Word of DEI's demise has been greatly exaggerated. According to HR Grapevine, 485 Fortune 500 companies still back "diversity goals."
While some companies have ditched DEI entirely, many others have simply done what leftists have done when their schemes have been shown to be unworkable for the last 50 years: they changed the name.
"Global warming" became "climate change." "Liberal" became "progressive." And now DEI is about to get the same linguistic treatment from woke corporations.
Conservative activist Robby Starbuck agreed on Wednesday that DEI is not “dead” but is “cornered and in a position to die.”
I see a lot of people saying DEI is dead. It’s not. It’s cornered and in a position to die but we must be punishing and relentless in finishing this ideology off. No mercy. Mercy allows it to survive and grow anew to terrorize future generations. Lots of work left for us to do.
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) January 22, 2025
I'm not as optimistic. A defining characteristic of the radical left is that they are always playing the long game. History has proven that playing the waiting game pays off in the end for them in many cases.
Some of the most pie-in-the-sky, radical ideas from the 1970s and the "New Left" are mainstream today. Government health insurance, feminism, gay rights, and marijuana legalization were considered crazy at the time. Today, they are the law of the land.
For the time being, the left is going to rebrand and rename the effort to "equalize" American society.
Opposition to DEI workplace practices spurred some corporate leaders in Davos to modify how they talk about them, Reuters reported. An adviser to Bangladesh’s interim government said DEI and ESG — “environmental, social, and governance” initiatives — “became toxic,” adding that “I’m more interested in what is effective, how do we get to the result as opposed to the label.” Bankers at Davos also predicted ESG funding won’t fully disappear because of Trump’s return. Many companies will still dedicate resources to sustainability and climate, even while some “walk back their messaging” or tweak their goals, a S&P Global report forecast. That’s partly because regulators and investors will still expect information on “factors that will impact the long-term success of a business.”
"When companies abandon DEI for merit-based or colorblind hiring practices or operations, some are more open about the move than others," reports a Heritage Foundation "Backgrounder" from November. John Deere posted on X that they were abandoning DEI commitments, while Microsoft quietly nixed their DEI program in a letter to employees, saying DEI is not "business critical."
Perhaps the biggest problem is the ever-changing, shifting definition of DEI, which has always been a deliberate tactic by the left when confronted with opposition.
"DEI terminology is hard to define, and DEI proponents have no consistent definitions for what they are advocating for or against. DEI officials’ actions, however, and stated positions on issues involving race, appear discriminatory and may violate state and federal civil rights laws," notes Heritage.
DEI programs have opaque objectives. According to an article in the Academy of Management Learning & Education, “diversity has evolved into a rather amorphous field where the very word itself invokes a variety of meanings and emotional responses.”10
The researchers report that a survey of corporate human resource (HR) managers found eight definitions of “diversity” among respondents. Seventy-one percent of respondents said their organization did not have an “official definition.”Rohini Anand and Mary-Frances Winters, “A Retrospective View of Corporate Diversity Training from 1964 to the Present,” Academy of Management Learning & Education, Vol. 7, No. 3 (2008), pp. 356–372.
Hence, it will be fairly easy to "rename" DEI efforts using any number of definitions. And the more obscure, the better.
The best way to stop the left has always been vigilance. And for the right, it must be a generational effort. That's exactly the way the left plays the game and how the right needs to respond.
