Diversity, Equality and Inclusion is falling from favour and is on the way out

When will our UK Institutions catch up?

While the United Kingdom (UK) have manipulated the order of the letters (EDI rather than DEI), we may hopefully soon have some respite from the absurdity of equality, diversity and inclusion ideology that has so infected most western nations. DEI is finally starting to get pushed back into the vacuous dark hole from whence it came. At least, it appears, in the United States of America (USA).

Most people’s experience of DEI includes having one or more of the following requirements, administrative policies or activities foisted on them by institutions and employers that require staff:

• either on induction or annually watch DEI training videos or undertake so-called training courses that are often little more than poor quality click-through digital death by PowerPoint¹

• read and sign on to an organisation’s diversity goals and vision

• take unscientific tests such as the false-positive error prone Implicit Association Test that has been shown to identify implicit bias where none exists (for example, against gay, disabled or obese people)

• include gender pronouns in all communication, but especially on name badges and in email signatures

• participate in regular EDI surveys, undertake outreach, and attend team meetings where staff of different (non-white) cultures induct you to their social customs and practices

• listen to and accept criticism with the goal of continuous improvement (white people), and

• provide criticism and suggestions for how you would prefer to be treated (everyone else)

• apologise regularly and ask for help (white people)

• raise complaints regarding any and all perceived slights in order to help that other group to better themselves (everyone else)

Much of the content of DEI material is lifted from the pages of unsound texts by authors like Ibram X Kendi (author of How to Be Antiracist) and Robin DiAngelo (author of White Fragility). These texts tell us that even in the absence of any evidence of racist thought or action, one group are universally racist and another group are universally victims based solely on the colour of their skin. Yet, and as we see with the so-called white progressives like Robin DiAngelo, in many of our institutions it is middle and senior-aged white people that have defined the DEI terms, set the agenda, created the policies and enforce the rules. These white progressives have created workplaces where not only are their own more junior white staff no longer able to thrive, they have effectively created a new cultural environment where their own children and grandchildren face an enormous barrier to entry.

In our workplaces today DEI promotes race, disability and difference above all other factors in the hiring process, making them more valuable considerations than qualifications, experience and merit. And while there are many examples for why this practice is unsound, the politicians, white progressives, fact checkers and mainstream media continue to contradict all wisdom and good sense by labelling us racist or far-right for pointing them out.

The divisive DEI mindset has been blamed in the failure to appropriately respond, investigate and prosecute perpetrators and protect many tens of thousands of young white girls from Pakistani muslim rape gangs in the UK (here, here and here). DEI is the coercive persuasion used to mitigate, mollify and argue away even the most horrendous abuse of children, so much so that we see men described as boys and girls needing a hysterectomy as a result of gang rape (Point 33), and pro-muslim academics incorporating critical race theory (CRT) into their argument that it is not the Pakistani muslim men’s fault they raped these young white girls. Rather, he claims, it is white British people recognising the obvious fact that the perpetrators were all of one nationality and religious persuasion and, therefore, the so-called racialisation of the men in an example of the lasting legacy of colonialism that is at fault. I am sorry, but that is about as pathetic and disgusting as the politicians, police, social workers and journalists who repeated claims that eleven and twelve year old girls were slags and prostitutes who somehow consented to being gang raped while making the core of their articles a sermon about how we are all anti-muslim and islamophobic and shouldn’t hate on them presumably because, like that academic above said, it isn’t their fault.

Several Boeing insiders have described how DEI bureaucracy poisoned the working culture in their factories, and played its part in several embarrassing maintenance failures, including the door plug that blew off am Alaska Airlines plane in mid-flight. While we are told there is nothing to see here, two whistleblowers who raised serious safety concerns and described the poor culture resulting from hiring practices informed almost solely by DEI at Boeing were first threatened with physical violence, and then turned up dead in nothing short of timely and curious circumstances (here and here).

While our doctors, nurses and midwives are being taught that DEI and anti-racism is a matter of life and death, and that they must take race, gender, culture and sexual orientation into account, this unbelievable message in practice can see a healthcare professional faced with two patients and admitting to having made the wrong decision that resulted in the loss of one mother and both babies as a direct consequence of recent DEI and unconscious bias training (UBT) - a mid-twenties term-pregnancy white mother who along with her baby would have had an optimal outcome with only a moderate amount of urgent care but who was not treated immediately because the lone obstetric surgeon on duty chose to concentrate over an hour of heroic but knowingly pointless effort on a geriatric pregnancy (>40 years-of-age) black mother at 21-weeks gestation who suffered a major preeclamptic event with signs of both uterine and hepatic rupture prior to arrival in the ED that had already caused the death of her baby, the loss of an estimated 70% of her circulating blood volume, and extensive seizures, and who all in attendance believed would not survive no matter what was done².

