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At the risk of profound understatement, Americans don’t agree on DEI.
Recent polling, while imperfect, at least shows the clear divide over diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. A poll from The Economist/YouGov showed 45% in favor of ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and 40% opposed; a Reuters/Ipsos poll found 51% opposed shuttering government DEI programs and firing employees from those departments, while 44% were in favor.
It’s worth noting that both of those polls were conducted in the context of opinions on the Trump administration, and there are probably some stultifying effects. In other words, people might support Trump and thus hesitate to support DEI – or, inversely, oppose Trump and thus hesitate to criticize it.
A more granular poll from the Pew Research Center, comparing surveys from September and October of 2024 to results from February 2023, showed similarly divided results, and a slight decrease in overall support. But it also parsed the difference between thinking DEI was a “bad thing” and thinking employers paid “too much attention to it.” On that front, employees who were generally supportive of DEI – including those who identified as Black or Democrats – were slightly more willing to say their employers overemphasized DEI.
You can only go so far with polls, and I’ve heard healthy debate about what we’re tracking. The polls don’t really account for people who felt like DEI was a good and necessary intervention that has now served its purpose — or people who always had qualms about DEI, but yielded to social pressure.
Polls also paint with a fairly broad brush when they ask about DEI — and don’t delve much into what we really mean when we say diversity, inclusion, and equity. That’s problematic because DEI can serve as a catchall shorthand for a lot of different things, ranging from specific policies to more general philosophies and even worldviews.
I’ve spent the last couple of months talking to a lot of people about DEI: liberals, conservatives, critics, and practitioners. Most of them spoke candidly on the condition of anonymity, in large part because few issues touch so many live wires the way DEI does. But the conversations have helped me map the terrain, both in terms of different ways DEI shows up in our lives, but also how those intersect with debates over policy and philosophy.
It’s worth noting that these are not new issues. The debates of affirmative action, political correctness, the civil rights and women’s liberation movements, they’re all still here with us.
But it’s hard to ignore that our modern discourse is fractious and fractured in a way that feels new — or at least accelerated. There’s a nastiness and bitterness to many of these conversations. In one discussion I learned a new ten-dollar word, “Revanchrist,” a policy based on revenge and clawing back lost territory, real or metaphorical. You can see how it might apply.
Still, I have a glimmer of hope. Not that everyone will agree – but perhaps that people can stop talking past each other. If we can agree what we’re talking about, maybe we at least disagree better, and more productively.
Diversity
Ask a hundred people, and you’ll get a hundred different explanations about what diversity, inclusion, and equity mean. Trust me.
For this week’s edition, I want to work through some of what I’ve heard about diversity.
On paper, a lot of diversity statements suggest a goal of having protected classes and characteristics show up in elected or appointed office, the workforce or classroom, and in media representations. The basic idea is to achieve some kind of proportional representation — call it parity — between what we see when we look at a boardroom table, a graduating class, or an ensemble cast and what we see in the world.
And, in general, diversity efforts look at a broad range of people and characteristics. That includes race — which obviously plays a prominent role in this discussion — but also pregnancy or parental status, disability, age, religion, and so on.
There’s also an old-school lower-case-l liberal argument for diversity of thought — this one is often (but not exclusively) invoked by conservatives, though not always in good faith. There are assuredly times when conservative thought has been met with heckling, social media cancellation, or lost employment and educational opportunity – and I think the tendency to downplay those situations has only deepened our current cultural divide. But it’s been harder — at least in my conversations — to identify how conservative thought has been the subject of broad discrimination the way that, say, women, minorities, veterans, or people with disabilities have.
In any case, whatever you include in the term diversity, it hasn’t always been a unified or evenly distributed effort. There are many groups which advocate for just one category. And the majority of conversations I’ve had about diversity center on race, usually in terms of Black and White. A lot of the disconnect in conversations about DEI comes from whether diversity really means a dozen-plus different groups, or whether it’s more narrowly a byword for Black-White race relations (and to a lesser extent gender dynamics).
