The Mediocre Narcissist’s Guide to Blaming Diversity for Your Own Failings
The Real Agenda Behind Anti-DEI Rhetoric: Preserving Privilege at All Costs
Talofa reader,
This edition I’ve got a bit of a bee in my bonnet, so bear with the “tone” of this one 😂
I'm listening to the Lex Fridman1 Podcast with Mark Cuban as the guest, and they’re talking about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programmes.
Mark’s been in some back-and-forth’s on social media with folks who believe DEI programmes are a big scam perpetuated to allow “under qualified”2 people to get hired.
Despite Mark's anecdotal evidence to the contrary-
That he has asked around corporate America to understand how real this claim is, and he's only been met with business leaders admitting it's not happening at their company, but that it "does happen" and point to a news article out on the interwebs-
So, no first-hand experience of this major DEI boogeyman that seems to have corporate America in a death grip.
Mark, again, is backing his understanding and experience of these programs as a business leader.
He takes DEI as part of good business practice and sees no problem with it.
Mark goes on to explain each letter's meaning brilliantly:
"D is diversity, and means you just expand your pool of potential candidates to people who you might not otherwise have access to."
"E in Equity means when you hire somebody, you put them in a position to succeed."
"I, Inclusion, means you hire somebody and they might not be typical, right? You show them some love and give them the support they need. This way, they can do their job as best they can and feel comfortable and confident going to work."
So, DEI, gets the thumbs up from Mark “Dallas Mavericks Owner” Cuban.
Which makes me think - if this Billionaire gets it, and he's a businessman who loves capitalism, so he is definitely no left-leaning liberal shill.
And he's saying it's good for Business…
If Mark Cuban gets it, then why do a lot of people find it hard to park the few examples of badly implemented DEI programs in favour of the majority of great outcomes for the rest of the programme?
Rhetorical question.
Asked and answered, because we all know why, and that shit is not only exhausting, it means we're not going by facts and statistics anymore, we're going by people's "feelings" - wasn't this what those folks most upset by DEI say we shouldn't do? Go with our feelings over facts?
In the podcast, Mark points out that a lot of folks who get let go were actually not good at their jobs - where have we heard this before?
Mediocre people who think they're great and refuse to accept the objective feedback that they really are not good at their jobs. You know these types of people; they blame everyone but themselves.
Diversity hires are under-qualified and taking jobs of much more qualified "people"!
For the "facts, not feelings" crowd, let's do some quick research and find out what evidence there is to back all these DEI claims being made on social media.
What Does the Research Say?
Before we kick into the research, and as good of a job as Mark Cuban did in the podcast, let's just set the definition of DEI once and for all:
Diversity refers to the presence of differences within a given setting, such as race, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, etc.
Equity is about ensuring everyone has access to the same opportunities and resources, and that fairness is upheld.
Inclusion means that everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered to participate fully.
Nothing crazy, right?
It's not mind-blowingly "out there."
As a lot of the social media and figures like Lex Fridman were the main antagonists for this discourse on DEI "obviously ruining America," let's start with what's known by peer-reviewed research on the impact of DEI in the workplaces of the U.S. of A.
United States of America
In 2019, McKinsey & Company released their report "Diversity wins: How inclusion matters,"3 the third report in a series they did investigating the business case for diversity, following the previous reports released in 2015 and 2018.
The report found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25% more likely to have above-average profitability than those in the fourth quartile. For ethnic and cultural diversity, top-quartile companies outperformed those in the fourth quartile by 36% in profitability!
In 2020, a Glassdoor Diversity and Inclusion Workplace Survey4 showed 76% of employees (3 in 4) reported a _"diverse workforce is an important factor when evaluating companies and job offers."_
That same year, a 2020 study5 by The Wall Street Journal found diverse and inclusive cultures are six times more likely to be innovative and agile, eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes, and twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets.
Does that sound like the outcomes of an under-qualified workforce full of mediocre, low-skilled diversity hires?
The McKinsey and WSJ studies show the positive business results of a more diverse company, which makes the Glassdoor survey read a little differently, huh?
Like, maybe if the majority of the workforce values diversity in where they work, companies might want to take these DEI efforts seriously? Maybe?
