Introduction
Make Work Fair by Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi was published in late January 2025. It argued that the adverse political passions targeting DEI in the US were a very good reason to abandon the language of DEI in favour of the idea of fairness. There is a lot of merit in this suggestion. But it’s not ideal in my view.
DEI has been denigrated by ultra conservative influencers determined to misrepresent its goals and how it has been implemented. Like any aspirational set of values DEI hasn’t been manifested perfectly, but that’s no reason to attack it.
In her 2023 book Left is not Woke, Susan Neiman argues that the Left isn’t Woke, but it has allowed itself to be identified as such. Being Woke has become an insult because it has become associated with the identity politics that inhabit the Left extremity of the political spectrum. The Right extreme employs the insult against the Left in general, and the Left has fumbled its response.
This fumble has hurt DEI and, by extension, the cause of Disability Inclusion.
What is woke?
Here are some quotes from NPR’s Morning Edition on 19 July 2023. The show’s host is Domenico Montanaro, and his guest is Elaine Richardson is a professor of literacy studies at the Ohio State University. They are discussing What does the word ‘woke’ really mean, and where does it come from?
RICHARDSON: In simple terms, it just means being politically conscious and aware, like stay woke.
MONTANARO: The word has a long history. It was used in Black protest songs dating back to the early 20th century, including by Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, the singer of the 1938 song “Scottsboro Boys.”
RICHARDSON: It comes out of the experience of Black people of knowing that you have to be conscious of the politics of race, class, gender, systemic racism, ways that society is stratified and not equal.
MONTANARO: Modern Black activism and the Black Lives Matter movement used it widely as a rallying cry. At other times, the seriousness of the word has been diluted, used facetiously and ironically on social media. And now the word has been co-opted as a political slogan on the right…
MONTANARO: On the campaign trail, though, there’s no sign of the candidates abandoning the word as they continue to use it to galvanize the conservative base around culture war issues.
DEI isn’t political
DEI is a philosophical value set accepted by people who identify themselves as either Left or Right – to the extent that these terms have meaning any more. Some on the Left prefer to call themselves Progressive, but folks on the Right could do the same – if the term hadn’t become co-opted by the Left.
Wokeness, as Neiman observes, is a term that members of Far Left have adopted to convey concern for just causes, but it has become enmeshed in identity politics through identification with the victims of those real injustices.
DEI risks being identified with Wokeness because it recognises the members of our community who, because of identified attributes, are subject to discrimination. Those who see themselves as members a of minority group within their community may respond to the injustices they experience in ways that don’t necessarily sit well with everyone. Identity politics can play out under the umbrella of DEI without necessarily being an inherent element of DEI.
This creates a complex challenge for DEI practitioners. The principles of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion don’t give cause to exclude advocates of Wokeness who see that being a member of a minority group as a bona fide political concern. A political response isn’t invalid, but it may not be well suited to a setting – especially an organisational one. This can leave a perception management problem that must be handled adroitly.
So, is changing the name the solution?
Name changes can solve problems. I like the idea of fairness at work being a theme. It presently lacks any political contamination. I also like kindness at work. Having a workplace culture that is fair and kind expresses two universal values that no reasonable person would object to – you’d hope.
A problem emerges when we think about to whom we should be fair and kind – the same people DEI intends to help. The how of being fair and kind runs into the same issues the how of DEI struggles to overcome.
DEI lays out principles at a head level in a shorthand way that can be unhelpful. Each word represented by an initial is a conversation that rarely happens. As a consequence its detractors have an easy target to misrepresent what DEI is about. Of course, DEI is Woke in the proper historical sense. It embraces Woke in the contemporary positive sense. But it isn’t Woke in the pejorative sense of identity politics that Right extremists have crafted. But who can figure that out?
On the other hand, fairness and kindness seem to speak for themselves – and from the heart. If we are being systematic, we might say that kindness is the action and fairness is the outcome.
How do we become kinder?
That’s a pretty deep question, when you pause to ponder it. But before we can answer it there’s another question to be asked – Do we want to become kinder?
I will guess that you do, since you are reading this. But can you speak for everyone else in your workplace?
Being kinder is what DEI is about essentially, but it assumes that the way to get there is via formal strategies that focus on individual attributes [especially those that make a person a victim] and training [disability awareness, anti-bias and the like]. This makes sense from a bureaucratic perspective, but it may also explain why DEI practitioners often struggle to achieve the success they desire. In this they are not alone. Efforts at organisational change frequently fail to attain their objectives.
Asking other people to become kinder without asking the same thing of yourself won’t give the best guidance on how to make that happen. If you explore being kinder yourself, you will likely discover vulnerabilities and uncertainties that can’t be explored and addressed in a half day Kindness Awareness course. Some things aren’t as amenable to efforts at training as we’d like to think.
There are better ways to promote the creation of a kinder workplace.
It’s complicated
There’s merit in DEI. Any effort at changing workplace behaviour needs a theory or two, a strategy, measurements and methods of accountability. But then it’s time to climb down out of your head and find a comfortable place in your heart before you devise actions to take. Changing behaviour, even to become kinder, takes cognitive effort. Hence it requires personal commitment that is best stimulated by demonstrated personal commitment from others.
It interests me that DEI training and strategies are something executive leaders expect to be delivered to everyone other than themselves. In one respect they are expected to know this stuff and be competent at it because they are executive leaders. But that’d be wholly unreasonable and unrealistic. It’s also unfair, and not inclusive.
There is an abundance of evidence that when executive leaders live what are considered the core values of the organisation its workforce will follow. We have a natural urge to want to emulate how high-status individuals behave. DEI isn’t bottom up. Its top-down. The same applies with kindness.
This doesn’t mean that we wait on executive leaders to be kind. Kindness is an inherent human attribute that can expand when unshackled from bias. This can be part of workplace behaviour by anyone who wants to participate in being kinder and strengthened by shared engagement.
What the top-down flow does is express a core organisational value that will permeate a workplace culture and dissolve those pockets of resistance that are responsible for most of the harm done.
Conclusion
DEI isn’t inherently political but suffers from the association claimed by supporters and imputed by detractors. It’s a difficult path to manage well. But its greater challenge is that it is often seen as an add-on – a moral obligation imposed from on high. And when those on high do not walk their talk, the workforce gets the message that this value isn’t important.
Arguably we have a right to be unkind and unfair in our private lives, but not at work – if kindness and fairness [indeed DEI] are our employer’s core values. And that’s about performing those values, not just saying them.
There is difference between complying with imposed moral obligations and personally adopting universal human values expressed as kindness and fairness – and embodied in DEI. That distinction is something each one of us must contemplate – and then decide how to behave.
We can sit under the DEI umbrella and engage in our identity politics provided we are aware that our passions might wreck the umbrella. It’s not about whether our cause is just, just how we campaign for it.
There’s no inherent or necessary separation of philosophy and politics, but the practice of the former isn’t the same as the practice of the latter – and we need to know the difference.
Being Woke in the original sense is a good thing. But it can be enacted in an unwise way. The fact that credible researchers like Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi suggest walking away from DEI language does expose a very real problem – one of a lack of capacity to articulate a compelling defense.
We have an opportunity to open up the conversation and tap deeper and richer veins of thought and feeling.