DEI Should Die?
This is coming from a practitioner, author, and supporter of the so-called practice. Check out why I (kind of) agree with Elon.
A global consultancy recently invited me to debate the question: Should DEI die?
Not all of the points made in the notes were shared in the debate as I was responding to my debate partner and the audience. For all parts however, I at the least share what I considered most salient.
I argued in the affirmative. That is, Yes. It. Should.
Now, those who know me also know that I don’t use the word “should” very often, almost never. As Susan Newsonen says ,“Should is: critical and shame-based; disempowering and unmotivating; and, ‘not real’ meaning it indicates there is an [absolutely] correct way to do things.”
So, when you hear me say “should” throughout the notes I took in response to the initial questions, know that you shouldn’t take what I am saying as “the” correct way to think about things.
However, you could assume that some of what I am saying is relevant to the current state of the DEI space, industry, and practice. In fact, I have shared some of these points previously in this Substack.
What do you think? Was I convincing to supporters? Do I affirm the anti-DEI activists? What arguments did I miss?
Introduction
There is a long list of reasons why DEI should die.
And, believe me, I have been practicing what many people now refer to as DEI for over 20 years, so I should know. The Trusted Black Girl (the prolific Roianne Nedd), who supports keeping DEI on life support, has also been doing this work for quite some time with great success.
She might have a list of reasons why organizations should continue to keep the ventilator on these three letters sentimentally. I will not.
DEI should die, and the why has never been clearer.
The list of reasons why death is imminent, given its current half-dead state, ranges from the ineffectiveness of many practices to a lack of depth amongst practitioners, confusing it with anti-racism and social justice since the death of George Floyd, to the fact that the anti-DEI activists never engage with practitioners of substance, and supporters/practitioners don’t invite dissenters.
In fact, in too many cases when DEI has gotten good faith pushback, it has been demonized, and the dissenter has been dismissed, deplatformed, or disappeared in certain spheres.
See, both DEI and anti-DEI practitioners feel like DEI needs to live.
DEI practitioners are unsure of what comes next. Anti-DEI activists want it to stay tube-fed, because if DEI truly goes away per the repeated rhetoric, the political boogeyman of the acronym and the branding that has made many of the ‘anti-’s significant sums of political and financial capital goes with it.
DEI should DIE – one place I agree with Elon Musk, but not for the same reasons, of course.
Even I, one who has for over two decades written, spoken, practiced, gotten results, and has receipts, am not immune when I question well-socialed, top LinkedIn voices by people who think I am one of “Them”.
In one particular instance, a person who responded to my critique was an anti-racism practitioner (at least based on LinkedIn) who started being so in June 2020.
He told me in a comment without hesitation that, “You know NOTHING about DEI.” I could only send a puzzled raised eyebrow emoji in response. Other well-known DEI voices simply ignore me when I dissent.
DEI practitioners should be beacons for dissent. Able to process the tension and mindfully wade through the complexity. But that has not been happening consistently.
DEI should die.
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From the 1970s through his passing in 2013, Dr. R. Roosevelt Thomas Jr., known as “the father of diversity management," a true pioneer in the space, challenged civil rights leaders about the post-Martin Luther King, Jr. approach that most of them were taking. He went to college with many of these folks at Morehouse College, Dr. King’s alma mater.
He got pushback. His long-time friends couldn’t or weren’t willing to listen when he talked about an approach that wasn’t defined by race and gender disparity.
As Upton Sinclair said, "It is hard for a man to understand something that his paycheck depends on his not understanding."
Thomas had an approach to diversity management based on four paradigms—two grounded in social justice and civil rights, and two focused on performance — for him, diversity management was about individuals getting what they needed to thrive.
Diversity was then and is now always present, including and beyond demographics, always accompanied by the tensions and complexities of similarities and differences.
If his so-called performance paradigms (three and four for those who know) had become standard, I would not be standing here supporting the need for DEI to die.
U.S. Supreme Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in her pivotal yet temporary support for Affirmative Action in higher education in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), said: "We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary."
Roosevelt Thomas quasi-predicted this end based on her words. In a way, he predicted the end of group-identity focused-diversity (even before the ‘I’ and definitely before the ‘E’ was bolted on). . .
What’s my point here?
When I think of reasons DEI should die, I'm not sure the death didn't happen well before the current President of the United States hammered nails into the plastic coffin containing its remains.
After his hammering (or having others do the hammering and crediting himself with it), he summarily sucked the credibility out of all the rhetoric he articulated in his Executive Orders by hiring grossly unqualified people for the most potent and influential offices of authority on the planet.
"DEI hire” is a silly idea that got traction not because it is true, but because it was a convenient inception in the current zeitgeist. The 47th President of the United States and others have used the definition as being without merit, qualification, or the depth/intelligence to do a prescribed job.
Using the criteria that he used to choose the majority of his highest-level cabinet members, the U.S. Executive Branch now has more DEI hires than any company I've ever encountered. The so-called anti-DEI activists have said nothing about this.
