as it is in air traffic control. That
many people leaving obviously did not help. But here he
is blaming it on people with disabilities.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Right, honestly, Like it's just disgusting. So I think that's
where I can leave that part. I mean, there's gonna
be more information that comes out about this. I'm sure
about causes and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
But it is not DEI. Yeah, argument that they seem to.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Be making, and we'll talk about counter arguments stuff like
this later. What they're saying, essentially is they're hiring unqualified people.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
What makes them unqualified is their disability, and that is
not at all what is happening. No, that is not
at all what is happening. They're hiring people who are
qualified and also have a disability. They may have something
else going on, and so I think it's really important
to kind of clear that out.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
No, that is a great catch. Yeah, you're exactly right
that it was. The underlying assumption here is that these
are people who could not do the job correctly, and
it was because they were unqualified, and they were unqualified
because they had some disability of or one another, you know,
of some or some they were in some other way unqualified.
(24:41):
But that's not at all what was actually happened. Not
even close, not even close.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
So this brings us to the point where we've been
talking about DEI and kind of what it means at
this point in time, but we haven't really kind of
unpacked exactly what it means. When we talk about this,
diversity refers to the participation of individuals with a variety
of backgrounds, including people who have traditionally been marginalized or underrepresented.
Equity refers to equal access, so that opportunities for people
(25:06):
are fair, just, and impartial. An inclusion means that people
in that environment are treated with respect and dignity and
are accepted. So dei's primary purpose can be characterized as
ensuring that every qualified person in an organization, company, school,
or office is treated fairly and has the opportunity to
fully participate, regardless of their background or identity. And if
(25:26):
you are concerned with DEI, which part of that do
you strongly disagree with? I mean, that's The point that
I would make here is like, do you disagree that
people should have fair opportunities? Do you disagree that people
should be treated.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Kindly and with respect and dignity? Like? What part of
this is the is the actual issue here? Right?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Because I would imagine that the issue is not DEI.
The issue is that you are not qualified enough to
compete with a diverse workforce.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Right, Yeah? Yeah, I mean you hear this and it's
like the as we mentioned this, not only like an
outcome of this could mean that there are people who
are black or indigenous people, or from other countries or
who speak different languages not participate in those bases, but
could also mean that there are places where people who
(26:12):
there might be someone who is atheist who runs a
company who then hire someone who's Christian and does not
make them feel like they don't belong there because they
are Christian. It could mean that they onboard people who
are from rural communities even though they're in an urban setting,
because they want to have the opinions of people who
also live in urban areas. Like these initiatives also support
(26:33):
that they include people from all backgrounds and walks of
life and protect all of them and so it's not
just that it is people of color to the exclusion
of other people, and particularly of qualifying candidates. It is
find the most qualified candidates don't be distracted by the
fact that they have a name that is different from
(26:54):
one you might otherwise recognize, or you know, other features
of who those people are. Yeah, so I think there
are some counter arguments. There are kind of there's a
lot they kind of overlap with one another. We've mostly
said what they sort of are, but will I think
unpack a little bit some of the kind of arguments here. So,
(27:15):
I think unfortunately initial attempts at affirmative action, they didn't
know what they didn't know like they I think they
didn't necessarily know what they were always incentivizing. And so
there were a couple of missteps that happened early on, specifically,
without clear direction, many places took affirmative action to mean
x percent of your workforce must be minorities, and the
(27:37):
resulting consequence was that they essentially would have what they
were sort of colloquially described as racial quotas. That was like,
we need to have, you know, five percent of our
employees be black. So just like higher up until you
get to that ninety five percent and then the last
five percent make sure they're all black. And there were
(27:57):
several court cases that began to come out of this
these sort of policies, and that more clearly shaped affirmative
action policies and discouraged this whole idea of like racial quotas.
The whole idea of racial quotas have since been prohibited
by the Supreme Court, but also like it's just helped
direct better, more appropriate ways of thinking about affirmative action.
