Diversity training: a victim of the 'war on woke'

Perhaps the most important event in America this year outside of the presidential election, said Rich Lowry in National Review, has been the "intellectual collapse" of the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) fad. The US has been spending some $8 billion a year telling Americans in training sessions, workshops and classrooms that they are, depending on their race or gender, either "victims or oppressors and that the country is shot through with white supremacy". This has always seemed unhelpful, and evidence to that effect is piling up.

A compelling new study released by Rutgers University found that DEI training often sows division and resentment. In one experiment, participants examined a scenario involving a college applicant getting rejected. Those who had been prepped by reading DEI materials were more likely to deem the admissions officer "discriminatory", even though nobody's race was mentioned. Fortunately, companies have begun to roll back DEI initiatives, with Walmart, America's largest private employer, just the latest to abandon ship, joining firms such as Ford and Boeing.

So much for the "awakening" that was meant to follow George Floyd's 2020 murder, said David Plazas in The Tennessean (Nashville). It was admirable of corporations and schools to try to make themselves more welcoming places for minorities. The sad fact is that America has a long history of discriminatory practices that prevented many people from being able to participate equally in society because of their race, gender and other factors. It has only been 60 years since the Civil Rights Act passed. If some of the DEI programmes that companies and colleges introduced were flawed, why not reform them? Instead, CEOs and deans are letting right-wing activists bully them into junking the whole project. "Fear", not fairness, "is at the heart of these decisions". It represents a "big step back" for America.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Corporate diversity efforts are still broadly supported by the public, said Jessica Guynn in USA Today, but views of DEI have steadily become more negative. Consumer boycotts have forced brands such as Bud Light and Target to retreat from marketing campaigns to the LGBTQ+ community. Donald Trump is keen to exploit this shift in public sentiment. The long-time Trump aide Stephen Miller has been "filing dozens of legal actions against 'woke' corporations", while the activist Christopher Rufo was recently invited to Mar-a-Lago to discuss his plan to punish universities that have DEI programmes. Trump is also likely to revive his first-term ban on government contractors conducting "un-American" diversity training. Make no mistake: the "war on 'woke' America" is only just beginning.