The broader definition is often invoked by those defending DEI — but, again, I’d say not always in good faith. I heard many decry critics of DEI as ‘racist’ in a reactionary way that suggests, pretty directly, that DEI is for them primarily about race. But when some of those same people are presented with the shortcomings of DEI, they will deflect by invoking DEI’s widest imaginable scope.
I don’t want to skip over this, though: I have also heard critiques of DEI used as a stalking horse for more bigoted ideas. Derek Anderson, who runs a local community affairs show on Facebook, put it bluntly when he said “DEI is the new N-word for some folks.” In some of my more candid conversations, I’ve heard DEI used with the tenor and tone of a slur. But that’s certainly not always the case, and context matters.
The situation, of late, has been even more complicated because DEI practitioners — the people doing the actual work — have been less vocal.
Back in early 2023, WHQR held a panel on DEI, where people in government programs (at UNCW, the county, and the public schools) and private sector offices spoke really freely about their work. They discussed the importance of race, of course, but they also talked about their broader mandate to help mothers, veterans, and people dealing with disabilities and homelessness, among other things.
But when the UNC system purged DEI from public universities last year, UNCW clammed up, and later gave fairly boilerplate answers. New Hanover County’s DEI office, which has been criticized by Commissioner Dane Scalise and may be on the chopping block in this year’s budget talks, has on several occasions declined to talk — which is even more notable because two years ago, the county’s chief diversity and equity officer sat on our panel.
Parity and Overrepresentation
How diverse is diverse enough? How do you define that? And can you be … too diverse?
Set aside for a moment the issue of how you achieve diversity. (It’s a doozie, I know.)
At 30,000 feet I’ve heard mostly agreement on the idea that organizations should reflect the society they serve – and that if an industry broadly speaking lacks diversity, something is probably wrong. It offends our egalitarian sensitivities, which I think is healthy.
Take, for example, a survey of racial and gender diversity in the corporate governance of the Fortune 500. There are different ways to gauge this, but data from Harvard Law and the National Diversity Conference shows that in 2022 around 70-72% of board members and executives were men (and about 80% of those were White). For women, roughly 75% were White.
Most people who talked to me agreed, in general, there’s an issue here. I spoke to a conservative White woman who said, of course, she’d like to see more women — regardless of race — on these boards. In my anecdotal survey, White men were the least likely to see an issue, and yet plenty still acknowledged, ok, something’s gotta give here.
But this consensus falls apart as you get more granular and, at the smallest scales, parity gets trickier. Take the WHQR newsroom. Say you wanted parity for New Hanover County’s Hispanic and Black communities (around 6% and 12% of the population). In that case, our staff of five would have to be exactingly multiracial: one reporter would need to be ⅓ Hispanic and another just shy of ⅔ Black. Combine a minority demographic with a small organization, and you get a reductio ad absurdum. Assume for the sake of argument that indigenous, trans people, and people who are completely blind each make up around 1% of the population, give or take – how can you proportionately represent those populations when each person on our staff makes up 20% of the team?
Sometimes, it’s enough to make the effort. United Colors of Benetton isn’t an accurate graphic representation of the population, but when you see their ads, you literally get the pictures.
But there’s also been extraordinary pressure over the last few years to get more granular, leading companies to set quotas and deadlines.
On the hand, most people think accountability is a good thing (as a journalist, I obviously agree.) Liberals and conservatives alike mocked companies led by White men when they started hashtagging support for women during the #MeToo movement or the Black community in the summer of 2020. “'Put up or shut up,' was the vibe,” one advocate told me.
But on the other hand, quotas don’t magically fill themselves. And they left people with questions about how diversity goals would be met — and what that meant for the people who were hired and promoted to meet them. More on that, in a bit.
There’s (at least) one more tricky issue when it comes to diversity: overrepresentation.