(28:20):
And DEI and I didn't really plan to talk about this,
but like one of them is, they have tried to
take on some types of hiring practices where they don't
see the name first, they just see a resume, and
then they just look through essentially what their qualifications are,
and then they decide based on that whether they're going
to bring them in for an interview, and so they
don't actually know anything about their race, or their sex
(28:43):
or anything else. They just see what their qualifications are.
And that alone reduced inequality so much that they wouldn't
even need something like racial quotas, because there were really
qualified candidates who were otherwise not being chosen because they
had a name that sound did like a minority name,
or it was a woman or something like.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
That, right, I mean, I think we talked about that
on the on an episode. We talked about it on
the Names Matter episode. There's one we did. We talk
about that a little bit. Yeah, because that was a
pretty pretty important study. It was pretty wild, good reference.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Others argue that affirmative action resulted in discrimination against white
or otherwise advantage groups, and there very well may have
been some instances in which white people who have had
a hiring advantage due to being white, but had been
outperformed by a person of color or a different sex
and felt that they were being discriminated against.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
That that could have happened.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
But the whole point is that the hiring practices are
fair and inclusive, and DEI policies frequently spell out strategies
for finding qualified employees without being distracted and dissuaded by
the fact that they may have come from a different background.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, exactly. So you know, the idea is to try
and level the plain field. And we talk I think
we use we talk a lot about hiring practices as
this pertains to business. But again, this actually is across
the various elements of society, because it is it is
inclusion for acceptance to schools, it is access to medical care,
it is access to financial services like getting loans by banks,
(30:11):
getting insurance, like, there are so many different places where
this could be a factor that affects the extent to
which someone would be facing problems because not of anything
they've done, or in any lack of things that they
have done, but because they are in some group, right
that those people have some bias against for whatever reason,
like maybe they're profoundly against the Irish, you know, and
(30:34):
so they see O'Malley come through and they're like, hmm,
I don't know about that person. We're not hiring that, right.
So another counter argument that I saw, so I think
largely those kind of represent the bulk of them. It's
usually things like it ends up being that they just
focus on hiring people because they're black or Hispanic or whatever,
which is that has been done away with many a
(30:56):
long time ago. And then there is the argument essentially
that they are high unqualified people, which most which is
not true, like that mostly there's no real evidence that
that has happened. That mostly seems to be a scare tactic.
And then the other one that's sort of unique from
those two is that some argue that with how society
has gone, that these types of measure measures just aren't
(31:17):
needed any longer. They're unnecessary, we are past the point
where they matter, despite the fact that if you look
around at all, the majority of CEOs, doctors, and professionals
at the highest levels are still primarily white, straight, cisgender men, right,
not exclusively, but primarily, And like even the initiatives that
(31:38):
exist in places like hospitals still find that with those initiatives,
they're still struggling. And I say struggling maybe isn't the word.
They're not really fulfilling on the promise of ensuring that
there are a relative distribution of qualified professionals that represent
different backgrounds, including just like white professional Christian women are
(32:00):
not as well represented as white cisgendered.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Men, right, And so you're going to see that across
the board. I mean, we both work in behavior analysis,
and you could see that in any in most of
the programs that we see for conferences and who's working
in research spaces like, you see that quite a bit,
that there is a discrepancy where it is you know,
a lot of I always kind of say, it's like,
there's a lot of older white men that are doing
a lot of speaking engagements, and so it is it's
(32:25):
just important to note and to maybe kind of figure
out some ways to do better with that.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
It was a long time ago, but when I started
my master's program, it was mostly women, and when I
started my doctoral program, it was mostly men. Yeah, and
so I think that speaks to where the allocation of
people sort of existed, and like, I think there were
(32:50):
a lot of reasons for that, and I do not
necessarily I do not blame the people at the institutions
who are making those decisions, but I think that there
had sort of truly been a push toward what maximum
level of achievement was suitable for certain people that sometimes
they internalized that idea, thinking well, this is as far as
I need to go because I'm a woman, or sometimes
(33:12):
it was just me. It was so difficult that like,
only people who had the most advantages were likely to
try and push through the obstacles that existed. I don't know,
there are a lot of reasons, I think, and I don't
think there was a lot of intentionality behind the people
who made the decisions there, but those were the spaces
where I found myself and I just thought it was
an interesting thing to observe where I'm like, we we
(33:33):
went in this space predominantly with women at this level,
but at the next level up it completely.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Flips like literally the opposite, right absolutely, Speaking of intentionality,
here's an ad that we intentionally are taking a break
for so you can hear.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Okay, we have been talking about, well, we were just
sort of unpacking some of what might be considered counter arguments,
I guess. But let's start digging into I think the
those sort of real world impacts and consequences and what's
going on here. And I think we'll start by understanding
what happens in places where DEI is specifically included, and
(34:17):
the research has been done to look at what happens
when you do that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Right, This is probably my favorite part of the episode
because I think that you and I probably we share.
