Not Quite, Arwa, Not Quite....

A more honest headline would have to admit that what it means is 'You Don't Matter Any More Than Anyone Else'....and that's the message that should always have been sent, isn't it?

Trump’s second term has become a crusade against DEI. Hours into his presidency, he signed two executive orders targeting “radical and wasteful” DEI programmes. If a federal initiative has anything remotely to do with the issue, Trump has decreed that it must be eliminated. References to the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, for example, were marked for deletion by the Department of Defense. Why? Because the aircraft’s name has the word “gay” in it.

Well, that's another example of relying on machines and not people, it hardly invalidates the movement. 

DEI may be a relatively new term, but the idea has roots in the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it illegal for most employers with 25 or more staff (reduced to 15 or more by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972) to discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex and national origin.

And that once noble outlook has been twisted to allow discrimination against the majority.

While DEI has its roots in addressing injustices, there is a strong business case for it.

If that was true, businesses wouldn't have needed legislation to bring it in, would they? 

DEI should always have been treated as a serious business issue. Instead, it has often been approached as a box-ticking exercise or a PR manoeuvre.

Or a grift, as we can see from the next example you dredge up: 

“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.

You cannot legislate to make people care about things they just don't, and aren't going to, care about.