Georgetown professor Ella Washington and Harvard professor Frank Dobbin discuss the beneficiaries and misperceptions of diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI, and who will be hurt as it's dismantled across public and private sectors.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What sparked the dismantling of DEI initiatives?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. And today, we're discussing the rapid dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, commonly known as DEI, in both public and private sectors nationwide. One side of the political spectrum praises DEI, often referring to it as a major step toward progress. The other uses it as a slur, an example of woke culture gone too far.
And it's become a challenge to debate its merits when we can't even agree on what it is. The cascade to dismantle anything called DEI began in January when President Trump issued executive orders to eliminate initiatives within the federal government and institutions that receive funding from the government.
Since then, states like Florida, Texas, and Utah have banned DEI offices at public universities. And companies like Pepsi and Disney and McDonald's have done away or quietly shifted their focus away from initiatives that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
To help us understand the criticism, the developments, and implications, we're joined by two distinguished experts, Frank Dobbin, professor of sociology at Harvard University, and Ella Washington, an organizational psychologist and professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. Welcome to you both. Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
Well, I think it's good for us to start with some basics because I'm not even sure when I'm in conversation with people about DEI if we're talking about the same things because it's become such a broad term. So I think it's great for all of us to start with how you both define DEI. And I'll start with you, Dr. Washington.
Well, you know, diversity, equity and inclusion is the terminology that we use at the current date. And it should be noted that this terminology has gone through evolutions over the past six decades.
At the core, what we're talking about with this work is creating workplace environments and systems in our society where everyone has the opportunity to succeed and everyone has the opportunity to thrive. That is the core of diversity, equity and inclusion.
I would say in simple terms, DEI comes out of legislation trying to assure equality of opportunity that is having the same chances in the labor market by race, ethnicity, creed, starting in 1961, and then by gender as well, starting in 1964.
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Chapter 2: How has the definition of DEI evolved over time?
And I'm just wondering, how are you looking at those two things in contrast with each other?
Well, let's put it in context of what Gen Z expects, right? They were born between 1997 and 2012, and the ADA Act has been around since the early 90s. And so they grew up in a world that accessibility was mandated, but also part of their lived experience, just like social media has been part of their almost entire lived experience.
And so when they show up to work, they have very different expectations, for better or for worse, right? of where their workplace environment will be. And they are not afraid to vote with their feet, if you will. You know, 56% of Gen Zers today said they wouldn't accept a job without diverse leadership. And 68% say their employer is not doing enough to build more diverse workplaces. And so
I think as we tap into what the future of the workforce requires, we can look at demographics alone, but we also can look at what these Gen Zers are expecting from their workplaces as a signal to where companies may need to be paying attention.
Dr. Dobbin, I want to go back to something you talked about. You said earlier around diversity training. I think one of the most controversial and contentious elements of diversity, equity, inclusion today is like the popularity of those types of workshops over the last few years. Why don't diversity and say like implicit bias trainings work?
Well, if you think about what implicit bias training is trying to do, just to take that part of diversity training to begin with, the goal is to make people aware of their own biases so that they will be able to interrupt their own thought processes and decision processes and rid the decisions of bias.
So they'll be able to step back and say, wait a minute, am I giving the black candidate a fair shot here? But when people are told that they are biased, and that's what implicit bias training does, it tells everybody that they're biased, they don't react positively. Nobody really reacts positively to being told they're biased.
And as a consequence, people often leave, and I'm thinking about white men in particular, people often leave feeling that they've been challenged, that they've been called a slur, a racist, or a sexist. And they often leave in a very kind of defensive manner, like feeling... they need to defend their own fairness.
So often people just leave the room antagonized or increasingly they're doing these online and they leave the session antagonized. And what we see in our research is that
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