I mean I say probably we share. I would say
the same values almost across the board, like almost.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Entirely, except I like mustard, you don't like, Yeah, you
like mustard, I like muster.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
That's that's it, entirely, that's that's the division of our podcast.
I do you think it is important to know that, Like,
what we're going to try to do here is actually
just explain actual peer reviewed literature that explains why this
is a good thing, not from our personal perspectives or
our biases, but understanding what the research is actually saying
about this. So that's that's where we're going next. And
so this is what really happens with DEI. So in
(34:58):
a paper two thousand twenty three paper Edmunds, Flammer, and
Glossner in the National Bureau of Economic Research conducted a
study of companies boasting as being among the best to
work for. They reported the firms with DEI were financially stronger,
were more growth oriented, had higher future earnings, higher evaluations ratios,
(35:19):
and tended to have greater representation of women in leadership positions.
DEI did not change stock market performance either up or down,
and research and development professionals with DEI policies had higher
and improved innovation than those with less or no DEI.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah, so they implement these policies and these businesses are
more financially well off and more competitive. That was the
thing that happened right there. Was a twenty twenty three
Pew Research survey that was just asking people about how
they felt about DEI, and they found that the majority
of workers surveyed supported generally DEI initiatives. They regarded them
as helpful, important, and necessary. However, they also reported that
(35:58):
these opinions did tend to skew in a partisan way,
and they were generally viewed more favorably by women and
people of color.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Oh weird, you know, like I could see a bunch
of yeah, a bunch of white these going no, I
don't like it.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, So that's kind of shoot out. Yeah, another thing
that's happened. Really again, we're sort of talking real world
consequences here. So the current push is eliminating DEI. That's
like what the current administration is pushing for. What's going on.
So there is recently, just like maybe a week ago,
a list of trigger words that people who are writing
(36:34):
grants should avoid using lest their grants be audited and
potentially rejected. And the list here is crazy. So when
just for people who aren't aware, when you're trying essentially
to get a grant, you are going to write what
you're trying to do with that grant who the grant
is for, how it's going to succeed. Just what is
(36:57):
the whole point of that granted? Right, So, like when
when you're writing these grants, like you just you just
have to describe what you're doing. You're usually like it's
some kind of grant that usually includes people in some way,
and so you you're going to talk about it, and
important note here about maybe like government censorship and what
that should be because a lot of these are research
(37:17):
grants that are funded by the government that they fund
a lot of different things, research, medical research, social science research,
all kinds of things. And so here's a list of
words that you should not say lest your grant be
targeted and potentially rejected. It is activism, advocates, advocate advocacy,
barrier barriers, biased biases, bias towards BIPOC, black and Latin X, disability, disabilities, diversity,
(37:48):
diverse community discrimination, equality, equal, equitable, history, historical, female gender diversity.
