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Notes -
Meta ends its DEI program (internal memo, Ars Technica verification). The company is disbanding its DEI team. It will no longer use "diverse slate hiring" (intentional seeking-out of candidates of particular underrepresented minorities). It is "sunsetting our supplier diversity efforts", which probably means that they will no longer privilege minority/women-owned suppliers.
It is ending the perception that it has representation goals. Yes that's convoluted, but how else does one interpret this statement:
The stated reason for the shift in policy:
That is, they expect to no longer be sued based on "disparate impacts", but possibly sued based on preferential treatments. This... makes sense for a company to do. McDonalds is doing it; Walmart did it more than a month ago.
I expect more companies to follow suit (quietly or loudly). My question is: are there any corporate for-profit true-believers who will stick with the DEI initiatives? Ben and Jerry's, maybe?
One thing that is important to keep in mind is that there was a little cottage industry in the academic literature that strained to try to prove that diversity initiatives were actually supported by a simple business case, that increasing diversity would increase performance and increase profits. There were plenty of lit spats about such claims. But some folks still believe genericized versions of it.
The kind of funny thing is that a lot of those same people are the ones who are now saying that these companies are cutting such programs now just to make more money. If one truly believes that DEI programs increase performance/profits, then they should believe that cutting DEI programs decreases performance/profits. Thus undercutting at least one of their two rationales.
One would think that some set of these large companies who adopted such programs ≅4yrs ago would have seen their performance indicators and profits taking off. They'd be saying, "We can't cut this; it would cost us too much money." Instead, I think the much more likely interpretation is the one that is supported by the current claims, not the former claims - lots of companies adopted these programs in the wake of George Floyd; some were just trying to play the PR game, others may have legitimately believed the predictions of increased performance/profits. ≅4yrs later, they've seen that the magical increased performance/profit simply hasn't materialized, the political pressure is decreased, and they now, indeed, want to save some money.
As these companies continue to move away from DEI, and if it becomes increasingly apparent to the general public that it didn't work, how will the vocal proponents, like Mark Cuban, attempt to shift the narrative to avoid admitting they were wrong? The most surprising outcome is someone like him admitting fault, or that he was mistaken. My guess is that it will be some combination of "It wasn't properly implemented." or "It works perfectly fine where I invested." or "People didn't give it the chance it deserved."
Whatever the case, I suspect the Mea Culpas will be few and far between, and the deflections will be many. These people are masters of self-preservation.
"It wasn't working just because companies were doing it cynically for profit."
I wouldn't call Mark Cuban a true believer, but someone that panders to them. To the true believers their worldview implicitly or explicitly imagine capitalism as tainting ideals or progress as soon as it comes in contact with them, so it's easy to dismiss any negative result. It's not a proof through competition that their idea doesn't work, it's proof number 473935 that capitalism needs to go because it gets in the way of their ideas.
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