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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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My employer recently held a DEI week. One of our Human Resources VPs sent out an email with information about this “dedicated” event. The main course was a series of videos. Managers were expected to replace a normal staff meeting with one of these videos followed by a “conversation.”

Needless to say, this did not occur. Our monthly staff meeting went exactly as planned—brief program updates followed by technical presentations on recent tasks. Not a peep from our manager, who probably had to take some sort of training. This foiled my plans to write a review of our corporate strategy and emphasis, because I’m not watching a video version if I don’t have to. Instead, a few remarks on the framing.

Much emphasis is placed on “employee-driven” culture, putting the onus on managers and employees. At the same time, the initiative is very open about being “CEO action,” a coalition for executives to pledge how much they like DEI. Roughly half the subjects appeared to be advertising actions already taken at the corporate level.

The signaling strategy is obvious. Executives are more coordinated and socially skilled than 99% of the company, so they get to read the room and sign on to initiatives which they think will be well-received. HR departments make that intent into a program. Managers and employees enact it—in proportion to how much they already buy in. And in the end the company gets a few sympathetic stories for the executives to advertise next board meeting.

I want to emphasize how short this falls of the consultant-driven, aggressive approach which gets skewered on social media. No one is asking defense engineers to hold struggle sessions or reflect on whiteness. Twitter would like to show you the most dramatic, offensive version. If your workplace looks more like Twitter than like this…consider moving to Texas.

Ours is somewhat similar, almost entirely opt-in. One thing that low key kind of annoys me is how useful it is as a way to rub shoulders with executives though. A new person on my team who barely does their job is on a first name basis with my departments executive director because they worked on some dei presentation. There are greater injustices of course and it's better than it could be but it sits wrong with me.

This entirely depends on the people involved. There are a surprising number of upper management folks who aren't true believers. I've advised some on how to approach things. They know how destructive the woke spiral is and how cancerous even a small number of the most vocal advocates can be. They want to be on a first name basis with the worst of the worst, because they want to know who to target when an opportunity arises to move people out of the business.

Obviously, the valence switches completely if they are a true believer or even a collaborator.

I suppose the social climbers will always find a way. Perhaps this is better than outright banging the boss