“It’s a stark contrast to 2020, when the murder of George Floyd unleashed a racial justice movement that prompted companies to double down on policies aiming to increase opportunity for groups that have historically faced discrimination.”We have seen this happen at a number of schools. The people who support these policies think all they have to do is change the name.Last year, Eli Lilly’s annual shareholders letter referenced the acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion 48 times.
Amid growing legal, social and political backlash, American businesses, industry groups and employment professionals are quietly scrubbing DEI from public view — though not necessarily abandoning its practice. As they rebrand programs and hot-button acronyms, they’re reassessing decades-old anti-discrimination strategies and rewriting policies that once emphasized race and gender to prioritize inclusion for all.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr., chief executive of the Society for Human Resource Management, said that practitioners of DEI and its antecedents traditionally have focused on improving representation for historically marginalized groups, believing that “the magic bullet was diversity.” They are much better at bumper sticker slogans than the right is. They come up with some memorable acronym or term to describe one of their policies. It becomes popular within their circles. Then the right starts discussing the goals and consequences of the policy described by the term.