In the eyes of the likes of President Donald Trump right down to the average conspiratorial right-wing dupe, DEI is to blame for everything from the tragic deaths of 67 people in the Washington air collision this week, to the failure of commercial banking giants. At a press conference on Thursday, Trump suggested the failure of air traffic controllers to stop a helicopter and aeroplane collliding was linked to “a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s [Federal Aviation Authority] program”.
In under two weeks as president, he’s already declared the historically queerphobic, cisgender-normative United States of America a newly “two-gender” nation and scrapped government DEI initiatives in the shadow of already souring opinion towards them in the public and private sectors. According to 2024 research from the Pew Research Center, increasing numbers of people say the companies they work for spend too much time on improving DEI.
That’s not to say the right’s hyperfixation on the imagined harms of making workplaces and society more inclusive isn’t damaging. Clearly, it’s swaying people. For the past five years, following a global explosion of DEI policy announcements after the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, those who subscribe to the belief that these interventions are a threat (to white people) have seized on opportunities to demonise them, even against evidence that diverse and inclusive workplaces lead to higher rates of retention and improved financial outcomes for all.
In fact, social progression has always historically been followed by backlash. A recent paper in the Current Opinion in Psychology Journal by Seval Gündemir, Rouven Kanitz, Floor Rink, Inga J. Hoever and Michael L. Slepian for example, states: “Research indicates that unfavourable reactions to DEI policies are related to negative stereotypes and prejudice toward minoritised groups, to ethnocentrism, hierarchy-legitimising ideologies, heteronormativity, and to religious intolerance.”An unprecedented rollback of rights this may not be, but it does give those keen to introduce discriminatory policies – or to ignore duties towards improving inclusion in the workplace – a green light to further fail marginalised groups. Not that this is remotely a surprise to those of us at a higher risk of facing discrimination in the workplace.
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Read MoreIt’s in part why, since the work-from-home revolution, so many people of colour are keen on remote roles. Let’s not forget that a mere two years after 2020, 120,000 people left their jobs because of racism.
Unfortunately, the appetite for rolling back social progress – and amplifying extremist conspiracy theories – only seems to be growing. Will the backlash against DEI impact the UK workforce in the same ways that it appears to be impacting America’s? As much as I hope not, I have a feeling this is only the beginning. We had a good run, I suppose.
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