DEI – two sides to every story

Is there a more toxic acronym than DEI? It seems that a huge number of people believe that they have been victimized by DEI in one way or another. I don’t buy it, but this is the perception. It was a major talking point for Trump and the Republicans in 2024, and it appears to have served him and them well. Of course, me being me, I’m going to provide a different perspective about DEI, or at least the idea that, all other things being relatively equal, diversity in work/government/life is not a bad or even an unequal thing.

What drove me to write about this topic is the recent controversy surrounding Jackie Robinson. Apparently, the Department of Defense removed a webpage entitled “Sports Heroes Who Served: Baseball Great Jackie Robinson Was WWII Soldier,” during a purge to remove DEI content. In other words, Jackie Robinson’s admittance to Major League Baseball was considered to be a result of DEI. There was a fair amount of blowback, and it (along with some other content commemorating African American WWII service) was restored.

To be honest, I hadn’t heard about it until I I heard Nick Wright, a sports talk show host (Fox, I believe) and podcaster, comment on it. After the content was restored, many people argued that calling Jacie Robinson a DEI hire was insulting, and Nick thinks (and I agree with him), that this is exactly the wrong response to the controversy. In his opinion, Jackie Robinson is the definition of DEI, and it is a reason to defend the practice rather than shy away from it. So ask yourself, was Jackie Robinson qualified to play in the big leagues? Obviously, yes; he’s in the Hall of Fame for his MLB performance. But was he the most qualified player in the history of Negro League baseball such that he should have been the first black player admitted to the Majors. According to most Negro League experts, not even close. No one would say that Jackie was a better Negro League performer than Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, or Satchel Paige at the minimum. When Jackie was chosen by Branch Rickey to join the Dodgers, it wasn’t clear that he was the best player in the Negro Leagues at that time. So I think the evidence is pretty clear that Jackie Robinson was a recipient of DEI. I guess the DoD agreed at first, since the anti-DEI argument is that the world should be a strict meritocracy (more on that later), and this clearly (to some) was not.

In fact, sports has many examples of DEI. Among them:

• Earl Lloyd, the first black player in the NBA
• Emmett Ashford, the first black umpire
• Frank Robinson, the first black manager
• Art Shell, the first black Head Coach in the NFL (I’m not counting Fritz Pollard, who coached in 1921 before the NFL was established)
• Paralympics
• Female officials in the NFL and the NBA
• WNBA
• The Rooney rule (that a minority candidate be interviewed for each head coach open position), even though in practice it hasn’t worked as intended

I won’t get into black QBs, which first appeared in the late 60s (Marlin Briscoe, who ultimately had to switch positions in order to remain in the league, and James Harris, in the AFL), but were rare until the 21st century. The point is, in none of the above cases was it clear that any of the above individuals were unquestionably the most qualified person to fill the position. And why should we even have the Paralympics and the WNBA? Shouldn’t they have to compete against unimpaired athletes and NBA players?

Want more examples of DEI. How about our most sacred document, the Constitution. Cases in point:

• 13th amendment – outlawing slavery
• 14th amendment – equal protection under the law
• 15th amendment – affirming the right of blacks to vote
• 19th amendment – affirming the right of women to vote

In all of these cases, the Constitution had to be amended to assure equal opportunity, not preference. This is again the definition of DEI.

Our Supreme Court is probably our most obvious example of DEI. Consider:

• Louis Brandeis (first Jewish Supreme Court justice, in case you didn’t know. And he was nominated by Woodrow Wilson, who was believed to be anti-semitic)
• Thurgood Marshall (nominated by a former segregationist, LBJ)
• Sandra Day O’Connor
• Clarence Thomas
• Sonia Sotomayor
• Ketanji Brown-Jackson

Again, while each of these individuals may have been reasonably well-qualified, many would argue that they weren’t necessarily the most qualified person to fill the vacant SC position at that time. I could go on and cite countless other examples of DEI that made our country a better place, but I think I’ve made the point.

The main argument from the anti-DEI crowd is that everything should be based on merit. But in fact, everyone knows that life in America is not a meritocracy. And how do you define it? I would bet that everyone who reads this post (and the author) has seen examples in the workplace in which promotions and lofty titles have been given not to people who were the most qualified but instead to a friend of the hiring manager (or a friend of the hiring manager’s boss) or to the person who kissed the most butt. One of my great friends worked in the front offices of 2 baseball teams for 10 years and was a highly paid consultant in baseball for 15 years after that. He developed advanced baseball metrics that rival those of Bill James. He trained a person who later became that youngest General Manager in the history of the sport. He was highly qualified to be a GM himself, but he never got an interview. Why, because he wasn’t a former player or coach and because he could be outspoken (that trait didn’t help my cause, either). If the world were a meritocracy, he would have become a GM at some point. Sadly, that’s not how it works or worked out for my friend. If he were hired today, it would very possibly be called a DEI hire.

To those who believe that the world was a meritocracy before DEI became a thing, please provide that proof (this is another of Nick Wright’s arguments). In the 1970s, 500 out of 500 Fortune 500 companies had a white male as its CEO. Even today, the vast majority of CEOs of large companies are white males. Until 2008, every President of the US was a white male, and every President has been a male. Until 2020, every Vice President was a white male. Not a single Hispanic, Jew, or Muslim has been chosen as a Presidential running mate, let alone nominated for President (by a major party). Do we see a pattern here? Are these facts true because those parts of life are a meritocracy?

In his podcast, Nick Wright’s point was that rather than back away when DEI is vilified, we should rather push back and make the anti-DEI crowd defend their position. And I agree with him totally, because when, you get down to it, the anti-DEI movement is being promoted largely by white people, mostly white males, who see the inclusion of people who look different and act differently than them as a threat to their dominance. In a perfect world, maybe we wouldn’t need to deal with any of this. But our country is very far from that. And while I agree that DEI should not be used to elevate people solely on the basis of race, sex, or sexual orientation, I, for one, don’t have a problem with giving some well-qualified individuals who are being otherwise excluded on the basis of race, sex, or sexual orientation opportunities in order to someday remove the institutional bias that still exists in today’s United States. There, I said it.

#Nick Wright

#DEI

#Jackie Robinson

#US Constitution

#US Supreme Court

#Fortune 500 Companies