Oh I said that one hate speech excluded minority, Hispanic inclusion, equitable, inequitable, LGBT, marginalized, multicultural,
(38:13):
like race, Like, you can't say words like this in
grant applications, Like that's insane. That's insane. A lot of
those are words that, out of context, have nothing to
do with politically charged topics, like you can use them
in a lot of different ways. But also they're just saying,
like what you can write is white man's penis and
(38:33):
that will be fine. Anything else we will not accept.
Yeah yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
For an administration that has spent a lot of time
talking about freedom of speech and all the stuff, they
certainly don't like people saying certain words.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah. Yeah, they are very against speaking freely. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
So despite the effort put toward increasing DEI initiatives, many
researchers have found that the actual implementation of DEI has
been limited and that many spaces simply check the boxes
for DEI on their paperwork without actually having to invested
time or energy into any of those programs. So basically,
it was they were throwing up a green flag saying yes,
we're doing this, but they weren't actually being intentional about
(39:11):
any of the changes or any of the systems that
they had promised it to engage with. They weren't doing
any of those things, which is kind of an unfortunate thing.
That's not all places, but there are some places that
just kind of checked the box and accepted the grant
money or accepted whatever it was, and just kind of like, yeah,
you know, marketed that they were doing DEI, but weren't
actually doing it.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Yeah. I think the performative activism piece without actually doing
anything about it is just as bad as supporting like
anti DEI initiatives, right, because it it dilutes what that
initiative is intended to do and represent anyway so substantially
that it actually almost backfires in a way. Right, that
is definitely problematic. Okay, again, real world consequences here, quick
(39:53):
facts that most people in the United States will know,
but I'm going to say it anyway in case you
just to make sure you're really clear. To set up
the next point, we're going to make rural communities in
the United States almost universally support the Republican candidate, and
they were instrumental in putting Trump back into office the
(40:15):
second time and in putting him into the office the
first time. And ironically, rural communities will suffer greatly with
the elimination of DEI initiatives. Right.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
So, DEI initiatives pushed universities, including Ivy League colleges, which
we talked about on our Ivy League episode. They pushed
these Ivy League colleges to accept people from rural communities
who did not come from wealth, who did not have
access to private preparatory academies, who did not come from
a legacy of Ivy League alums. Even though wealthier people
in urban areas had more resources and greater access to
(40:48):
education that technically made them stronger candidates for Ivy League colleges,
DEI programs saw benefit in including people from rural communities
with different backgrounds and so specifically ensured that they also
recive opportunities for education despite not necessarily being as competitive
as candidates who had greater resources.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
So what we are.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Saying here is that DEI initiatives are not solely race
or gender. They also include socioeconomic factors to eliminate issues
of classism. Yeah, people who would never would have had
the opportunity to go to even a community college have
access to these colleges as a result of what can
(41:28):
be described as DEI initiatives that ensure people of all
socioeconomic backgrounds can also have a fair shake at getting
into education systems and further advancing their careers.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
That's the equity part of diversity equity inclusion, yeah, and
I mean arguably the inclusion part as well, but I
mean like the part where we're making it as available
to all as possible. And there's more to that too,
which is that world communities, almost by nature, they tend
to have fewer infrastructure supports like roads. They have a
(42:00):
couple of main roads or highways or whatever, they have
less access to services sometimes, such as medical care and
DEI programs have invested in programs and institutions to ensure
that they could send doctors to reach rural areas or
have them be available via telehealth. They made sure that
they had access, they had access roads, or they even
(42:22):
just improved the roads in general so they were more
resistant to extreme weather, and that supported transportation infrastructure that
allowed for more emergency vehicles to make it out to
those communities. They would also build partnerships within those communities
between them and the more urbanly located providers and those
rural communities to ensure that they had access to just
(42:45):
basic basic services that they should have a right to.