There are many cases where parity is not exactly the goal of diversity. Take, for example, casting mostly Black actors in a movie, or supporting minority-owned businesses, or celebrating the success of a girls-only charter school focused on students from diverse backgrounds.
All of these would sound problematic if not out-and-out bigoted if you swapped in White and male.
The argument is often that all of these can serve as a corrective to historical inequality. Black Panther is weighed against a century of film dominated by White male actors. Patronizing Black-owned Wilmington-area restaurants like Catch or On Thyme (which both have great food) is weighed against generations where Black families didn’t have access to the capital to start a restaurant. Cheering on the girls of GLOW is weighed against past discrimination against women and minorities in the school system.
For another way of looking at the issue, take New Hanover County's diversity and equity assessment from 2023, which gauged diversity for county staff. The study shows that Black employees are actually overrepresented by about seven percentage points compared to the county's demographics. Now, this isn't something the county has bragged about, exactly. But the assessment also makes no note of the underrepresentation of White, Hispanic, or Asian employees. In fact, the assessment indicates there may be more work to do.
"While diversity can certainly be seen throughout the enterprise, there are some departments within our organization with limited diversity," according to the assessment.
This was one of the aspects of the county's diversity office that Commissioner Scalise criticized on X. It would be beneficial, I think, if the county or its diversity office could respond, but beyond a boilerplate statement asserting that all of the county's hiring practices comply with the law, they haven't said anything publicly. (Off the record, some county staff said Scalise is overreacting, but many others I spoke with agreed he had a point.)
The county's reticence leaves it unclear what achieving diversity would look like. Is the county seeking parity, overrepresentation, or is it working without a numerical goal (which makes the reliance on statistics odd)?
And, in that vacuum, I've heard other arguments, including that overrepresentation is justified by the history of violent and discriminatory treatment of Blacks, both in general and specifically in the Wilmington area.
It won’t shock you to hear not everyone I spoke to buys this argument. Some people feel like a corrective was necessary at some point, but that the playing field has been effectively leveled and the sins of the father forgiven or at least forgotten.
Others told me they felt representation was an inadequate response to present day problems. Hiring more minorities might help, they said, but certainly media representation wasn't the solution.
“You can’t signify your way out of generational trauma and historical inequality,” a Black professor, who I knew when I was in academics, told me.
Many people did say, for them, “the struggle” is very much ongoing, and that the past is neither dead or even really past, as Faulkner had it.
One thing I noticed was that, often, the argument for overrepresentation is implicit, and never outright stated. When I made it explicit, bringing it up to people, some rejected it. But others took a beat, and thought about it. It wasn’t my goal to change people’s minds, but I was surprised how much nuance I found when we dug in on this topic.
Diversity in the Media
In a way, the argument for overrepresentation extends to media coverage, which gives us the archive of ‘firsts’: the first trans person elected to Congress, the first Black woman in space, the first disabled person to summit Mt. Everest.
We get pitches all the time for stories that, ordinarily, we would never cover if it weren’t for the who: a disabled person running a marathon, a woman passing a physically demanding firefighting training exam, a Black business owner succeeding in a traditionally White industry. Sometimes the pitches make the logic explicit: we know you wouldn’t ordinarily cover this but… and I always appreciate that candor, regardless of whether we do the story.
And I get it: I’m a middle-aged straight white guy. I get to see myself reflected in the news, and the media in general, constantly. (There was a time where being of Jewish descent, or having tattoos, or being a non-religious Humanist-type of guy might have made it harder to ‘find’ myself represented, but I think that era has passed.) I’ve seen what it’s like for someone not like me, to see something of themselves in a superhero film, or a campaign ad, or a headline. Maybe for the first time.
It’s pretty powerful.
Unless it’s not. Meaning, if it feels inauthentic, gimmicky, or tokenizing. I’ve heard liberals and conservatives alike roll their eyes at this kind of thing and call it out as empty pandering.
