DEI explained: What is DEI and why is it so divisive? What you need to know.
Donald Trump kicked off the campaign to abolish diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives during his first term. Now he's back in the Oval Office to finish the job.
During an address Tuesday night before a joint session of Congress, the president claimed his administration had eliminated DEI.
"We have ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and, indeed, the private sector and our military," Trump said. "And our country will be woke no longer."
Just hours after he took the oath of office on Jan. 20, Trump began issuing executive orders to dismantle programs, put pressure on federal contractors to end “illegal DEI discrimination” and direct federal agencies to draw up lists of private companies that could be investigated for their DEI policies.
Cabinet officials quickly followed. In one of his first directives to Pentagon employees, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent a short note with "DoD ≠ DEI" in large black letters. "Those who do not comply will no longer work here," he wrote.
Some companies like Facebook and Instagram owner Meta canceled DEI programs altogether to align themselves with the Trump administration.
"President Trump's speech confirmed what we already knew: He is intent on attacking all pathways to the American Dream that give all people the freedom to thrive in our nation and instead hoard opportunity for the privileged few," Andrea Abrams, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Defending American Values Coalition, told Paste BN in a statement. "His baseless attacks on DEI are attacks on the promise of America, the promise that everyone should be able to build the life of their dreams without barriers standing in their way."
With Trump fueling the backlash, tensions are running high in a nation already polarized over DEI. But what is DEI?
What is the meaning of DEI?
DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion. Beyond that, there is little agreement on what it means.
On the one hand, DEI is a broad-brush term that refers to the policies and measures that organizations use to prevent discrimination, comply with civil rights laws and create environments more welcoming to people from marginalized backgrounds.
Supporters of these diversity programs say they help companies hire and retain top talent and boost innovation and profits.
"Talk to any CEO of a major Fortune 500 company. They’ll tell you that their bottom line, dollar wise, does better when there’s more diversity in the room," Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a former civil rights lawyer and a Democrat, recently told the New York Times.
Critics see diversity initiatives differently. They say DEI focuses on race and gender at the expense of individual merit and they have challenged these initiatives in courtrooms and on social media as illegal discrimination – so called “reverse discrimination” – against white people.
Some of the “woke” excesses critics object to? Linking executive compensation to diversity goals and sponsoring fellowship or internship programs open only to certain groups.
DEI “postulates that American society is systemically racist, oppressive, animated by white supremacy or any of many other ills attributed to America, its founding, and its culture,” Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, recently wrote. “DEI does not promote diversity, etc., to which few people would object. It seeks to dismantle our entire society and recast it.”
Why is there a DEI backlash?
A wave of DEI initiatives swept through the federal government and corporate America after George Floyd's 2020 murder forced a historic reckoning with race in America. That wave was quickly met with a forceful backlash from conservative foundations, think tanks and political operatives that joined forces to make DEI a mainstream flashpoint.
In 2023, the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious college admissions. The ruling didn’t have direct implications for companies but it energized conservative groups led by Stephen Miller, now White House deputy chief of staff for policy, and anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum, who have targeted corporate “wokeism” at nearly four dozen companies from Apple to Pizza Hut-owner Yum! Brands.
They took aim at controversial measures such as setting hiring targets, which they say are illegal racial quotas, for women and people of color.
The organization that Miller co-founded, America First Legal, recently called on the Labor Department to investigate federal contractors, like Meta and Lyft, with DEI policies that it says may violate federal law and Trump's executive order. On Tuesday, the Trump administration sided with Blum's American Alliance for Equal Rights in challenging a recently enacted Illinois law that requires nonprofits to publicly disclose demographic information such as the race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity of its officers and directors.
Another activist, Robby Starbuck, wrung concessions from corporations like Walmart and Target through pressure campaigns on social media.
“The tenets of DEI demand that you discriminate against white people by giving preferential treatment to other races,” harming white men and Asians, Starbuck said on a recent podcast.
What is ‘illegal’ DEI?
What does the Trump administration mean by “illegal” DEI?
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Justice Department recently issued policy guidance on what constitutes "unlawful DEI-related discrimination” and which programs it will target.
“Far too many employers defend certain types of race or sex preferences as good, provided they are motivated by business interests in ‘diversity, equity, or inclusion.’ But no matter an employer’s motive, there is no ‘good,’ or even acceptable, race or sex discrimination,” EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas said in a statement.
David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at the NYU School of Law, said the guidance offers a window into how the Trump administration will interpret and enforce a landmark 1964 civil rights law that bars employment discrimination.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted to help qualified women and people of color land jobs. The Trump administration has alleged that ensuing corporate DEI practices have unfairly disadvantaged and discriminated against white men.
“The documents unsurprisingly take a broad view of what forms of DEI are unlawful,” Glasgow said in a LinkedIn post. “However, I think it's notable that even this vehemently anti-DEI administration appears to acknowledge that many forms of DEI remain lawful.”
According to Joelle Emerson, CEO of of culture and inclusion platform Paradigm Strategy, programs that may run afoul of the Trump administration include:
- Exclusion from training opportunities;
- Access to mentoring, sponsorship or workplace networking opportunities, raising the risk that employee resource groups not open to everyone could be targeted;
- Limiting access to internships, fellowships and other programs to specific underrepresented groups;
- Including or excluding a job candidate from a hiring pool based on race, sex or other protected characteristics (such as corporate America's use of the NFL's “Rooney rule”);
- Training that separates workers into groups by protected characteristics.
According to employment lawyer Jon Hyman, the law does not prohibit employers from:
- Promoting a diverse workforce of qualified employees from different backgrounds;
- Ensuring fair treatment, access and opportunity for everyone while working to remove barriers “that have historically led to unequal outcomes;”
- Creating an environment where people from all backgrounds feel welcome.