And so without those programs, without these DEI initiatives, people
in rural areas are likely to have less access to
very basic things as simple as groceries, education, medicine, and
emergency supports. And they largely voted for this. They voted
(43:05):
for this. That outcome right.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
The majority of voters over the age of fifty also
supported Trump's reelection in November twenty twenty four. Older people
also have a history of being pushed out of employment
or struggling to find employment due to their age, and
DEI programs specifically aim to include older folks in the
workplace and support them in other areas without DEI initiatives
and DEI protections. That's another way to look at this too.
(43:31):
It's not just initiatives, it's also protections. Businesses are free
to use discriminatory hiring, promoting, and firing practices and kick
older people out of employment just for being older what
they deem to be quote unquote too old. They can
just remove people from their positions because they are too
old for that position. DEI policies would have protected and
(43:52):
included older people, and they also voted it away.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, so, I guess as a takeaway, if you ever
wanted to fire or just not hire someone for being
a Republican or being a Trump supporter, now you can yeah,
this discrimination against Republicans brought to you by Donald dip
Trump and the Republicans in Congress. M Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
So DII programs do not just benefit small minority groups.
They benefit everyone that's involved, anyone that participates in the system,
in these organizations, in these institutions, And when everyone is
treated equally, when people are given an even playing field,
everyone benefits. Everyone, Every single person benefits from this. We
succeed as a species when we could lift each other up.
(44:35):
And DEI is not the problem. It is the solution
to all of the things that are going on inclusion,
making sure that everybody has a seat at the table.
It's so or the majority of people. We talked about
this on the episode. Maybe Nazis don't get a seat
at the table, but like everybody else can have a
seat of the table. And it's really important to be
able to have all of that together so that we
can actually uplift the species, uplift our communities, and uplift
(44:57):
our neighbors and our friends and the people that we
care about.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
And yet DEI is not necessarily perfect, like there are
there is room for improvement here and ideally, moving forward
it will be better and better, but you can't improve
it if it's gone. And what they're trying to replace
it with is just nothing, bigotry. I guess like it's
it is. It is replaced by a big nothing burger, right,
(45:21):
And what happens in that space are the things that
were problematic that resulted in those programs being initiated in
the first place. So like, this is just the direction
that would make sense to go, is to like, if
there's a problem with DEI, we bring people to the
table to discuss how we improve the system, and we
want to have like voices at the table, Like that's
(45:42):
that's the whole thing. Yes, And the opposite of that
is kick voices out of the table. One rules all
and everyone shut up and listen to that person. And
I don't I don't want to live in that system,
which is historically never worked.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
No, it never happens. It's historically never worked. We have
seen it demonstrate in time and time and time and
time and time again. Dictator and people like consolidating power
into a single person has never worked.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
Yeah, we talked about this in our episode on Royalty.
And it's just like these these are unsustainable systems. They
collapse under the weight of their hubris and the fact
that they are built on a lack of diverse ideas.
That you have one person who's not being questioned, who
makes terrible decisions because they only surround themselves with yes
(46:27):
men and people who refuse to criticize anything they do.
They quash dissent, they squash innovation, they squash criticism, and
those systems fail. They fail because they cannot succeed without
people pointing out the flaws. And so that is what
happens when you take those those guardrails down exactly. Okay,
(46:47):
well that is what we have to say about DEI
for right now. And so here is an advertisement that
is happening. All right, we are back. And so when
(47:07):
we record, we like to wrap our episodes up by
recommending some things. Sometimes it's movies or music, or books
or TV shows or activities or life hacks. Who knows.
We just recommend something that we feel like we want
to recommend, and it often is unrelated to our topic
at hand, and sometimes it is related. But before I
do that, I need to get through the credits. And
(47:28):
again I would like to say, if you are joining
us for the first time, I hope you've made it
all the way through, and I hope that you enjoyed
what you heard today. And if you did and you
would like to support us, you can join us on Patreon.
If you do that, you'll get access to behind the
scenes content at free content, some additional bonus goodies, all
that kind of thing. I also will read your list
on these full length episodes that we publish that come
(47:49):
out every Wednesday and say big thank you to the
people who help continue to allow us to be a show.
