Dei Deconstructed: Your No-Nonsense Guide to Doing the Work and Doing It Right

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This is just one example, but the lessons we should take away from it should be sobering. As societies and as a world, we are far from where we need to be, and our efforts to do good may result in unpredictable consequences—and harm—we are unprepared to handle. Now, five years later, the effects of the movement are starting to materialize. The #MeToo movement undeniably increased reporting of sexual assault and harassment by empowering victims to share their stories—with a smaller but notable increase in arrests, as well. 29 But belief in the benefits of the movement is polarizing, with only 25% of men in a US study believing that recent attention to sexual misconduct had a positive impact, versus 61% of women. 30 This split is far from the only concerning effect. Within workplaces, following the #MeToo movement, a 2019 study found that 60% of managers who are men felt uncomfortable mentoring, working alone with, or socializing with women—a 32% jump in discomfort from just the year prior, with 36% reporting that this discomfort stems from worries that engaging in any way would be seen poorly. 31 This trend is exacerbated in senior-level men, who are now 12 times more likely to hesitate to have 1-on-1 meetings with junior-level women than before. The implementation of DEI has been causing harm to oppressed communities instead of providing relief. These individuals should not be forced to labor for solutions or take on the emotional burden to bring about reform. Each time I retell this story, I get the same eager questions. Was there a happy ending? Did companies finally recognize the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion work and enable the many experts, practitioners, educators, and consultants to work their magic? Did a new cohort of companies triumphantly emerge from 2020, having turned over a new leaf, as a new vanguard of the diverse, equitable, and inclusion organizations of the future? I’ll say this up front: this book is not a deep dive into critical race theory, organizational sociology, or change management, though all these and more will inform the content you’ll be reading. This is on purpose—I’ve aimed to provide a well-rounded, interdisciplinary, and comprehensive foundation that can enable any thoughtful newcomer to do effective DEI work. In my experience, you don’t need to be a subject matter expert to be an effective change-maker. You just need to have enough of a knowledge base to begin gaining experience and refining your impact.

Women of color deserve truly equitable workplaces where our success and well-being is centered. Lily Zheng’s DEI Deconstructedis a compelling must-read for leaders who want to stay accountable, make change, and create better workplaces for us all.” I found author Zheng (who goes by they/them) on LinkedIn and was super excited to find that they had written a book! DEI is a complicated concept, and organizations have (or haven't, depending) grappled with the struggle of how to integrate and use DEI in their work, strategies, products, etc. Zheng looks at how many DEI practices often frustrate marginalized people, how there are better approaches and how we can work towards a better world. But to inspire everyone to take action Zheng says it is important we frame DEI initiatives are framed in the right way. His demeanor shifted. Well, ah—I’m not sure we have the budget for . . . it’s not exactly in the, ah, scope of what I was planning to talk to you about today. I’m sure, I’m sure I could connect you to a colleague of mine that might be interested in talking about other ways to partner afterward. For now, let’s focus on this talk. Does the offer work for you?All of these varieties of training have their challenges, if not in their fundamental assumptions about creating impact, then in their haphazard and inconsistent deployment. Many kinds of DEI training promise lasting attitude and behavioral changes from relatively simplistic exercises and reflections, for example, but pull their exercises from sources ranging from social psychology research and grassroots organizing work to self-help guides or simply a practitioner’s own imagination. On the question of power, Zheng recognizes that “If we are to achieve DEI in the organizational sense, we will need to engage critically and often with power” because “power is the potential to influence or compel people or events”. But power comes in many forms, and Zheng lists several forms of non-formal power, such as expertise, information, charisma and influence, that can be deployed to achieve DEI outcomes. Recently, for example, a colleague with no previous exposure to corporate DEI shared with me a story of sitting through a mandatory DEI training, led by a person who was not White, in which the facilitator referred to different racial groups as “Negroids, Caucasoids, and Mongoloids” before listing a long list of racial stereotypes to the unwitting audience. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing—a racial classification system developed in the 1780s still deployed in 2021. The training deeply confused and upset the audience. “What is wrong with DEI practitioners?” demanded my colleague afterward, and all I could do was shake my head and apologize on behalf of a person I had never met. What is wrong with DEI practitioners?

Chapter 8: Achieving DEI is the strategy chapter, where you’ll learn how to use and gain trust as the currency of change. I’ll be honest about what happens when the work gets messy and what to do when the neatness of theory meets the complexity of practice. You’ll learn how to carve out a path for yourself and your organization toward diversity, equity, and inclusion that gets things done, whether your stakeholders trust their leadership to lead DEI step-by-step or have so little trust that even good-faith consideration of DEI sounds like wishful thinking.Even if we do DEI work each and every day, it’s wishful thinking to believe that the trajectory of the world will take us automatically toward equity and that all we have to do is ride the current to get there eventually. There is no such thing. If we achieve DEI, it is because all of us have put in the thoughtful, intentional effort to do our best and do things right. Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum says it well when she uses the metaphor of a moving airport walkway, or a conveyor belt, to describe racism; I believe the metaphor applies effectively to other systemic inequities, too.