Anti-DEI legislation has been introduced in 30 states and the US House of Representatives and enacted into law in 4 states. While I have numerous legal, moral, and practical concerns about these laws, I want to focus instead on why these bills have been popular. Much of the backlash against DEI work is classic White Supremacy, but that’s not the whole story. There are other objections to DEI efforts, and it is worthwhile to examine those and learn from them.
To understand behavior, it’s useful to consider the SCARF model (initially described by David Rock, 2008)
1. Status – our relative importance to others.
2. Certainty – our ability to predict the future.
3. Autonomy – our sense of control over events.
4. Relatedness – how safe we feel with others.
5. Fairness – how fair we perceive the exchanges between people to be.
Everyone places a different degree of importance on these values. If one of these is challenged, particularly one that you place a high degree of importance on, it can trigger defensiveness. Opponents of DEI programs highlight each of these domains to gain support for their restrictions:
Status
For centuries, the political and financial power in the US has been in the hands of White men, first because the law mandated it, and then because tradition demanded it. Any process that diminishes this power challenges the perception of high status. People who think their status is being diminished will fight to maintain it. Efforts to change the power dynamics in this country, even to make things more fair, will generate defensiveness.
Certainty
Societal norms change over time. And when it comes to DEI efforts, it can feel like there is a lexicon du jour. Not being confident that you are using terminology that won’t offend someone can be anxiety-provoking, and that’s made even more complicated by continuously changing standards.
Autonomy
Some institutions mandate DEI training. Once something becomes mandatory, it can become a source of resentment. Even the best educational experiences lose something if you’re told you must participate. People generally don’t like to be told what to do. Alabama’s anti-DEI laws focus heavily on “compelled speech,” meaning it is illegal to mandate people participate in trainings or take pledges they disagree with. It’s written this way not only to avoid First Amendment challenges, but also to make people feel like their autonomy is threatened by DEI work.
Relatedness
There is a movement in the DEI space to focus on the impact of words, rather than their intent. This means that if someone is offended by your words, it doesn’t matter if you intended to offend or not because you caused injury anyway. This can create behavior where it’s easier to avoid people who are different than you just to prevent any chance that your words could be interpreted negatively. You don’t feel safe around people if you can cause harm even without any intent to do so. That feeling of discomfort contributes to the DEI backlash.
Fairness
DEI opponents focus on this element frequently because it is easy to make life look like a zero-sum game. They argue that if one group benefits, another group must be harmed. Any efforts that single out one group or another are seen as inherently unfair.
The rhetoric of DEI opponents threatens status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness; it’s easy to see why these anti-DEI bills could pass. In response, DEI proponents need to reevaluate our strategies and see if our attempts to build inclusion are, in fact, achieving their stated aims if so many people are feeling excluded to the point of wanting this work banned. Some of the objections to DEI work are legitimate, and we can do better. Not only can we learn from their criticisms, but in many cases, we can use the SCARF concept to our advantage by reinforcing how DEI efforts can enhance the 5 domains:
Status
To build support, we can emphasize that the best leaders and the most successful enterprises are those that can capitalize on diverse ideas. When an institution is not inclusive, it wastes the potential of its human capital. There needs to be room for robust discussion and creativity so the best ideas can rise to the top and generate status. In health care, this means better outcomes for more patients, more grant money coming in, and less attrition. DEI work can increase the status of Duke Health and its employees, and I would argue it already has.
Certainty
Language does matter. Slurs, for example, are never acceptable. However, to reduce opposition among potential allies, we can stop changing the rules of the game for general terminology, especially with little agreement on what is “proper.” Consider, for example, that BIPOC, non-White, minority, minoritized, underrepresented, and people of color are all similar concepts with pros and cons associated with their use in different scenarios. Likewise, we use LGBTQ, LGBTQ+, LGBTQIA, queer, sexual and gender minority, and others depending on cultural context. I do not advocate that we need to choose one term and stick with it indefinitely, rather I suggest that any of these terms can be acceptable. We should reduce the stress of choosing the “right” one because they all refer to heterogeneous populations who do not all agree on one term. DEI work should not be about language policing.
Autonomy
Although there aren’t as many mandatory DEI trainings as the opposition assumes, we can still work to minimize them. And we can make the training desirable enough that people choose to do it because they see the value for themselves.
Relatedness
When evaluating a contentious situation, we should consider the intent. The impact of words and actions is critically important, but if we don’t at least consider the intent, we can overreact and cause additional, unnecessary harm to both parties. We don’t live in black and white, and we don’t have to think of the world as a harm/no-harm binary. Intentional harm and unintentional harm deserve different consequences, and we can offer grace and education rather than reprimand those who intend no harm.
DEI work can enhance relatedness by building a safe environment for everyone. Knowing that you can bring your full self to work, whether that means as a person with tattoos, a first-generation immigrant or first-generation college student, a member of a marginalized racial group, or sexual or gender minority, you should feel and welcomed for who you are. Inclusion is for everyone.
Fairness
Fairness is one of the bedrock principles within DEI work, which is why it is ironic that it is used as an argument against it. A primary purpose of DEI work is to make historically unfair situations more fair. From a public relations standpoint, though, it works best to emphasize how everyone can benefit from these programs rather than highlighting certain groups to receive benefits that are not available to others. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, we want to make sure people see how DEI work benefits them personally, so they don’t feel threatened by the idea that someone else might be receiving something they can’t have, even though that’s exactly how the marginalization of entire populations happened in the first place. I recognize the cynicism in this idea, but I see it as an unfortunate reality if DEI efforts are to survive. We must continue to battle against zero-sum thinking that sees the advancement of one group as necessarily harming another.
None of these changes to how we do DEI work is guaranteed to prevent further anti-DEI actions. And nothing here addresses the underlying racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia, etc., that lurks in these laws. But some of the DEI opponents’ criticisms are legitimate, and DEI proponents should always try to do better. We might never change the minds of the hard-core DEI opponents, but we could win enough allies to keep these bills from passing.