And that is Mike, m Megan, Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian,
Asha and Kiara. Thank you so much. Yeah, we love
you so much. We love you to the moon and back,
indeed the very real moon. Also, thank you so much
to my team of people who help make this happen.
(48:11):
Writing in fact checking from Shane and myself. Our social
media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our musical and sound
producing engineer person in the chair as Justin, who is
very very good at this and it helps make it
sound like I am not in a ball full of marbles,
which is I guess what it sounds like when I
record sometimes.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Ah well, I mean I don't think you sound like that,
but just does a great job of making sure that
never happens.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
Indeed, indeed, anyway, if you would like to tell us
about your thoughts about DEI or anything else that we
have talked about, or if you just want to reach
out and say, hey, you guys are great, We're good
with all of that. You can email us directly at
info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com. We're also on the social
media platforms. I'm particularly checking out blue Sky right now
(48:56):
is where I'm spending my time. Although I do feel
like I can maybe go over to Meta and just
make some wildly inaccurate claims about Mark Zuckerberg because apparently
you can say whatever you want over there. Now, there's
no rules. There are no rules. There are no rules,
which means there is no value. But let's go. Let's
go make fun of them for that. Yeah. Otherwise, you
can reach out to us. We'll try and talk to
(49:17):
you on those and those places, and we're happy to
hear from everybody, and we like hearing from you. But
before we move on today, let's recommend some things. Yeah, recommendations.
I'm going to recommend a thing that is relevant to
the topic at hand. I have been trying to, as
(49:38):
I post things on social media, include hashtag DEI and
everything I post, regardless of what it is. I am
hoping to just kind of mess with the people who
would see these kind of things and flood the flood,
the ethernet, the sphere, the Internet, the ethersphere, I don't
know what to call it, and the flood the zeitgeist
with the word DEI so much that they can't even
(50:01):
get their heads on straight. So I'm recommending you joined
me in that. Just whatever you post, it doesn't matter
what it is, just include DEI, just to troll them
a little bit, just to most of them, because they
deserve it, because they're being jerks. They're being jerks. You're right,
You're absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
I'm gonna recommend something that is getting a lot of
criticism for being considered DEI, but it's absolutely not. It's
just a good movie. And that is Captain America's Brave
New World. This is the new Captain America movie. I
saw it yesterday. It includes Anthony Mackie as Captain America,
which is he's great in it, and I.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Love it because he is.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
He's so good in it and he is. You know,
he's a Captain America without a super soldier's herem so
it makes him even more relatable. Right, Harrison Ford is
great as Thunderbolt Ross in this There's a lot of
really good surprises in it that are really cool. I
just thought it was a lot of fun. It was
just a really great political thriller that also included monsters
and space things.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
Fun. Yeah, as all good political thrillers. Duh, duh, all right, fun.
I'm excited to check that out. Well, if you decide
those check those things out or attempt to take on
posting DEI and everything, you can let us know about it.
We're happy to hear from you. My also didn't say this,
but you can leave us a rating and review wherever
you listen to podcasts. That helps people find us click
(51:15):
on those five stars. That just makes the algorithm like
us a lot. And then of course leaving a review
means that more people see that and they're like, ooh,
I'll check that out. But if you don't have time
for that, I understand, it's totally okay. Most of the time,
I think people find podcasts via word of mouth, So
if you'd like to share us, you should just tell
somebody and then they'll go check us out and then
all all the good things, and we appreciate it. But
(51:36):
I think that that is all that we have to
say about this topic for now and about Captain America.
Is there anything you would like to add or anything
that I forgot before we wrap up today? Be good
to each other. Indeed, yes, be good to each other.
I agree, yeah, good good closing words. All right, Well,
thanks for listening. This is Abraham and this is Shane.
We're out.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
See Yeah, you've been listening to Why We Do what
We Do.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWD WWD podcast dot com.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome
day
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!