Not everyone takes a nuanced approach to diversity efforts. Some just don’t like it. In my conversations, some voiced sharper criticism, especially when it came to media: people repeatedly mentioned recasting historically White characters with Black actors — rumors that Idris Elba would play James Bond, or Halle Bailey as the Ariel in The Little Mermaid, etc. — and the Bud Light campaign featuring trans woman Dylan Mulvaney.
Some were audibly angry about these things. The phrases “shoving it in our faces” and “jamming it down our throats” were common refrains. When I pushed the issue, most said they of course weren’t racist — and, for example, many expressed sadness or disappointment at the racist backlash that helped scuttle the casting of Idris Elba as Bond. (One conservative even noted “he’d probably be pretty good,” and I agreed.) A few voiced transphobic or bigoted sentiments about Mulvaney, but most just found the campaign “annoying” or “forced.” I won’t pretend to know what’s in their hearts, but clearly something touched a nerve — because I think they’d be hard pressed to remember any other specific light beer advertisement from two years ago.
Another common theme was nostalgia: depending on the person’s age, they’d point to some past decade — often the 90s or early 2000s — when they felt race and gender relationships were better than now. Often, they’d blame ‘woke’ activists and “the media” (more than a few took potshots at NPR) for distorting or creating a divisive narrative that overemphasized race.
Not all nostalgists were conservatives, by the way. Several self-identified liberals took issue with the media’s "recent focus on race" (in particular, a few specifically lamented WHQR’s “overkill coverage” and “fixation” on the 1898 Wilmington coup and massacre, saying it was taking up valuable bandwidth — literally — than could be better spent on other, more contemporary issues). I also talked to a few liberals who pined for a time when social issues were seen through the lens of economic inequality, not racial disparity.
It’s worth noting that many critics I spoke with took a laissez-faire approach: they felt, for example, that companies like Disney or Anheuser-Busch were free to do what they wanted, but they would personally stop drinking Bud Light (“not a huge loss, since it tastes like piss,” one conservative told me) or skip The Little Mermaid at the theater. Most felt the free market would “punish” diversity efforts that were over the top, but wouldn’t really be upset if that’s not how things played out.
Now, I've been lingering on the issue of media representation because often, in my conversations, people conflated things like Hollywood remakes and marketing campaigns with the other work of DEI — and this often poisons the well.
One person — a self-described “contrarian Libertarian” — said the female-cast reboot of Ghostbusters put him off of DEI as a whole. When we dug down, though, he acknowledged that there was some merit to diversity, noting that his mother, a third-generation Ecuadorian immigrant, was a corporate executive who had struggled with “the glass ceiling” for most of her career. I wasn’t lobbying him to embrace DEI, but as we talked his stance mellowed from caustic — “man, fuck DEI” — to more measured, “I guess I think we just spend too much time on it.”
The merits of meritocracy
Again, in the vast majority of my conversations, people agreed that diversity is basically a good barometer of social and civic health when applied at a large scale. At the same time, most people agreed that you ought to hire the best person for the job, elect the best candidate for office, or cast the best dancer for the ballet.
These two ideas can coexist in the abstract, but they break down when you get into the nitty gritty. So, it’s time to ask: how do you create diversity?
The nightmare scenario (and in some cases, the boogeyman) is the ‘diversity hire’: Hiring with more regard for race (or some other category) than merit, or even deliberately ignoring incompetence for the sake of maintaining or increasing diversity.
Yes, this is often a racist dog whistle, but there are some real concerns tangled up here – and there have been since the days of affirmative action.
To be clear, many people said the idea of diversity hires was nonsense and a distraction. However, did I talk to minorities, especially Black people, who felt like they’d been hired — or accepted to a school, or asked to run for office — because of their skin color?
Absolutely.
I heard some real frustration and anger from people who had been on the other end of diversity efforts that were slapdash and hollow. I heard from a potential Black candidate for local office who felt both parties would court them simply as a token, and not because of their policy ideas. And I talked to a Black executive — the only Black executive in their C-suite — who felt like she had been hired to “Blackwash” the company.