Now, I can admit that there have been people who got jobs for which they were not prepared, as a result of positive action policies. I can also attest that there are people who’ve gotten jobs based on other preferences of, traditions with, and what was convenient to the person who hired them, without regard to a protected characteristic. Such hires are also “affirmative” just without the moniker and its accompanying stigma. Neither of these affirmative hiring approaches is healthy or helpful to organizations.
If there was ever a time for DEI to die or stay dead or to be guided into the good night—the raging has been done, it has not been gently resisted, it has fought a good fight, it’s now time for the dying of its long-dimmed light.
The Notion of Standpoint Epistemology
Big Question 1: Why DEI Should Die?
DEI should die because it's already dead (minimally, half dead) — we're just preserving the caricature in a plastic coffin. The structure that many DEI programs adopted—outwardly focused on protected characteristics and dressing up statistics for show —has not been sustainable since well before Roosevelt Thomas wrote Beyond Race and Gender in 1991 and “The Shamming of Diversity,” just before he died in 2013.
Here's the fascinating thing about our current discourse: both sides have fallen into what Jonny Thomson, via philosopher Justin D’Ambrosio, calls "manipulative underspecification"—saying enough about something to trigger reactions without providing specific meaning.
Anti-DEI activists reference "critical race theory" and "woke ideology," mostly accompanied by ambiguous critiques. At the same time, DEI practitioners respond with equally vague defenses of "social justice" and "equity" without clear definitions or an invitation to make meaning of them together with dissenters, as both anti- and pro-DEI folks equally fail to do.
Christopher Rufo, perhaps the most famous anti-DEI activist in the U.S., explicitly admitted his strategy: "The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think 'critical race theory.' We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans."
Meanwhile, the concept of equity—originally about creating conditions for equality of opportunity—has been distorted beyond recognition. What started as H. George Frederickson's 1971 intervention, making social equity a third pillar of public administration alongside efficiency and effectiveness, has devolved into group-identity scorekeeping.
The more expedient we are in letting DEI die, the faster we can drop this silly conversation about three letters and get on with the work of making organizational cultures inclusive—creating conditions for all to thrive in ways that are accessible, actionable, and aligned with organizational purpose.
Not an “extra” heavily administrated thing bolted on for cosmetic purposes, we have had enough of that. We must design systems that help people thrive, not reacting to every symptom that arises in a way that makes us akin to social hypochondriacs.
DEI should die because social hypochondria is bad for our health–mental, physical, and spiritual.
Big Question 2: What is the Role of DEI Professionals in a Post-DEI Workplace?
Many people who became "DEI professionals" after Floyd are no longer in the game. A disproportionate number wrote shallow books full of LinkedIn posts and social media drivel, shared stats without context, and promised to “overturn systems”.
When business slowed and the going got tough, they disappeared. That's not "when the tough get going"—that's a puddle mindset: it stagnated and then dried up.
Mind you, I am sensitive to people losing their livelihoods (2025 has been devastating for small organizational development-related consultancies for anything that doesn’t have to do with AI. And, I am also flabbergasted that my fellow so-called DEI experts didn’t see this years back and deliberately reframe the discourse.
Many continued quoting McKinsey studies claiming increased representation produced higher EBITDA. McKinsey said, “Companies in the top quartile for ethnic diversity on executive teams were 36% more likely to have above average profitability in 2019 than companies in the bottom quartile, up from 33% in 2017.”
Chicken or Egg.
Did these high-performing companies have above-average profitability and become more “diverse” (in the group demographic sense), or did the “ethnic diversity” CAUSE greater profitability?
This is a brilliant group here, at least that's what the internet says about your people or at least what you say about one another. Brilliant people: You know that causation is not to be confused with correlation, right? Did “diversity” cause the profitability, or is there a (very) rough correlation?
Most DEI folks didn’t question the stats. I mean McKinsey said it. . .So it must be true, when McKinsey comes to town, right?
It didn't matter that researchers from Harvard to the London School of Economics have clearly proven this research to be flawed.
Professor Alex Edmans from the London Business School, author of May Contain Lies, said: "The McKinsey study is irreproducible even with their chosen performance measure and preferred methodology. There is no link between diversity and other performance measures when using more established methodologies."
So, back to the question – For the well-meaning folks still in the game (what do DEI professionals do post-DEI in the workplace?)—Drop the moniker of “DEI Professional”.
It's irrelevant. For all the reasons above and more. . .And. . .
Since titles matter to people, I suggest new ones: "Chief Thriving Officer," "Community and Connection Lead," "Mattering Architect," "Head of Relational Fitness Coaching," “Organisational Light Bearer.”
I made those up. You can make up your own. There are plenty of ways to convey the intention and possibilities that can manifest when inclusion skills become organisational superpowers.
Become facilitators of inspiring more people in your organization to harness the power of highly relational leadership and build their relationship fitness.
Peter Drucker said, "Leadership is the capacity of a human community to shape its future."
Be a catalyst for an ever-increasing number of people, enabling them to emerge and adapt to community needs. That's the role that's been needed for a long time.
We don’t need DEI to remain in its half-dead zombie-like state to build better for people and organizations.
Big Question 3: What happens to historically underrepresented groups when DEI dies?
My question in response: What has happened for so-called historically underrepresented and marginalized groups via DEI?
