It was only a matter of time before the rollback of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies in the workplace provoked a backlash. Following an ongoing reversal on the matter in recent months, seen on a global scale at Google, Facebook and Amazon, and here in Britain at BT and Deloitte UK, the head of the Co-op group has spoken of her alarm at this development.
As reported in the Guardian over the weekend, Shirine Khoury-Haq, the CEO of the retailer, warns of the grave implications of this turnaround:
The medium-term consequences for institutions that employ DEI policies are already proving deleterious
Rolling back on DEI isn’t just an internal business decision, it has real-world consequences. It deepens inequality, weakens trust, and risks undoing decades of progress’
Her concern is echoed by the equalities minister, Seema Malhotra: ‘Your race should never be a barrier to your progress,’ she also told the newspaper. ‘This is not just about fair access to opportunity, but ensuring how we grow our economy.’
The arguments marshalled here to defend DEI policies – and the words employed to do so – are striking in that they could equally and quite legitimately be used by those who see DEI itself as unjust and unfair. Critics of the policy have long argued that it does indeed hinder people’s progress on account of their race, insofar as it actively discriminates against potential or actual employees who happen to be white. Affirmative action policies in the US have for years also punished high-achieving Americans of East Asian ethnicity.
The Co-op’s head regrets that the current pushback ‘weakens trust’ in the workplace. Again, this has been a persistent objection to a DEI philosophy that pursues a policy of positive discrimination. Such a strategy will weaken and undermine a sense of trust and cooperation in the office and factory, exacerbating a suspicion among workers that their colleagues, superiors or they themselves have not been appointed or promoted according to ability. This has potentially devastating consequences for morale, while further entrenching a mood of resentment among those who suspect that the game is rigged.
We saw the other week one example of how a practice of treating people preferentially or disadvantageously according to racial categories is having poisonous outcomes, when the Health Secretary Wes Streeting spoke of his alarm in discovering one NHS staff member boasting of their ‘anti-whiteness’ stance. This racialised thinking is embedded in the public sector. The Times reported on Saturday that Imperial College Trust’s DEI team was offering a 49-slide ‘micro-aggressions toolkit’ which tells staff that ‘white people, as a collective group, have unearned advantages over other races or ethnicity groups’. That sweeping term ‘collective group’ condemns an entire set of people, many of whom will be diligent, working-class or underprivileged, to a life of undeserved prejudice.
The medium-term consequences for institutions that employ DEI policies are already proving deleterious. The long-term consequences for a society which continues to determine the future of people according to indiscriminate, arbitrary categories will be catastrophic. A mood of resentment will continue to fester unless our thinking changes for good.
The equalities minister uses the language of ‘fairness’ to defend DEI. Yet that, too, is the ultimate clincher for those who resent a policy that doesn’t reward people for their talent, industriousness or hard work. This policy is intrinsically unjust and unfair.
Or at least it is when treating people as individuals. But when it comes to appreciating a society at large, those of a progressive and left-leaning persuasion seldom see individuals, only groups or ‘the system’. This is why they believe the status quo to be ‘unfair’.
Because women and ethnic minorities are under-represented in certain strata of society, they conclude that there must be injustice afoot. As Pavita Cooper, the UK chair of the 30% Club, a body that campaigns globally for gender equality in corporate leadership, also told the Guardian: ‘If I thought we had a completely meritocratic system then I would be less worried.’ She added: ‘It’s about making sure everyone gets that same chance, rather than a small group of elite people getting to the top of British institutions.’
What fundamentally separates conservatives and liberals on this matter is that the former treat people as individuals who happen to inhabit a society, whereas the latter apprehend a society composed of groups and constituent parts, one to be engineered and fixed accordingly. Treating human beings as components of a larger whole has always been the hallmark of left-wing ideologies. It’s the source, too, of their often immoral and callous treatment of people, a treatment that grows more injudicious and pitiless the further leftwards that ideology drifts.
While conservatives and classic liberals regard human beings as ends to themselves, modern-day liberals see them as means to an end. This is why the battle against DEI, and the cold-blooded utilitarian philosophy it embodies, needs to be pursued with unrelenting determination.