The future of DEI: Without defining terms, confusion

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Much conversation about DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) is incoherent and leads to a lot of misunderstanding about what people mean by, “I’m for DEI” or “I’m against DEI.” Often, the people making those statements do not understand what they are for or against.

This is partly due to DEI not being a single concept, but instead three separate ones. On top of that, there is a lot of confusion and disagreement about what each of those concepts mean. And when people in conversation about a subject don’t share a common understanding about basic definitions, how can they intelligently engage each other? They can’t.

Inclusion is probably the most straightforward and least controversial aspect of DEI. In the simplest terms, it means having a work or school environment in which people from all backgrounds are welcomed, respected and encouraged to be active members of the work or school community.

Diversity and equity are a bit more complicated.

Some people define diversity broadly, including a diversity of races, ethnicities, nationalities, genders, religious beliefs, political views, life experiences and more. But when someone looks at an organization’s senior leadership or employees generally, one often hears, “That organization does not look very diverse.” If an organization does not look very diverse, then that signals a far narrower definition of diversity — one that must exclude differences in religious beliefs, political views and life experiences (because those differences usually cannot be seen), and essentially limits diversity to race, ethnicity and gender. So, when someone says, “Your organization needs more diversity,” it’s hard to know what that really means.

I recently discussed the term “equity” with a DEI consultant. She insisted it means giving each person in an organization the tools and help they need so that everyone can compete on an even playing field, regardless of background. That is a very different conception of equity than the definition found in a video recently posted online by Vice President Kamala Harris, which defined equitable treatment as: “We all end up at the same place.”

That latter conception of equity envisions equal or proportionate results. For example, because Asian Americans represent about 6% of the U.S. population and Black Americans represent about 14%, then, under that conception of equity, their representation in, say, medical or law schools, or in a corporation or nonprofit, should also be about 6% for Asian Americans and 14% for Black Americans.

Those two definitions of equity are radically different from each other and, depending on which meaning is intended, they represent very different organizational goals (equal opportunity vs. equal results) and raise different questions about implementation and fairness.

Let’s say a university, corporation or nonprofit has an “Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.” What does that mean? Well, it depends, first, on how those key terms are defined. Is diversity defined broadly or narrowly, and why one way and not the other? Does equity mean equal opportunity or equal results? To fully understand that office’s purpose, one would then need to understand the office’s specific objectives for each well-defined element of DEI, the specific plan to reach those objectives, and how performance against those objectives will be measured.

The answers to most of those questions for most organizations are opaque. There is usually a lack of transparency about goals and a lot of verbal obfuscation (intentionally or otherwise), where people talk generally about “being fair,” or “wanting to be welcoming,” or making sure “everyone has a chance,” or some other non-objectionable, but also non-informative, descriptions of purpose. Often, people talk about using DEI to correct for the effects of “systemic racism,” but that term itself is usually vaguely defined and often used as a catchall cause for a broad range of problems.

I recently reviewed a local nonprofit’s “Racial Equity Plan.” Immediately, it was clear that the plan was solely focused on a very narrow definition of diversity: race. Beyond that? The “plan” was a mishmash of jargon, vague aspirations, undefined plans of action and no clear sense of what the intended end results were. It was deeply uninformative.

So when someone says, “I’m against DEI” or “I’m for DEI,” how are either of those statements comprehensible without a full understanding of what the speaker is saying? They aren’t. And that is especially a problem when the speaker has only a vague sense of what they are talking about.

More often than not, a person embraces or rejects DEI depending on which political tribe that person belongs to (people on the left are supposed to be “for” DEI and people on the right are supposed to be “against” DEI, even though a common definition of DEI does not even exist).

So, instead of having conversations based on shared understandings about what certain words mean, we see angry shouting about a subject where so many of the shouters could not, if asked, write down a full and comprehensible definition of the thing they are so adamantly for or against.

There’s an old joke that, if you asked 10 economists the same question about economics, you’d get 11 different answers. I think about the same ratio applies if one were to ask 10 different DEI “experts” to define DEI. And if experts can’t agree, how can the general public hope to have any clarity on this subject?

So the next time someone tells you they are “for” or “against” DEI, try to find out their understanding of the meaning of each element of DEI and what, specifically, they like or dislike about those elements. If they are unable to do that, then maybe they are just mouthing incomprehensible nonsense and you’d better off not listening to them at all.

Loren Robert Thacker, of North Oaks, is an attorney.