I also heard from Black employees who had deep ambivalence: they felt both insulted that they’d been hired to fill a quota (real or imagined) and grateful that they’d gotten their foot in the door.
I talked to one Black employee who’d had been hired in mid 2020, right after his company had launched a high-profile diversity campaign. The timing felt both conspicuous and fortuitous.
“You need a job to get a job, right? But at a certain point, it’s definitely about my ability. I’m doing a good job, I’m gonna get promoted, I’m gonna get noticed for the right reasons. But that shit doesn’t happen if I don’t get in the damn building first. I gotta get past the gate. Past the gate keepers. I know why I got that first job. They know too. Everybody knows. But I also know why I have this job,” he told me.
I also had some frank conversations about people who weren’t good at their jobs. A number of people acknowledged they knew someone they considered a diversity hire who was dramatically underperforming, but had been kept on because “it would look bad to fire them,” as one Wilmington city employee told me. The issue seemed to come up a lot in government jobs, where personnel policies make it hard to just fire someone without a long series of performance-improvement measures.
Almost no one I talked to said the issue was chronic — few could name more than one or two people who met this description. But, especially for conservatives, even a single incident seemed really infuriating, in large part because they felt they had to hold their tongue or risk being branded a racist. And some said they felt that was a dangerous, slippery slope in workplaces where employees are supposed to hold each other accountable.
As a White female police officer told me, “it was a really bad situation, but, like, no one is going to say it. They’d rather stick their hand in a garbage disposal. So, what else do we shy away from?”
It’s definitely worth noting that many said their workplaces were also plagued by cronyism and nepotism, or by toxic environments where managers played favorites. All of which is to say, if merit is the metric, there were a lot of people who didn’t measure up — and ‘diversity’ wasn’t the most common reason they managed to hang on to their jobs.
Recent legal challenges to various forms of affirmative action — including Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, where the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions policies — are part of a broader pushback on the attempts to ‘engineer’ diversity. Many conservatives have been arguing that the Harvard case will likely have broader implications, through the EEOC, that will result in the ban of any consideration of race when it comes to hiring — and they are probably right, given the current attitudes on the Supreme Court.
Some employers have told me that leaves them at an impasse: they want a diverse workforce but won’t legally be able to consider diversity when they’re hiring (or promoting, or planning projects, etc.).
But I’ve heard from others, including several DEI practitioners, who say that’s exactly the wrong way to think about building and maintaining a diverse organization. One now-former diversity officer told me the focus should be on recruiting, not hiring.
“Make sure you’ve got a good candidate pool. Make sure nothing is keeping your job opening from getting out there – all the way out there and not just to some areas,” he told me. “Like Donald Rumsfeld said, you don’t know what you don’t know. You might find the right person coming out of an Ivy League school. You probably will. But you also might find them in a vocational tech program. You might find them tending bar. But if you got a really deep bench, and then you pick the best people, you’re gonna get a more diverse team. Statistics is on your side.”
A final perspective I want to leave you with is this, from an HR officer whose company never created a stand-alone DEI department, but considered diversity a core corporate value.
“Everyone talks and talks about diversity and DEI and all that. Like, ‘how can we make it happen’ and ‘how can we hit these targets,’ and that’s kind of backwards. It’s thinking about how we can get these people to achieve this goal. How can we make the workplace diverse? For us it’s always been, what kind of workplace would a diverse group of people want to work at? I mean, if it’s a cool job, and it’s a good job, that’s kind of the thing. If you build it, they will come,” she said.
That brings us to the idea of ‘inclusion’ — but also the end of this edition. We’ll have more next week: Part II will look at inclusion and equity, but also some of the deep philosophical fault lines that have shown up in my conversations. And, beyond that, we’ll likely have a Part III, unpacking any feedback. I expect some folks will have strong feelings – but that’s part of the point of all this, having an honest conversation.
