Scrolling through the notes on my phone yesterday, I appreciated for the first time just how many times and in how many different ways I have endeavored to approach the swinging pendulum of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives over the past five years. Some of my notes have already made it into full-fledged articles on this blog or were considered through my lens as a workplace trainer and reconstituted on our blogs for Impact Workplace Training. Others have been living as jotted pieces, paragraphs of thought that I held for the day I was ready to more cohesively pull them together. Mostly the ones I held back reveal a bit more about me, and my ambivalence and frustrations with the ways in which DEI has been bandied about.

Straddling Perspectives

Much of my work – as a legal advisor, investigator, and trainer – lands me in a space straddling different perspectives. My home base and comfort zone is the law. In that space I am guided by statutes, cases, and regulations that define what is and is not acceptable workplace behavior. It is a world in which “it depends” may be the answer, but with sufficient margins of examples as to allow for reasoned analysis when making a judgment call.

My stretch is into the world of the DEI practitioner. That world offers the potential of a workplace where everyone feels welcome, valued and included no matter their background or appearance, which aligns with my ideal. But too often DEI falls short as organizations, managers, or individuals in DEI positions take shortcuts and claim victory, in ways that extend the welcome mat to some but not others or sacrifice the goal of all feeling valued.

Targeted Onslaught

DEI is under siege right now. It is being disassembled from the federal government infrastructure, is being cut out of numerous private businesses, and where it remains, it is facing imminent challenges from the full force of the federal executive branch.

I feel for the many caring, empathetic people I know who built their careers in the DEI and affirmative action space. They are scared, shocked, and in many cases face existential challenges to their ability to earn a living. On a human level, they have not done anything to warrant that type of threat. Plenty have done good work, and struggled with budget limitations, pressure to show immediate results, and competing organizational priorities that impeded their efforts, such that substantively the current threat feels misplaced.

I also understand what has driven things to this crisis level. We can demonize certain government leaders and critique of them is warranted. But there is a broader public sentiment that emboldens them. I hear it regularly, from ordinary people who recoil at being labeled “racist” or are struggling too much themselves up the socioeconomic ladder to accept that they possess “white privilege.” I see it in the programs and opportunities that benefit individuals in select demographic groups and overlook any consideration or outreach based on other “dimensions of difference,” meaning the ways in which our past experiences give us a unique perspective. And at its worst, there have been a few times when I advised a well-meaning but misguided manager that hiring or promoting a candidate because of a desire for greater racial or gender diversity, when other candidates were objectively better, is a form of discrimination.

Providing Context and Considerations

Given last week’s presidential executive orders, the screaming headlines, and the wide-ranging reactions I have seen on LinkedIn, I have gotten to writing in earnest. I am putting it all out there – in a series of six or more articles that I will be posting over the next two weeks. I am offering the legal context, the details of the executive orders, a breakdown on the pieces of affirmative action and DEI that survive, and considerations for employers looking to comply with the law while maintaining workplaces that value the varied dimensions of employees’ backgrounds and experience.

Stick with me and read on. The journey begins with the foundation, or rather the absence of one, which left the affirmative action infrastructure as vulnerable as a house of cards.

By Tracey I. Levy