Diversity washing

DEI

Here is a story about how far we have come in America, from January 2025, also featuring an earlier piece about diversity washing: 

These 12 major companies caved to the far right and stopped DEI programs

“Companies scaling back diversity, equity, and inclusion programs have started a trend.

“Right-wingers have been railing against DEI for a while now, and one of the loudest is Robby Starbuck, a failed filmmaker and failed congressional candidate. He objects to companies sponsoring Pride events, supporting transgender employees, taking action against climate change, and more. Oh, and he thinks toxic chemicals turn people queer and that the COVID-19 vaccine is what killed Matthew Perry.”

Climate change advocates are DEI killjoys?

“But the anti-DEI movement is bigger than just Starbuck. ‘Business experts have told CNN that Starbuck’s activism alone does not fully explain these decisions, and some companies’ commitments to diversity and inclusion were thin to start.” 

“Diversity washing” is the new greenwashing (2023)

“What’s that? According to this paper authored by academics from several institutions, including Chicago Booth and the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford, there are a number of companies that actively promote their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion in their public communications, but in actuality, their hiring practices, well, don’t quite measure up. 

“The authors label companies with significant discrepancies—companies that discuss diversity more than their actual employee gender and racial diversity warrants—as ‘diversity washers.’ What’s more, the authors found, companies that engaged in diversity washing received better ratings from ESG rating firms and were often financed by ESG-focused funds, even though these companies were ‘more likely to incur discrimination violations and pay larger fines for these actions.'”

Everything is the fault of DEI.

From what I’ve seen in right-wing media, DEI hires caused the fires in Southern California to expand, even as the Los Angeles fire chief has two decades of fire fighting experience.  

 Strangely enough, DEI seems to have nothing to do with all the annual hurricane damage in locations like Texas, Florida, and Speaker Mike Johnson’s Louisiana. That’s why we need “standards.” Before we give money to those blue-state people, they’ll have to fix whatever systems they broke. But those folks on the Gulf of Mexico should receive help immediately.

FOTUS instantly blamed DEI and Biden for the mid-air collision over the Potomac River on January 29, saying that standards for air traffic controllers had been too lax, including the FAA hiring people with “severe intellectual” and “psychiatric” disabilities. However, he cites no evidence because he likes saying stuff.

The clear message is that if the person in charge is black or a woman or gay, and they falter, they must have only gotten the job because of “reverse discrimination.” When you are a competent person, this tension can be exhausting, but this is nothing new. Read the description of the 1969 novel The Spook Who Sat By The Door by  Sam Greenlee

Nasty (and not in a good way)

Kelly hit on something. “They aren’t looking to reverse progressive policy because they disagree with it. They are looking to pass as much harmful policy as possible because they are angry with America for ever having passed it in the first place, and they want to punish Americans for it.”

There are SO many examples. I’ll pick one from MedPage Today about the CDC removing certain pages:

“In addition, tools to estimate and reduce the risk of HIV were also down at the time of writing, as was a page on CDC’s efforts to address racism as a driver of health disparities.”

So, as I understand it, DEI is the problem, even though it wasn’t applied as rigorously as some people seem to think. We should be selecting competent folks like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Hah! Jonathan Chait wrote in the Atlantic [paywall] that FOTUS “is promising a return to meritocracy—while staffing his government with underqualified loyalists.”

I will posit that not being in favor of DEI isn’t inherently racist/sexist/homophobic, though I could make a case for its value. Conversely, blaming everything that goes wrong on DEI is precisely racist, sexist, and homophobic.

DEI is

From a post on Facebook, which I pared down somewhat: What DEI Is :

-ramps and sidewalk curb cuts
-subtitles & captions (TV & phone)
-family restrooms
-pay equity & transparency
-parental leave (time & pay)
-not having to just accept workplace harassment
-work accommodations for a variety of disabilities
-flexible work arrangements
-various food options for vegetarians/vegans/kosher/gluten-free/etc at medical facilities
-non smoking areas/end of smoking indoors
-large print materials
-materials in different languages
Some of What DEI isn’t:
-hiring an underqualified person for a job just because they’re a person of color
-hiring based on race just to meet diversity goals (this is illegal)
 -a  new fad or buzzword. DEI work has been going on for many, many years, under different names

Now that DEI has driven from parts of corporate America and the federal government, inequality has been quashed! Yeah, right.

Is diversity “pandering”?

Kareem re: The Bachelor

I was talking to a White friend of mine recently. During the conversation, they said that all those television advertisements showing diverse people, folks of many colors and sizes, and abilities, are “pandering.” This took me aback.

Maybe it’s because I’ve written about this at least twice. Here’s the second piece, because the comments to the first piece (which I linked to in that second post) were so filled with racist vitriol that it was exhausting.

The less vulgar responses were like what “Bruce” wrote: “My count of Blacks in commercials exceeds 33%… But blacks make up 14% of the population and only 10% of total consumption (commercials, after all, are all about stimulating consumption)…

“So explain that huge discrepancy. I surely don’t mind seeing diversity in TV ads. But they should reflect fairness relative to these respective groups’ overall economic impact. Otherwise, it’s just PC gone haywire.” As I noted, I grew up when there were NO people of color in TV ads and damn few on the programs.

It finally occurred to me that I was stating the premise incorrectly. Advertisements have always been aspirational. I can see myself in that new model T Ford. My new Frigidaire will keep my food fresher.

