The Timely Death of DEI

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — DEI for those who love or, like you and I, hate it, is now in trouble. Think of it as affirmative action on stilts. It had a good run. But now enough people have seen, or themselves endured, its baleful effects in the workplace, on campuses, in public life.. British journalist Brendan O’Neill describes some of its most preposterous manifestations and welcomes its demise, here: “You know who will cheer the death of DEI? The working class,” by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked, January 13, 2025:

So, is it RIP DEI? The boss class’s favourite ideology certainly seems to be in trouble. Big business everywhere is rethinking its devotion to ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’. As part of his coming out as a pretty standard tech bro who bristles at woke and loves Joe Rogan, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has said DEI might be for the chopping block. He even instructed his minions to take the tampons out of the men’s bathrooms at Meta HQ. Expecting people who menstruate to use the ladies’ loo? Guys, this is big.

The legacy media is noisily lamenting Zuck’s bonfire of the diversity initiatives. Meta is ‘eliminating’ DEI, weeps CNN. It quotes an internal Meta memo that basically says it’s game over for ‘equity and inclusion’. To these people, Zuckerberg is an apostate. To renounce the religion of DEI, the divisive ideology that holds such fierce sway on college campuses and in HR departments, is to make oneself an enemy of the new elite. I reckon we’re days away from a Vox piece calling Zuckerberg a fascist….

DEI is the old practice of divide and rule with a woke twist. Via the toxic belief system of ‘intersectionality’, which holds that ‘privileged’, ‘cishet’ men and women will never understand ‘oppressed’ groups like African Americans, Muslims and trans folk, DEI ensured there could never be a coming together around shared class interests. After all, why would black workers align with white workers if all white workers suffer from ‘internalised racism’ and ‘oppressive’ tendencies? DEI essentially hung a sign, Maoist style, around the necks of certain workers, marking them out as problematic. It was catastrophic for race relations – unconscious-bias training has been shown to increase racial animosity – and for workplace solidarity. But it was a boon for a fragile-feeling boss class that dreads pushback from the people it employs.

DEI is one of the greatest tricks capitalism has ever played on working people. In empowering the HR elites to lecture employees about their ‘privilege’ and ‘internalised supremacy’, it turned reality utterly on its head. The wage-earners were depicted as the ‘privileged’ ones, while the HR establishment was reimagined as the great defender of ‘the oppressed’. The worker became the despot, and his employer the radical. We ended up in the truly bizarre situation where female workers who stood up for their hard-won right to their own bathrooms and changing areas were rebranded by HR as ‘bigots’, and any white worker who claimed to have common cause with a black worker risked being told that he was arrogantly overlooking the other worker’s specific cultural experiences. Solidarity has long been frowned upon by certain bosses, but it is downright impossible under intersectionality.

So, will Zuck and the others save workers from the cruel diktats of DEI? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The DEI-abandoning elites are not doing this to help the working class but rather to burnish their own credentials among the cultural class as the West undergoes a pretty big ‘vibe shift’. And DEI hasn’t gone away – many workplaces still enforce this deathly creed. But even if it’s accidental, even if it’s just a byproduct of the elites reconsidering their priorities, the demise of DEI will benefit working people more than anyone else, and that’s good.

I’m all for Brendan O’Neill and his savage indignation. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion — goodbye to all that. Up with meritocracy. Let us all ring DEI’s knell. I’ll begin it: Ding, Dong, Bell.