Traps and Trade-Offs in DEI, Part I
Traps and Trade-Offs in DEI, Part I
My four-year-old son (Kai) and I were walking back from the park a brief while ago. He watches different cartoons. In a couple of them, the characters talk about traps or lava and things of that nature. So, this particular day, he looked at dots on the sidewalk. I don't know what they were created by, but they were little circular dots. They could have been from patching the street up, birds; it’s hard to know. They were otherwise random marks on the concrete.
He told me, “Daddy, don't step on those. It's a trap!” He made it into a game. So, I played along for about 50 meters. Then, my wife texted me about our evening plans. She was at school (the in-person days of her Master’s program), and I knew she had little time on her breaks, so I responded quickly.
While responding, I looked down at my phone. And Kai says, “Daddy, Stop!,” very loudly and with “stop” pronounced in German. (The words are very close, but the tone is much different when you hear them in German vs. English.) “You go into the trap!”
As I looked up in response to his command, he pointed out the various traps I was stepping on. I thanked him, immensely grateful because Who wants to be trapped?
As we made our way home to prepare for our next adventure, I began to think about the traps in organizational life, particularly regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion.
I thought about how, as people who express explicit and significant commitment to DEI (i.e., people like myself who work in the space), and those who are supportive, we often face traps that we don't have Kai, there to point out for us.
In Episode 8 of the Reconstructing Inclusion podcast, I shared about the trap set by the character Foxy Loxy that the tragic protagonist of the story, “Chicken Little,” put himself and his fellow feathered colleagues in with the catastrophizing statement, “The sky is falling!” He exclaimed after being hit on the head with a piece of wood thrown by Foxy Loxy, who was using Chicken Little as trap bait.
The rationally-oriented Cocky Locky pushed back against Chicken Little without avail. The result was that all fowl in the story, except Cocky Locky, were part of Foxy Loxy’s feast. I won’t reiterate this trap, but it is one to be mindful of.
Here are a few other traps to consider:
Trap #1: Reductionism. Some people would disagree with me, but reductionism goes in many directions. Most of them, by definition, fall into the incomplete category, and others are harmful.
Too many people who call themselves DEI experts tend to reduce DEI to grievance and seemingly intractable problems, "central problematics—those generic, recurrent, never resolved and never completely resolvable issues—that shape the work of the sociologist."
For example, we reduce everything to genderization or racialization as the causal rationale for all ailments and problems in organizational life and institutions, society, etc. Conclusions about a particular state of an organization occur as definitive and clear standpoints that are difficult to argue. High-level certainty in many reductionist conclusions leads to relational deadlocks. Making sense with those who stop at such inferences is, at best, a perpetual impasse.
To many, these so-called “problematics,” as Dr.Smelser refers to them above, are not just part of the problem but are the de facto issue that DEI practitioners must address. Some would conclude that if we don't address them in a manner that leads towards their eradication (which is impossible according to Smelser because they are “recurrent, never resolved, and never completely resolvable”), we're not doing “the work.”
Related post: Centering Nuance in DEI
I think that's a trap. It's a trap, one because what it says is that DEI is for racialized people. And that's all DEI is for.
Secondly, it limits the needed nuance in dialogue, allowing us to get beyond convenient, less than marginally rigorous conclusions. And there is an absolute need for continuous commitment of human communities to mitigate the dysfunctional dynamics that come from racialization and racism.
In May, it will be four years since the death of George Floyd. Where are we? Are we any better off for focusing as we focused? Have we advanced beyond where DEI impact was five years ago, pre-Floyd? And, as Dr. King articulated in his 1967 speech, “Where Do We Go From Here?”
And the answer to being better off due to our focus? In some ways, “yes,” but there are trade-offs. We made some trade-offs as many DEI practitioners, as well as new and established anti-racism activists, doubled down on race work. Some did so without the level of skill needed to elevate the work.
Thus, we put ourselves in a trap that is hard to escape because some people perpetuate a narrative that mimics what many have reinforced. That is, DEI is all about race grievances–discrimination; and, therefore, the problem is primarily white guys.
Now, white men have created some significant problems in the world (if lumped together as a monolithic group), no doubt. Not all white men have. And it's not that the white guys of today have been the only perpetrators of the problems that face racialized communities. What is the difference between this mindset and the stereotyping of racialized people?