Frankly, I don’t watch many television ads, as I fast forward a lot through recorded programs. The shows I watch tend to be news programs. But even speeding through them, I can tell many, if not most, of the programs I watch, are for prescription drugs.

Let me be clear that I despise these direct-to-the-consumer Rx ads, which seem to run only in the US and New Zealand. Their goal is to remind Black women they can also have clearer skin. Hispanic men no longer have to suffer the embarrassment of ED.

These ads show diversity, not because they are “woke” or pandering but because they want to sell stuff – sometimes things you don’t need – to as many people as possible.

As author Walter Mosley speaks to CBS News about how much more buzz his new book, Every Man a King, is getting than any of his others, he notes it’s because of capitalism.  

The Bachelor

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who incidentally appears in an ad about AFib, though not tied to a particular product, recently wrote about diversity in television. His example was The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, et al. I’ve never watched a single episode.

He asks a “simple question:  Do reality shows (or TV shows and movies in general) have a responsibility to be aspirational as well as reflecting ‘reality’? By that, I mean, should a reality franchise with a vast audience and influence on popular culture merely reflect systemic racism, or should it aim higher in creating the kind of diverse world that we aspire toward?

“When you reflect systemic racism by not including a more ethnically diverse cast, then you are perpetuating that racism. For money.” He explains it well.

AAEEO

Another friend noted, “I’ve seen some media coverage of the Oscars. The whole thing seems like a study in overcompensation, as if ‘the academy’ feels guilty and hopes throwing everything at a single film can make up for decades of ‘in-crowd’ awards.”

The reference, of course, is to Everything Everywhere All At Once, a movie I  extolled. It may be my favorite film of this century. (My friend hasn’t seen it for what I know to be good reasons unrelated to the ethnicity of the actors.)

My take: EEAAO was a film that would not have been made a few years ago,  but it can now be with an Asian co-writer/co-director/co-producer. And that should be celebrated. I’m REALLY happy that I saw it at the cinema.

And it’s not just Asians being honored. Of the four acting winners, Michelle Yeoh is 60, Jamie Lee Curtis is 64, Ke Huy Quan is 51, and Brendan Fraser (The Whale) is 54. The guys had both been lost in the Hollywood wilderness.

I understand that “diversity” is a bugaboo for many people. On a recent episode of the TV drama The Good Doctor, the black female third-year resident didn’t want to be on a video chat talking to would-be doctors that “looked like her.” It was a burden, which I totally got. Mild spoiler: she gave the talk at the end and realized how powerful the experience was.
Race
Another friend asked me in a public setting recently whether we should stop counting race in the US Census since race, as we all know, is a social construct. I said yes, which was disappointing to that person. They were sad that Barack Obama had not checked the White AND Black boxes on the 2010 Census.
I opined at the time that the race question might disappear when the number of people selecting multiple race boxes increased enough to make the numbers meaningless.
In retrospect, I don’t believe it’ll go away until America becomes more willing to discuss the consequences of racism. Since the distinctions will be based on historic racial characteristics, they will remain relevant for… I don’t know how long.

Myths retconned to advance diversity

multiverse

Uthaclena poses a question for Ask Roger Anything.

Should icons, legends, and myths be retconned to advance diversity and inclusiveness? Is creating new stories and characters stifled or advanced by doing so?

Maybe. And maybe. A post by Mark Evanier this year addresses this.

“Among the pro-social requirements at that moment was that every [cartoon] show that particular year [1980] had to have minority representation. Someone in it had to not be a white guy.

“As it was explained to me, Standards and Practices at ABC had made up a list of racial and ethnic minorities, and it was kind of like ‘Pick one.’ Joe Ruby, one of the producers of the show, looked it over and picked ‘Hawaiian.’ He and Norman had previously invented a sidekick for Plas, who had perpetual bad luck and whose voice would be based somewhat on Lou Costello’s.”

So I asked him, “I was wondering if you thought that was a good thing, a bad thing?” He replied, “In this world — or in my world, at least — one often finds situations that fall under the category of ‘Doing the right thing for the wrong reason’ or maybe ‘Achieving the proper goal in an improper way.'”

I agree with him that ABC was hamfisted about this. Thus,  the inclusiveness checkmark was achieved but at a creative cost.

A better solution would be to create situations that reflect the characters portrayed. To achieve that, one needs to have more writers who are black, Hispanic, gay, women, fat et al. You know, people who have some experience with being what the stories are trying to portray rather than having a white character in blackface.

MCU

To the specifics of the question, when I was growing up reading comics, DC came up with different “earths” to explain the difference between the Golden Age and Silver Age heroes.

Someone recently wrote that there were too many characters named Superman. I can’t speak to this because I’m not following the comic books. The marketplace, I reckon, will decide.

I’ll point to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As you know, Sgt. Fury, fighting in WWII, was a white guy in the comics. But movie fans now can’t think of anyone but Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

Here’s the problem with comic books that are more than a quarter-century old. You always have to retcon the storyline, or it doesn’t make any sense. The Lee/Ditko Spider-Man is in his 70s. Reed Richards and Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four fought in World War II, so the Lee/Kirby characters are centenarians.

I’m cool with the changes because we’re dealing with the multiverse, which was used to tremendous effect in  SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME and especially  Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Heck, anyone who has ever watched soap operas for any length of time knows that babies suddenly age for storyline reasons.

If you’re going to alter something, having media that reflects our evolving understanding of the world makes sense to me.

And if someone is pearl-clutching over people of color in the Tolkien universe, for instance, they can write off the finished projects as bad fan fiction.

Ramblin' with Roger
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