Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs were not meant to play a ZERO-SUM game.

For far too long, some groups have been shut out and the field has favored one group of people above others. If you doubt, check the metrics... What is the population of female Americans graduating from four-year degree awarding institutions and check that against the percentage of women CEOs in America. You will see the pendulum tilting towards - male-Caucasians. What DEI has done in the last decade is to ensure that women who meet the criteria of becoming a CEO do not hide, and are not shut out of the hiring process. This is what DEI officers do... DEI does not intentionally create quotas to increase the direct hiring of females, Hispanics, or African Americans... It ensures that all are given an opportunity to compete. Now, do we have instances where quota is created, yes. Even at that, you can wonder if it is justified. Where you have an establishment that makes decisions about women's health that is comprised of men - how is that fair? Or in a situation where 20% of the student population in a school is comprised of minorities but only 2% of the faculty are minorities - how do you explain that - does it mean the minorities graduating do not qualify to return as faculty or they don't like to return as professors? These are a few of the anomalies that DEI corrects - a DEI officer is infused into every hiring process to ensure that those making decisions are fair in their review and qualified people are not frozen out because of biases that are often not visible (implicit bias).

DEI ensures the workplace is accessible for all. Including the disabled who need wheelchair access. It ensures budget is developed to ensure entrances, toilet design, and public transportation are accessible to all taxpayers, and not for able-bodied people alone.

Whether anyone likes it or not, America has a horrible history with race and racism with slavery for 150 years, Jim Crow and segregation for 250 years, and now implicit and explicit biases that keep minorities out of places of opportunity. There have been experiment after experiments that tested this over the years. When the same CV with a white name and African names are sent to the same company for an interview opportunity, and the "white" man's name got picked for the same CV his African American colleague was not given an opportunity for, what do you call that - bias that leads to fewer minorities in places where they can accumulate generational wealth... I have a similar story in my current work with a funding agency - the time is not ripe for me to tell that story. In fact, I have multiple personal experiences in the last 13 of 14 years that I have lived in the U.S. Ask every U.S. resident of African descent, they have story after story to tell. Ask a woman the same question, and they will tell you dozens of stories, or the disabled, or Asians, or Americans from the South when they come up North...

DEI programs that have been delivered across private and public institutions have addressed many issues that transcend the subject of race. It has addressed the subject of sexism, social bias, gender and pay inequality, xenophobia, homophobia, and individual biases that transcend race... There are scientifically assessed outcomes that prove that DEI has increased productivity and it is not a ZERO-SUM program that takes opportunity from one group and gives it to the other as being projected by people who are afraid that the time of exclusive privilege for "white men" is over. And they are fighting this with all the might they can... They want to send women back to the kitchen, and African Americans back to the plantation farms (saying - "immigrants are taking your jobs" - what are those jobs, low-paying farm, cleaning and menial jobs that pay minimum wage?). They want to sack all disabled people from jobs they qualify for because they claim that are not fast enough. They want to replace barriers to opportunity that have been dismantled by DEI programs...

I once criticized the hiring composition of lead and co-lead of DEI programs before one of the deans in my school. This hiring approach sent the wrong message that it is all about race... If you look at the spectrum of people who have been hired to lead DEI programs, they are people of a particular race... That in itself stand against DEI principles. The other fact is that you are making people who lack the influence to lead a change program, if their voice is not recognized, how will enduring change come? If a black person is hired to lead a program that will challenge the status quo without a buy-in co-lead who looks like the people who hold power, that program is a failure before it starts. This is what you see across many public (and some private) institutions where they hire mostly African Americans to lead DEI programs, and those who hate what this program is about are even more enraged. And they have killed it ...

Even though DEI programs are being dismantled across public and private institutions, their impact remains. Other programs are being put in place to continue the strong positive impact of DEI programs...

DEI is not a ZERO-SUM program, the metrics do not support this disinformation.