These studies provide concrete, data-driven evidence that DEI initiatives lead to positive business outcomes, not the downfall of American companies. For those who value facts over feelings, the research speaks for itself.
Too Early to Celebrate
So, far from "taking all the jobs" and flooding the workforce with under-qualified hires, DEI's not even making that much of a dent according to the statistics!
A “Center for Talent Innovation” report6 found that only 3.2% of executive and senior-level positions were held by Black professionals, 2% by Hispanic professionals, and 0.8% by Asian professionals. While a 2020 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that job applicants with distinctively Black names were called back at a rate of 10.1%, compared to 15.2% for those with distinctively white names.
Do you want to know how long it would take to close the economic gender pay gap globally?
A 2021 report by the World Economic Forum states that, at the current rate of progress, it will take another… wait for it…
267.6 years!!!
This is the U.S.
At this point, on balance, and backed by evidence (sure, research and stats are a tricky thing, nothing's 100% blah blah blah), I'm going with a few conclusions:
A lot of the social media outrage is mostly racism, plain and simple.
Some of it is coming from mediocre narcissists getting rightfully fired from their jobs. They need to blame anything else for their failures, so they went with their tried & true scapegoat: "it was those darker shaded people taking my job." Classic garden variety racism.
Exhausting really, to be honest.
New Zealand
Not wanting to only look at other countries' problems like we don't have our own, I also looked into what the available research had about our DEI status and how many under-qualified hires were flooding the workplaces via this loophole.
Guess what I found?
Not much.
Diversity Works New Zealand put out an Aotearoa State of Workplace Inclusion 2021 Report, which had these diversity gems of just how well Women, Māori, and Pasifika were doing:
Women were more likely to lose jobs during Covid, and faced difficulties balancing work and home responsibilities.
Women are underrepresented in leadership, especially in the private sector. The public sector made more progress on female leadership representation.
Māori and Pacific peoples faced higher unemployment and under-utilisation during Covid. Migrants also faced challenges.
Māori and Pacific workers have lower pay and seniority. The ethnic pay gap has not improved significantly in 10+ years.
But They Hire by DEI Quota!
They shouted.
First of all, dumbass, it's illegal.
And very much so in the United States.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) states that "unlawful practices under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act include [...] using quotas based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."
However, I did find a 2021 report by The New York Times that found many companies were setting specific diversity goals and tying executive compensation to meeting these targets.
While these goals are not illegal quotas, critics argue that they can lead to reverse discrimination.
What I will extend this argument, is the fact I believe DEI programs can be done poorly and outside of just the hiring practice of widening the scope of qualified candidates to non-traditional hiring areas, the rest of the internal programs for DEI, in my experience, are shit.
Does this mean we scrap the whole thing?
Hell no!
Any Evidence to the Claims of Under Qualified?
It's shit like this by Elon Musk that brings out society's lowest forms of sycophants, cheering on some made-up bullshit7.
"The criticism came after Musk claimed in a series of posts on X that efforts to diversify workforces at those companies have made air travel less safe. He offered no evidence for the claim, and one of his replies directed attention to a post by someone else speculating about the IQ of Black airline employees.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/elon-musk-boeing-dei-diversity-x-posts-pilots-rcna133351
The bootlickers claims that pilots from “black universities” had lower IQ scores were found to be completely unsubstantiated (i.e., full of shit or "made up"), but then again, simple minds think pilots' IQ scores are what fly the plane.
I digress, looking at how qualifications and not having them, have been taken advantage of, by DEI folks:
United States of America
In 2003, The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) conducted a field experiment8 to measure racial discrimination. Basically, they sent in resumes to jobs with fake names that were either very African American (Black), or very White sounding names. Their study showed that not only did the White sounding names get more callbacks than the black sounding names, by 50%, but to top it off, if the resume was higher quality for the White name, they got 30% more callbacks, but the same quality resume for the black sounding name didn't change at all.
You can read the report yourself for all the things they controlled for to reach these conclusions, i.e., this isn't just another big "coincidence" of a study.
Finally, a study9 published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that discusses the academic performance of underrepresented students in STEM fields titled "The Diversity–Innovation Paradox in Science" found that underrepresented students, including racial and ethnic minorities, tend to innovate at higher rates than majority students.
We could go on, but let's have a look a little closer to home.
