When we named this Substack “Ringside at the Reckoning, ”we didn’t specify who or what would face the reckoning. There was a good reason for this — we didn’t know. We still don’t.
We did say, though, that “leftist overreach is producing [a] reckoning.” And it seemed to me that the DEI and BLM movements might well be among the victims.
After all, these movements gained prominence as part of an irrational reaction to the death of a career criminal after a Minneapolis cop used too much force on him. An overhaul of policing might have been a sensible response to George Floyd’s death, if it could be shown that the excessive use of deadly force by police officers in America results in a more than a statistically insignificant number of fatalities and that the proposed overhaul wouldn’t unduly harm law enforcement efforts, thereby causing more harm than good.
But the reaction to Floyd’s death went far beyond the realm of policing. For example, the Washington Redskins changed the team name in response to Floyd’s death — a demand the owner had successfully resisted for years. What the wrongful action of a Minneapolis cop had to do with the use by a sports franchise of an Indian-themed name is anyone’s guess.
The same is true of DEI. What rational corporate executive would think as follows:
A white cop used excessive force on a black suspect. Therefore, we should favor less qualified blacks over more qualified whites in filling our jobs. And while we’re at, let’s also hire a bunch of new employees who don’t produce anything to oversee our discriminatory hiring and promotion practices.
It doesn’t make sense. Why should a company lower the quality of its workforce, while also creating employee discontent, just because of what happened to George Floyd?
Doing this won’t improve policing. It won’t prevent the excessive use of force against even one person who encounters a police officer.
Corporate America isn’t as rational as it should be. But surely it is astute enough to have a basic understanding of cause and effect.
Non-discriminatory hiring practices don’t cause bad policing. Lowering the quality of a workforce causes corporations to be less efficient, and therefore less profitable, than they should be. Favoring blacks and Hispanics over whites and Asian-Americans causes low morale. Larding up a company with DEI specialists wastes money.
Thus, as the irrationality of 2020 recedes, we should expect (indeed, we should already have witnessed) a reckoning for DEI at the corporate level. And according to the Washington Post, it looks like that reckoning is here.
The title of the Post’s report is: “2024 might be do-or-die for corporate diversity efforts.” The report suggests that it will be a case of “die.”
It begins:
This time last year, big companies had begun backing away from efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in their ranks, otherwise known as DEI. Experts feared energy around the work, which swelled after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, was waning.
In other words, they feared that big companies were coming to their senses.
Since then, things have gotten even more complicated. In June, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in higher education, igniting opposition to DEI. Dozens of bills targeting DEI initiatives at public colleges are pending across the country, and there’s been a spike in litigation alleging that the methods private companies use to address inequality amounts to discrimination.
In my view, what the Supreme Court said about race-based admissions by colleges is, in part, an excuse for companies to continue the retreat from DEI that, as the Post says, was evident “this time last year.” Keep in mind that the Court’s “diversity” jurisprudence in the higher education context never provided a legal justification for hiring and promotion discrimination by ordinary employers.
The diversity rationale the Supreme Court adopted in the college context (prior to the Harvard case) held that having a racially and ethnically diverse student body enhances the education of college students. Whatever the merit of this theory, it has no applicability in most employment situations.
The mission of an employer isn’t to enhance the education or the experiences of its employees. The purpose, normally, is to produce something. Diversity has nothing to do with this.
Certain employers might find it helpful to have someone who understands how to market to members of certain racial or ethnic groups. But this need could never justify preferring more than a very small number of blacks or Hispanics.
Certain employees (such as big law firms) might want to hire blacks and Hispanics to satisfy the ideologically-driven agenda of their clients (like Coca-Cola). However, it’s well-established that pleasing customers is no justification for racial discrimination. (How far would a bank in the South have gotten 50 years ago if it tried to justify refusing to hire black tellers because of customer preferences?)
Accordingly, the Harvard decision hasn’t really changed the legal landscape for employers who discriminate in favor of blacks. Such discrimination has always been illegal. The major change, in my opinion, is a growing sense that the DEI agenda has gone too far.
At the same time, I don’t dismiss the idea that in the post-Harvard case environment, fear of being sued has prompted some corporations to back away from discriminatory policies. I’m certain that it has.
But it’s clear from the Post’s article that this reckoning was underway “this time last year” — before the Supreme Court ruled in the Harvard case:
Companies made $340 billion in commitments to improve racial equity between May 2020 and October 2022, according to data from the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility. But in the past year, companies began easing off initiatives and cutting DEI teams amid widespread layoffs as they braced for an economic downturn.
It didn’t take an economic downturn, just fear of one, to induce companies to stop spending absurd amounts of money on an illegal and, from a business standpoint, counterproductive cause.
Add the heightened threat of lawsuits, and DEI’s reckoning seems to be in full flower:
At least six major firms, including JPMorgan Chase, Yum! Brands, American Airlines, Lowe’s and BlackRock have altered language in their DEI policies after being threatened with legal action in recent months, according to reporting from Reuters. The changes involve “removing language that said certain programs were for underrepresented groups” and “modifying executives’ goals for increased racial representation in the workforce,” Reuters reported.
Similar changes are unfolding in the legal industry, where three big firms — Perkins Coie, Morrison Foerster and Winston & Strawn — opened fellowships aimed at students of color to students of all races and backgrounds after facing lawsuits that claimed the programs discriminated against White applicants. After receiving an Oct. 9 letter threatening litigation, a fourth law firm, Adams and Reese, ended its diversity fellowship. . . .
It’s likely that more companies will move away from explicit race requirements for programs such as fellowships, grants and employee resource groups, according to Janet Stovall, global head of DEI at NeuroLeadership Institute.
“A lot of companies are going to stop their work or change what they do,” Stovall said. “They’re going to run away from anything that’s race-based.”
(Emphasis added)
That’s something to look forward to as we begin a new year.
Excellent article, thank you. I like seeing news about companies scaling back or DEI frauds being exposed. It is truly shocking how much people lost their minds over George Floyd, but then again, not really since there was a Republican president in the White House.
The war against what I call the leftist project which has metastasized in every sector of our culture is long and seemingly endless. It may take a decade or more and will require enormous and consistent force and energy from those of us who oppose the leftist project. The enemy is resourceful and desperate and has had decades to spread the decay everywhere. If we win on one front they will move to another. We can never falter or flag. For they will be on us like starving rats released from a cage. I think the war can be won but it requires a minimum quorum of our citizens to accept that we are in it. We aren't there yet.