While DEI has its roots in addressing injustices, there is a strong business case for it. According to research by McKinsey, companies with a representation of women exceeding 30% (which puts them in the top quartile) are significantly more likely to perform well financially than those with 30% or fewer. Companies in McKinsey’s top quartile for ethnic diversity show an average “financial advantage” of 27% over others.

No there isn't. All that tells us is that only companies with an excess of funds have money to burn on unprofitable programs like vanity hiring. Correlation != causation. Anyone in business who falls for these pitches deserves the inevitable bankruptcy.

“We all want a meritocracy, but too often we don’t have them,” Williams says. “There is one group in professional workplaces where over 90% believe they are working in meritocracies – and that’s white men. Every other group has sharply less confidence that they are working in meritocracies because they feel that they are being held to a different standard.

Notice that they don't say a higher standard? Just "different." That's because DEI hires, who were held to a lower or no standard, know that they don't work in a meritocracy. 90% of their White male employees are in denial or scared to admit they've noticed what's happening.

“The amount of money I made starting May 2020 until about 2023 – I’ve never made so much money in my entire life,” says Akilah Cadet, a DEI practitioner and the author of White Supremacy Is All Around. Some of that money came from brands who genuinely seemed to care, she says, but others were just in it to look good. Now, however, the jobs have dried up. “I’ve laid off my staff. I have a much smaller team. I’m being punished as a result of people no longer wanting to care about people they should have been caring about in the first place,” Cadet says.

Understands that she was grifting off a HR fad. But when the fad goes away, frames it as being "punished" so she can play the victim instead of opportunist.