DEI Harms None and Benefits All

The movement to end DEI is misguided in every way. Federally, it has resulted in blatantly racist and sexist consequences in our military. Before firing the chief of the Navy, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, Pete Hegseth stated in writing that she was a DEI hire. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Charles Brown, who was appointed to the role during Trump’s first administration, was fired after discussion that he was a diversity hire. Now, in our state, it has resulted in Laurens School District 55 losing its $13.5 million, 3-year incentive program for boosting teacher pay based on test scores.

DEI has existed for decades and is far from a “woke” practice, nor is it designed to exclude anyone. Rather, it is an inclusive practice: It works to ensure that our unconscious cognitive biases do not regularly harm or overlook anyone for reasons of which we might not even be aware. Numerous studies over multiple decades have proven the existence of cognitive bias and its results in the workforce, namely the usually (but not always) unintentional overlooking of and disqualification of candidates because of age, gender, race, and other factors.

The National Bureau of Economic Research published a study in April 2024 that came to the same conclusion as a 2016 MIT study: that name bias (specifically, bias against candidates with "Black-sounding" names) is still a factor that affects hiring practices. Another study called The Natural Hair Bias in Job Recruitment authored by Christy Zhou Koval and Ashleigh Shelby Rosette reflects bias against hiring Black women whose hair is styled in a certain way. It sounds ridiculous, but this is the world we live in—a world in which our best intentions do not necessarily reflect how we act.

In other cases, discrimination is less innocent, though no less harmful: a 2014 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee study by psychologist Nadya Fouad of more than 5,000 women revealed that of the 40% of female engineering graduates who leave or never enter the engineering workforce, about a third do so because of an unwelcoming or hostile male-dominated work environment. (Census data from 2021 found that women are still more underrepresented in engineering than in any other STEM field.) DEI is not meant to exclude men but to include women in this field—data shows that women are drawn toward socially conscious fields of engineering. This is just one example of how diversity in the workforce benefits our entire society.

No one who supports DEI believes that an underqualified applicant should be hired simply because they are a woman, Black, disabled, queer, etc. What a banal interpretation of this policy! Every job has a list of minimal requirements that must be met before a candidate can even be considered. Does the government not trust its business owners, much less its own departments, to apply rigorous standards?

This doesn’t even begin to address the history of documented lack of access of women, queer people, and people of color, among other groups, to equitable opportunities for wealth building, education, skill developing, and welcoming work and study environments. This is why DEI in education is important.

I think we can clearly see that, regardless of how DEI might be adjusted or improved in its application, the current administration has no idea what it’s doing when it comes to this issue. Unrelated programs are being canceled, and race and gender are blatantly being used to remove people from positions for which they are clearly qualified. The final nail in this anti-DEI coffin is the removal of programs that reward our state’s teachers based on merit.

Federal and state efforts to ban DEI are the very opposite of limited government, and they do not make us freer. In this state, for example, H. 3927 would prohibit a wide swath of programs promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in all state agencies, K-12 public schools, colleges, and universities. It would also direct state agencies to go after private organizations and businesses that seek to promote diversity in their workforces. Write your lawmakers, make them aware of these cognitive bias studies, and tell them to speak out against this foolish bill and fight against federal and other efforts that deny reality.