The answer is largely the opposite of what social justice advocates envisioned.
Thomas Sowell said in Social Justice Fallacies: "Hayek's argument was that the kind of world idealized by social justice advocates—a world with everyone having equal chances of success—was not only unattainable, but that its fervent pursuit can lead to the opposite of what its advocates are seeking."
In the realm of organizational life, what matters are the skills everyone brings, the reciprocity that enables us to contribute to one another's growth, and the rewards that accompany this mutual support. Without lumping people into group identity categories, everyone should be incentivized to build strong network connections across departments, disciplines, and demographics.
The problem has always been access. DEI's opponents have made it about aptitude, while it has always been about exposure. Access—especially early in life and career—enables exposure, which allows everyone to make their best contributions to human communities.
Let me conclude my response with this: the historically underrepresented and those whose group identities were marginalized in the past are not necessarily marginalized today.
I am a descendant of slaves from the transcontinental slave trade to North America. And, I have ancestors who were not enslaved. And, I have been more privileged than most people in the world by almost every available standard.
I have friends, some I grew up with in Topeka, KS (for those who haven’t been to KS, it’s the one right in the middle that Dorothy and her dog Toto from the Wizard of Oz are from)—I have friends who still live there who have had very different early lives (dramatically less privileged and lifestyles financially less enriched than I did.)
Let me tell you about my friend John W.
John was one of the smallest kids in our school (boys and girls), he wasn't popular, and his family didn't have much. He barely graduated high school, was running with crowds doing drugs and petty crime. A coach who knew us from middle school, an army vet, encouraged him to join the Army.
Twenty years later, I saw John at a gym in Topeka. He'd grown to 6'0", super fit, and had started several businesses after working for a heating and cooling manufacturer, learning digital creation in its early stages. Now, he runs a restaurant and creates digital content for local businesses in the region.
John said he got where he is because he started meeting people who recognized his gifts—coaches, teachers, and classmates who encouraged him and introduced him to opportunities. He happens to be racialized as "white," and the coach who encouraged military service was racialized as "black” and was culturally Hispanic.
How many Johns, Janes, Janniks, Jaspers, and Jamilahs are being exposed to new opportunities through their networks? People who, regardless of their group identities, wouldn't have chances to optimally share their gifts without being connected to someone who can bridge them to a flourishing life.
The more we affirm (through our actions) that this is happening, the more we do it, the more we take it upon ourselves to be a bridge, the better we know how marginalized individuals will fare as DEI returns to dust.
Big Question 4: How do Leaders Show Up in a Post-DEI World?
Let me say something that's not "businessy": Leaders show up in a post-DEI world with a goal for ego death.
What do I mean by that? Ego death means not knowing.
Why is it so important? It’s important because it means listening in a different way. It means shifting organizational mindsets from short-term stagnant puddles to long-term flowing rivers, interacting as part of a vast ecosystem, where interdependent pieces all matter and belong.
It means emergence is the guide, and emergence comes through being beacons for dissent, viewpoint diversity, and creating skills, capabilities, and incentives for people to reciprocally help others thrive, learn rapidly, unlearn faster, and constantly hold mirrors up to themselves–creating openings to hold up mirrors WITH one another.
The world of NOW—AI-fueled hype and promise—requires deeper focus on relational fitness (i.e., caring, listening, trust building, openness, rapidly learning together, etc.) and philosophical skills (i.e., critical thinking and analysis to examine fundamental assumptions, questioning taken-for-granted beliefs, identifying logical fallacies, and exposing hidden and at times blindingly apparent contradictions.
We need foundational questions beyond the empirical.
What will it take to elevate our inquiry-ability? Conceptual clarity for unambiguous prioritization.
Most organizations have never truly interrogated "equity"—never considered the tradeoffs.
How do we move beyond merely thinking there are solutions to understanding that every decision has tradeoffs and affordances?
Leadership must synthesize knowledge (as opposed to processing and unilaterally making decisions), make ethical sense of what harms and benefits, and navigate cultural distinctions from global to departmental contexts—managing the tensions and complexities that encompass the world of work.
Diversity is not going away. DEI must. We have to accept its death. DEI is dead. . . Long live its essence, not the caricature.
Creating the conditions for people to know they belong and matter, creating the conditions for people to thrive, unambiguously prioritizing and constantly developing the skills to do this well across organizations is imperative–not because it is nice to have, but because it is essential to fulfilling your organizational mission from bottom and top lines, to the generative impact and purposes of the business and it’s people.
DEI should die. Building thriving, generative, learning cultures needs more life, more light, more priority right now. Perhaps more than ever before.
I hope this was helpful. . . Make it a great day! ✌🏿
Interesting read! At this stage, it’s important to take a clear stance and seize the opportunity to assess what has truly worked so far and what has been merely performative.
Looking ahead, beyond initiatives that highlight numbers and metrics, I believe it will be crucial to create environments where, both managerially and systemically, we can guide people toward their zones of strength and put those strengths at the service of the collective. At the same time, we need to foster relationships that generate synergies where uniqueness is valued.
The future is probably make of people that will likely serve as bridges, between people and organizations.