“What the law does prohibit – and has since 1964 – is hiring preferences, quotas, or any other form of discrimination based on a protected class. That includes unfair treatment in hiring, firing, compensation, promotions, or any other term or condition of employment,” Hyman, a shareholder with Wickens Herzer Panza, said in a LinkedIn post.
Not all DEI was created equal
Some of the initiatives that sprang from the Me Too movement in 2017 and Floyd’s murder were ineffective or performative, such as workplace training sessions on race, diversity advocates say.
“DEI has become a political football but that does not mean it’s immune from criticism,” Y-Vonne Hutchinson, CEO and founder of DEI firm ReadySet, said in a TED Talk last year. “People in organizations made real mistakes.”
The problem now, according to diversity advocates: The political right has conflated the term DEI with programs that most people support and that benefit everyone.
"The discrimination that people like me face hasn't gone away," said Hutchinson, who is Black.
DEI vs. merit?
In an effort to avoid potential legal challenges, companies are removing mentions of diversity from their securities filings and increasingly they are adding a new term: “Meritocracy.”
Oil company ExxonMobil recently said it is focused “on building an engaged, global workforce; grounded in meritocracy.”
Bob Sternfels, global managing partner for consulting firm McKinsey, recently told employees: “We don’t guarantee equity in outcomes, but we do strive to ensure everyone has a fair shot to succeed in our meritocracy.”
Meritocracy gained currency last year when Alexandr Wang, founder of artificial intelligence start-up Scale AI, coined the term “MEI” or “merit, excellence and intelligence” which he said meant hiring “only the best person for the job.”
In fulfilling campaign pledges to cancel in the public and private sectors, Trump has boosted the conservative talking point, calling for America to become a “colorblind and merit-based” society.
Few people would disagree that the workplace should be merit-driven. But in recent years, conservative activists have positioned DEI as the polar opposite of merit.
“DEI was never intended to be about merit,” The Heritage Foundation’s Gonzalez said.
Trump "has restored merit as the cornerstone of all federal policy," Miller said during a White House briefing.
Business leaders have talked up the concept of merit for years. High-tech entrepreneur and investor Mitch Kapor has said corporations operate a “mirrortocracy,” not a meritocracy, a self-reinforcing system that concentrates power, influence and decision-making authority in the hands of one demographic group.
Glasgow said he’s “deeply frustrated” that conservatives pit DEI against merit.
According to Glasgow, DEI helps make sure systems are meritocratic by breaking down barriers and expanding the talent pool so companies can hire and promote the best people.
“We know from decades of extensive research that, in the absence of DEI efforts, humans do not make perfectly merit-based decisions,” Glasgow wrote on LinkedIn. “Far from being opposed to merit, DEI supports merit-based decision-making.”
Creating a true meritocracy "means creating and stewarding rigorous systems for hiring, feedback and promotion" and eliminating discrimination, said fairness, access, inclusion and representation strategist Lily Zheng, author of "Reconstructing DEI."
"DEI done right is how we achieve our aspirations of meritocracy," Zheng wrote on LinkedIn.
Did DEI change corporate America?
After Floyd’s murder, America’s largest corporations worked to reverse decades of disparities and remove bias from hiring and retention practices.
Those efforts seemed to get results. Between 2020 and 2022, the number of Black executives rose by nearly 27% in S&P 100 companies, according to a Paste BN analysis of workforce data collected by the federal government.
But the DEI backlash slowed that momentum. The ranks of Black executives fell 3% in 2023 from the prior year at twice the rate of white executives. Data for 2024 is not yet available.
Today, white men still dominate the corridors of power. Even with recent gains, Black Americans are outnumbered 12 to 1 by white people in executive roles.
Civil rights leaders warn DEI rollbacks could erase hard-fought gains in the workplace.
Without DEI, "we risk reverting to environments where homogeneity is the norm, bias and discrimination go more unchecked and the status quo remains unchallenged, where our nation will increasingly default to the belief that competence and privilege lie first and foremost with white men," said Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, president of the Christian nonprofit Sojourners.
That belief "contradicts our best civic and religious values and makes our workplaces less competitive," he said.
Is DEI dying?
Weaponized by critics, the term DEI has been phased out of corporate lingo and struck from public filings and less polarized terms like inclusion and belonging have taken its place. For example, the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, recently folded DEI and talent management staff into one “Talent and Culture” group.
But what about the substance of the work?
Some initiatives such as prioritizing diversity among suppliers are getting the ax as the political and legal climate shifts. Participating in external workforce surveys such as the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, which measures business support for LGBTQ employees, is also on the outs.
Don’t write off DEI just yet, says James White, a seasoned Black executive and former Jamba Juice CEO. His belief? Companies that have been doing the work will keep doing it for one simple reason: It’s good for business.
Costco successfully fought off an anti-DEI shareholder proposal from a conservative group, saying “our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary.”
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has said he plans to eliminate some diversity initiatives that were costly and ineffective but remains committed to programs to boost the diversity of his company’s workforce and customer base.
“You have to separate the anti-DEI movement from what is really happening at the companies,” White said. “There is clickbait and headlines that get people agitated, but the best leaders at the best companies are still trying to find ways to attract, hire and retain the very best talent available from the widest demographic set available to them.”
Emerson urged corporations to continue their efforts even in the face of legal and political headwinds.
“I want to remind all companies: You don’t have to stop doing those things,” Emerson said. “The things that have the biggest impact when hiring people from underrepresented backgrounds are things that are not only entirely legal, they are things that are in line with prioritizing the values of hard work and merit that the administration is touting in these executive orders.”
(This story was updated to add new information.)