Such a stance reduces DEI and its transformational potential and puts a box around the myriad subtleties of our identities, similar to the box that racialization places around the racialized.
We can't make this a them versus us dynamic. We all have to understand the role we've played in creating the conditions that we have today. That's trap number one, reductionism. And in this case, I use the example of racialization and racism. Any form of reductionism (reducing human complexity or, as Dave Snowden of Cynefin has coined it, Anthro-complexity) in organizational culture development is unhelpful.
Trap #2: Failure to Seek out Disconfirmation (Confirmation Bias)
The second trap is a need for the ability to seek out disconfirmation. On the flip side of the coin, it's confirmation bias. When doing this work and seeing a problem in organizational life, we often look for what we want to find. And when we look for what we want to find, we unironically find it.
The problem is that if you don't seek out the things that are contrary to it, you put yourself in the trap of thinking that what you're solving for is complete.
Another challenge is that you are partially correct because you want to be confident in your actions. You want to solve the problem. And in the case of something like any of the isms or ists or phobias of any kind against any humankind that we've artificially or socially constructed, it doesn't matter. We will never solve for them.
When we seek solutions, we don't permanently “solve” something. Perhaps one can say that we hope to make decisions that lead us to less wrong conclusions. We just create trade-offs (à la Thomas Sowell). And, over time, our actions, guided by our heat-seeking beliefs and convictions, can fail to produce trade-offs that take us further than we are at present.
It is essential to acknowledge one’s tendency toward confirmation. It's not so hard. It's something that, if one is intellectually honest, becomes your biggest asset.
Related post: Curate Disconfirmation
And, when we think about many of the people who are purporting to be against, anti, or “attacking” DEI, working through disconfirmation as a practitioner (i.e., being critical and seeking counterpoints of current methods, beliefs, and rhetoric), then it's easy to refute the rhetoric of those who are equally competent (or even in some cases, more brilliant) but hold their own biases and haven’t sought out disconfirmation.
As practitioners and supporters of DEI, it keeps us from being on our heels when doubters with solid voices and platforms to share them come forth. It's also possible to ask questions of doubters that you wouldn't have asked vs. ramping up a defense of your firmly held beliefs that you want to be right about. (As I say frequently, rightness has never transformed anything.)
In asking a penetrating question, you might create something closer to what you want in the long term, more so than any short-term orientation to this work because it's not short-term.
We could have some so-called quick wins, but I don't like using that phrase. I'm allergic to it as a notion. However, we can have a relatively quick impact. And, to do so, we have to ask the right questions. If we don't, we create more problems down the line, even though we might think we're solving something short-term.
It's the same as many people in companies who think very short term. So, while some of those people, you might surmise, are attacking DEI subtly, silently, or overtly, many have the same pattern as the DEI space.
Suppose we are consistently rigorous in our work, including seeking out disconfirmation. If so, we could solve not just the challenge we're facing when it comes to creating the conditions for people to thrive but also the impact we'll have on the organizational mind. We insist on clarifying that short-termism eventually gives you precisely what you're shooting for- something short-term.
The trade-off is, in the long haul, you don't win. So that's the second trap: confirmation bias or not intentionally seeking out disconfirmation.
Trap #3 Creating the dynamics of us and them:
In a field where our primary work is to mitigate the notion of separateness, we have, in too many instances, doubled down on behaviors that reinforce or reignite segregation.
Some of you who have read my book, Reconstructing Inclusion, know that I have a chapter called “Rooting (for) Them (Out).” The premise of the chapter is that I don't believe there's a “Them.”
Now, I've said this before. I'll repeat it. Some actors are acting in bad faith, but I don't fundamentally believe that there is this “other.”
I am firm that the interdependent nature of humanity, which my work centers, says you can't have an “other” and think that the so-called other is your enemy when, in fact, they are by nature connected to you.
So, how do we avoid Us vs. Them dynamics?
More to come in next week’s Part II.
I hope this was helpful. . . Make it a great day! ✌🏿
In this episode of the ‘Reconstructing Inclusion’ podcast, I interview Laura Smith, a celebrated organizational researcher and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) strategist. Laura shares her journey from Detroit to Europe, her encounters with distinct cultures, and the notion of work in different countries. She highlights the significance of DEI in startup and scale-up companies, discussing a data-driven approach to understanding employee safety, company culture, and readiness to respond.