The decline and fall of the 'diversity' narrative

 Jim Geraghty:

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And outside the political system, there are significant but hardly discussed signs of a cultural and political pendulum swinging back. Many conservatives believe that progressive forces calling for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” — that define human beings entirely through their race, gender, or sexual orientation — are marching relentlessly though every institution in America, turning every human-resources department into a tool of ideological and political indoctrination. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that in the past year, the DEI trend hit a metaphorical brick wall and is staggering backward.

Companies including Netflix, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery have recently said that high-profile diversity, equity, and inclusion executives will be leaving their jobs. Thousands of diversity-focused workers have been laid off since last year, and some companies are scaling back racial-justice commitments…

New analysis from employment data provider Live Data Technologies shows that chief diversity officers have been more vulnerable to layoffs than their human resources counterparts, experiencing 40% higher turnover. Their job searches are also taking longer.

Ask yourself if you ever could have envisioned Anheuser-Busch making large-scale layoffs because of a lengthy, ongoing decline in sales driven in large part by the marketing department’s decision to send customized beer cans to Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender TikTok influencer, as part of a social-media ad campaign. It’s anyone’s guess as to how much other companies’ marketing departments or boards of directors are paying attention, and not every backlash against woke or provocative marketing will have the same effect. It’s a lot easier to change which light beer you drink than to change which banks and big-box stores you use, or to tell your kid that you won’t take them to the latest Disney or Pixar film. But all kinds of corporate executives — with fiduciary duties to keep their companies running and profitable in the long term — will look at proposed marketing efforts and ask, “Is this ad going to put us in a Bud Light situation?”
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The problem with the diversity narrative along with the rest of the DEI trend is that omitted merit.  In fact, it replaced merit as a reason for choosing and promoting employees. What would happen to a sports team that chose its players based on DEI?