Even supporters of diversity often get it wrong

Diversity, equity and inclusion has been the bogeyman of the right for the better part of four years. The hysteria began with Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “war on wokeness,” which one might have assumed would flame out following his disastrous showing in the 2024 Republican presidential nominee race, fueled in part by voters’ tepid response to his deep obsession with all things woke. But the crusade survived, reanimated by the second Trump administration. Although Democrats have long been accused of stirring culture wars — especially on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights — Republicans have gleefully galvanized and led this particular battle.

According to a March poll from NBC News, 49% of Americans think diversity programs should be eliminated, while 48% believe the programs should be continued. Unsurprisingly, taking party affiliation into account, 85% of Republicans, versus just 13% of Democrats, believe DEI should be eliminated.

I’ve conducted trainings and research pertaining to racial equity and empathy for years, and polls like these always make me wonder: Do people genuinely not like DEI, or do they not understand what it is?

I lead a large professional development training center with clients around the world, and we routinely get inquiries from corporations, nonprofits and government agencies alike with questions on how they can improve relationships between their employees or between their organizations and the people they provide products or services to. We’ve seen firsthand how people on the right and left can carry deeply faulty views on what exactly DEI is and struggle to apply lessons.

A lot of the right’s opposition is rooted in persistent concerns over what people can and cannot say. One conservative complaint about inclusion efforts is that they inherently suppress free speech, but this claim speaks to a phantom issue and it compounds a few misunderstandings. When done thoughtfully, DEI trainings can give participants profound insight into how and why their words might negatively affect people from different cultural backgrounds. Such education poses no inherent threat to free speech. Instead, it offers a window into the impact of our words and lets us all make more informed choices about how we communicate. This matters if you think it’s worthwhile to try to better connect and resonate with people at work and elsewhere who are from a different race or culture from you.

While one big component of DEI is amplifying opportunities for underrepresented people, a far bigger focus is helping people of all races and backgrounds learn how to better engage with others, to improve their patterns of communication and their ability to work together. Open discussions are necessary for that difficult process to take place. DEI doesn’t quash free speech; its existence is proof of a society that embraces free speech and critique.

Another provocative argument from the right advances the dubious claim that hiring and promoting with an eye toward diversity, equity and inclusion inherently limits meritocracy. This is a serious concern. Ironically, it’s one of the major reasons this movement was born: Given the deep legacy of discrimination and disenfranchisement in American government, higher education and business, to recruit, hire or promote without explicitly considering diversity and inclusion would limit meritocracy. This is because a society without DEI would ensure that members of long-favored groups, such as upper-class populations, continue to benefit from their generational privileges and can get ahead in higher education or the workplace while equally qualified or worthier candidates with less generational privilege would be excluded. All things considered, there are no credible data showing that DEI has had a negative impact on the caliber of individuals ultimately being recruited, hired or promoted.

The left gets it wrong too, albeit in different ways.

During a recent training with county government employees in Southern California, we played a clip from the TV show “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” In it, writer and actor Larry David, playing a fictionalized version of himself, asks a young Black woman who’s standing a few positions ahead of him in line at a checkout to move up closer to the person ahead of her because he doesn’t like “having a big gap in the line.” The woman reacts defensively to his request and suggests that he (a white man) would not ask the same of a white man.

Later on, Larry shares this incident with his Black friend and confidant Leon, who indignantly lambasts Larry for having that interaction with a Black woman — suggesting that a Black person in Larry’s position could have made the request, but for a white person to do so crosses a nuanced and racially charged line in our society: “It’s not racism; it’s audacity.” There are a few F-bombs thrown into his retort for emphasis.

In addition to introducing some levity into the trainings, we use these scenes to explore some thorny questions: Does Larry’s request to this woman reflect a potential microaggression? How might participants feel, and how might they respond, if they were this woman?

Less than an hour after the first training, we received an email from leaders in the government agency asking us not to show the clip in the next scheduled training sessions, because the language might, in their words, “make some folks uncomfortable.”

My initial thought: If county government employees can’t handle hearing the exasperation of a sitcom character just talking about racism, that’s a really bad sign for our quest to tackle deep and persistent patterns of racial discrimination and inequity in places like Los Angeles.

But to be fair, many who support the goals of diversity, equity and inclusion have done a poor job of engaging in difficult and uncomfortable discussions like the “was that racist?” conversation in the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” clip. Instead, they’ve leaned into heavy-handed virtue-signaling that demonizes people’s flaws and blindspots, providing no room for grace. This has encouraged right-wing provocateurs to portray DEI as an effort to force social conformity, sow hate and dole out advantages to the undeserving.

Not only is there no empirical evidence that DEI does these harmful things via trainings or policy, but many DEI efforts are not particularly effective, period — often being toothless, performative window dressing at best. For example, when it comes to the diversification of American organizations in recent years, one would be hard-pressed to show major gains anywhere.

After painstakingly slow progress, still only 26% of voting members of Congress identify as Hispanic, nonwhite or both, when Congress is meant to represent a nation that’s about 42% non-Hispanic nonwhite.

On the business side, in 2023, 74% of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies’ CEOs were white, non-Hispanic men, even though less than 30% of Americans identify as white, non-Hispanic men. More than 70% of nonprofit organizations are led by a white CEO.

In my world of higher education, a 2022 poll showed that 72.6% of college and university presidents were white. If DEI was having the broad impact the opposition claims, these numbers would look radically different. But in amplifying this meritless claim that DEI undermines meritocracy, Republicans are deliberately choosing not to grapple with this clear, objective reality.

There’s a point in nearly every episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” where Larry or another character commits a cringe-worthy faux pas and the credits roll with the show’s theme mortifyingly playing. Over the years, the tuba-laden tune has become the backdrop for countless memes.

One thing is for certain: Americans love free speech, until they realize those who have different views are supposed to have free speech, too. Ultimately, people on the left and the right need to ask themselves whether they can agree to tolerate different perspectives, even if they don’t respect or like those perspectives. Otherwise, the joke’s on us — and we’ll stay trapped in an endless loop of cultural conflict, with the “Curb” theme proverbially playing in the background.

Jerel Ezell is a sociologist and the executive director of the UC Berkeley Center for Cultural Humility.