New Zealand
My Google and AI-assisted searches couldn't find any peer-reviewed studies done specifically covering if DEI hires were under-qualified.
What I did find was a report titled "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the New Zealand Construction Sector" reviewing the state of DEI in the NZ construction sector.
One of the key takeaways I found in the report was that recruitment initiatives struggle to treat diversity through an equity lens rather than "treating everyone the same".
If recruiters don't even understand the difference between "equitable" and "equal", you could see an argument for people getting hired just to "treat everyone the same".
Here's the thing though, this is just proof that hiring folks may need to consult a dictionary more, and we're still scant on evidence that we're getting flooded with all these under-qualified, freeloading criminals getting employed over "everyday Kiwis".
Oh, my bad, I added the last part to bring it home what this is really about, because I'll be honest, I'm over this, and I also know this was never, ever, ever about fairness, truth, wanting the best outcome for everyone, etc.
So what is this really about?
Well, it's definitely not about "logic" or "evidence-based conclusions".
It would not matter if I had a PhD in Diversity Studies and published a world-renowned paper on the topic, because shit like this is never about facts.
It's about people's feeeeeeeelings.
Yes, the same people calling everyone snowflakes, triggered, and woke.
If you believe a group of people do not deserve to be anywhere near you, or have the same or better things than you, no matter how much evidence points to hard work, smarts, meritocracy, and all the other things you associate with you and your "group's" status in life - then we can just cut this whole conversation short and save both of us a lot of time.
And sick as this might sound, I think I would respect a person a lot more if they could do some self-reflection and just say to me,
"Ron, I just don't believe you or your people, who come from a Pacific Island and didn't have a written tradition, could be as smart or as wealthy as me - also, God said you can't be, so you must have cheated the tests and stole all that money".
because then at least I would know you have a severe mental illness and need empathy, treatment, and probably be kept away from infecting other people with that white supremacy mind virus.
Conclusion
In conclusion, and vitriol aside-
The evidence clearly shows that DEI initiatives are not the boogeyman they're made out to be. They're not flooding the workforce with under-qualified diversity hires. If anything, they're barely making a dent in the systemic inequalities that have plagued our society for far too long.
Believe me, I'm no shill for DEI programmes, I'm not a fan of the programmes I've seen in my career.
But it's a start. It's "something", for now.
DEI needs to be implemented properly (no shit), with sincerity, respect, and a long-term commitment to systemic change, rather than being performative or tokenism.
If people were actually wanting to talk about DEI, why it exists, what they don't understand about it, how folks have seen it work, or not work - that would be great, let's discuss, let's have an actual talanoa (talk). It's the bullshit bad-faith arguments I see on social media, and I know I should be the "bigger person" and do myself a favour and just log off, but I had to vent.
But I'll leave you with this -
to be successful, DEI initiatives require:
buy-in from leadership
ongoing education and training
a willingness to have difficult conversations
a willingness to challenge existing biases and power structures.
If your organisation strives to create this culture, not only can you improve the bottom line but also just make a better, more welcoming place for everyone10 to come and work at.
Can I say just how disappointed I am in Lex, everyone saw it coming, you lay down with dogs you get up with fleas. Laundering easily debunked bullshit through his show in recent times show a sad state of affairs for the “love is the answer” guy.
We start the “coded” language here because there’s just so many different ways to say “black and brown people”, it’s actually sickening.
McKinsey & Company. (2019). Diversity wins: How inclusion matters. https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters
Glassdoor. (2020). Diversity and Inclusion Workplace Survey. https://www.glassdoor.com/employers/blog/diversity-inclusion-workplace-survey/
The Wall Street Journal. (2020). The business case for more diversity. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-business-case-for-more-diversity-11572091200
Center for Talent Innovation. (2019). Being Black in Corporate America. https://coqual.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CoqualBeingBlackinCorporateAmerica090720-1.pdf
I know I shouldn't even give it any oxygen, but it's Easter and I had time.
National Bureau of Economic Research. (2020). Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination. https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
"The diversity–innovation paradox in science". (2020). Bas Hofstra, Vivek V. Kulkarni, Sebastian Munoz-Najar Galvez, Bryan He, Dan Jurafsky, and Daniel A. McFarland https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1915378117
who's not a dick.