“DEI was supposed to help people like me. It didn’t,” writes Raquel Rosario Sánchez for Quillette. She continues:
In February, the Calgary-based Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy published a study on the effectiveness of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), authored by David Millard Haskell, a professor of sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. Haskell reviewed decades of research into the topic, including seven studies published in well-known journals, and meta-analyses covering hundreds of others. His conclusion is that DEI training is generally both divisive and counter-productive—which is to say that it exacerbates divisions rather than healing them.
In the UK, meanwhile, the Minister for Women and Equalities, Kemi Badenoch, recently received the results of a government-mandated study into the impact of DEI training in British workplaces. Many of the conclusions are consistent with those reported by Haskell.
Equally damning was evidence presented by the UK Free Speech Union (FSU), whose researchers recently found that diversity training was leading employees to hide their beliefs for fear of losing their jobs.
In a report published last month, titled The EDI Tax: How Equity, Diversity and Inclusion is Hobbling British Businesses, the FSU found that 36% of surveyed individuals had witnessed staff being penalised in some way because they’d resisted or questioned diversity training, with 12% reporting that they knew of colleagues who’d been fired for doing so. Moreover, of the 800 surveyed workers, “sixty-two per cent said they have had to conceal what they really think about the training they’ve received, including 22% (rising to 31% among Black and Asian respondents) who have been compelled to say things that they don’t really believe, e.g. said they believe it has been beneficial when in fact they think it was a waste of time”.
Overall, the report’s author, FSU Director Thomas Harris, makes the case that: “Many UK employees are thinking twice before contributing to workplace conversations. Genuine diversity of thought is required for any business to thrive, but much EDIC [Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Climate] training is having the opposite effect and embedding a new form of groupthink.”
Being a young UK-based woman of colour from the Dominican Republic, this rings true to me. I’ve been invited to DEI meetings and trainings that were supposed to be about assisting and empowering people like me. Yet none have been positive experiences. My role at these forums, I learned, was to look a certain way, not to candidly express my actual viewpoints.
My worst experience was at a service that employed me to work with women recovering from cocaine and heroin addiction, including prisoners set to be released into the community. When I received the invitation to join the organization’s DEI group, I had a bad feeling about what was to come, but decided to attend anyway.
It became apparent that, rather than engage in an effort to promote inclusivity and a welcoming environment, the meeting’s true purpose was to announce—and enforce—a certain ideologically prescribed dogma, and to browbeat dissenting voices into either agreement or silence.
When I challenged these new proposals at work, I was informed that the issue was very much non-negotiable, as the leaders were clearly enthused about their organization’s shiny new intersectional identity, and didn’t care much what our service-users thought about it. I was free to privately believe the heresy that human biology is a real and material presence in our lives, but I was not to traffic in such forbidden ideas at work.
As a lifelong leftist, I still find it jarring to think of how all this was allowed to happen within the short time frame of my own professional life. My only solace comes from the rising tide of evidence, in Canada, the UK, and elsewhere, indicating that more and more people realize that DEI posturing and rituals do not lead to true respect for diversity and inclusion. In my case, as in many others, they lead in the opposite direction.
Worth reading in full.