DEI has also led to universities and hospitals enacting enrolment and employment policies that require fixed percentage targets for non-white students in clinical cohorts and staff in clinical practice in what are predominately white communities.

They do this in response to yet more self-interested and sometimes race-baiting claims of racism in healthcare - claims that are almost always supported with specious or very low quality evidence. We are repeatedly told again by the white progressives and BAME activists that there is structural and systemic racism in healthcare, education, and almost every other system.

But what is systemic racism?

Academics like James Lindsay explain it this way:

Lindsay contends that while nobody seems to really know what “systemic racism” really is, many proponents of the DEI movement and their acolyte activists argue they’ve either experienced it or have a forthright conviction that they “know what it is”... even though they can’t describe or define it. And while there may at times be legitimate claims of unfairness and even discrimination inflicted by one individual on another, labelling these instances under the banner concept systemic racism prevents us from being able to clearly and easily identify these instances when they occur and takes us in the opposite direction of any possibility of a solution.

Because, in case you haven’t worked it out by now, DEI is mostly performative art of a type somewhat similar to self-flagellation. One group is told that even their closest friends and colleagues who have never said or done anything to harm them are racist and continuously plotting against or stealing opportunities from them (you’re a victim, brothers and sisters). At the same time, the other group is told to regularly prostrate and punish themselves and to never think, say or do things most of them have never thought, said or done (stop being racist, you oppressors). At any point where there is disagreement, one group are encouraged to give voice to their displeasure and to label the perceived perpetrator, such that it is not uncommon to see any discussion or debate quickly shut down with some variation of: he/she didn’t automatically agree with me or let me have my own way so they are racist, antisemitic, islamophobic, homophobic, transphobic or something else. And the examples in academia applying this punish now, investigate later to DEI-targeted complaints are numerous. For example:

• Prof. Gregory Schulz had to be reinstated after being fired for an article like this one that was critical of his university’s DEI policies

• Prof. Eric Canin was fired and eventually reinstated after being falsely accused of hitting a student and interfering with the free speech of students when video and photographs showed it was he who was assaulted by one of the woke activist students

• Prof. Peter Boghossian became a target for woke student complaints and administrative charges for presenting diverse points of view in his critical thinking courses that spoke against the identity politics and other ideologies he observed on campus

• Prof. Kathleen Stock (who now works with Prof. Peter Boghossian at his new university) eventually resigned after woke students held protest marches calling for her sacking over her views on transgender issues

• Dr Annette Plaut was eventually sacked after student complaints for little more than being loud and robustly argumentative

• Dr Neil Thin was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing and reinstated after students falsely complained that his lectures were sexist and transphobic

Sadly, while plenty of people are being sacked or constructively dismissed as a result of complaints of percieved infractions of DEI policy, most are not like the examples above. Very few are made public or get reported in the media. Fewer still are reinstated.

The UK government appeared self-contradictory in this report that claims unconscious bias training and the 60-90% false-positive error-prone Implicit Association Test are effective, when their investigation into the use of unconscious bias training found that there was no evidence to suggest DEI training works or brings the intended improvements to the workplace. In fact, it was found that this workplace training often backfires (something I have researched and published on with a group of very clever collaborators). Further, in the content of a report written by three highly qualified BAME investigators for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, they describe this type of DEI training as creating a sense of entitlement in BAME participants, and effectively creating negative responses and biases in White persons who may have never previously shown those behaviours.

Many public universities, some only after state governments ordered it, Boeing (here and here), McDonalds and others finally appear to be listening to the woke backlash and opening their eyes, disbanding the DEI team, and pledging to return to focusing on engendering trust and ensuring excellence. And it’s about time. People should be employed because of WHO they are and WHAT they can do… not HOW they look and whether they help to tick some DEI box in the HR administrator’s office.

How long until our UK institutions and companies realise that DEI is doing more harm than good and follow suit?

It can’t happen fast enough!

1. Death by PowerPoint is a phenomenon caused by the poor use of presentation software. It occurs when a seller or speaker fails to capture an audience's focus and interest using their presentation. Factors that can cause death by PowerPoint include overly wordy slides, hard-to-understand graphics or a speaker monotonously reading off their PowerPoint slides. For example, death by PowerPoint can occur when a sales presentation fails to engage a customer. While not the first time Microsoft software has been associated with causing mortality, death by PowerPoint is credited with being a salient factor in the deaths of all seven Space Shuttle Columbia astronauts (https://mcdreeamiemusings.com/blog/2019/4/13/gsux1h6bnt8lqjd7w2t2mtvfg81uhx).

2. While not having been made generally public yet, this is an actual example that is part of an ongoing litigation awaiting trial that I have read submissions for.