The core idea behind diversity, equity, and inclusion programs is not controversial: organisations that reflect the diversity of the communities they serve tend to make better decisions, serve their customers and stakeholders better, and create more equitable outcomes for people who have historically been excluded. This is a defensible proposition backed by a reasonable body of evidence, and the original impulse behind DEI programs deserves to be taken seriously.
The execution, however, has in many cases been so spectacularly counterproductive that it has managed to simultaneously damage the cause of genuine equity and hand a ready-made grievance to the political right. Understanding where DEI went wrong — and why — is not the same as arguing against diversity. It is, if anything, a defence of it.
From Removing Barriers to Counting Boxes
The original agenda of workplace diversity reform was about removing barriers. It was about asking: why are women underrepresented in senior leadership? Why are people from non-Anglo backgrounds underrepresented in certain industries? What structural factors — bias in hiring, lack of flexibility for carers, networks that exclude, performance assessments that disadvantage — are producing these outcomes? And what can be done to address them?
This is a worthwhile agenda. It produced real results — flexible working arrangements, blind recruitment processes, mentoring programs, changes to how performance is evaluated. None of these things required anyone to make a bad hire or compromise on merit. They simply ensured that the pool from which merit was assessed was wider, and that the assessment process was more likely to actually measure merit rather than cultural fit with the existing cohort.
At some point, in many organisations, this evolved into something different. It became about targets — not aspirational goals but de facto quotas for representation by demographic category. It became about visible compliance — the diversity statement on the website, the rainbow flag in the social media header, the mandatory unconscious bias training that surveys consistently show has little to no effect on actual outcomes. It became, in its most performative expressions, about demonstrating the right credentials rather than producing the right results.
And here is where the political damage sets in. When an organisation publicly announces that it is prioritising diversity in hiring — when recruitment advertising includes language about seeking candidates from “underrepresented groups” — it creates an impression, whether accurate or not, that demographic characteristics are being weighted against merit. That impression is corrosive. It is corrosive to the confidence of diverse hires, who now face the assumption that their appointment was at least partly about their identity. It is corrosive to those who were not selected, who now have a convenient narrative for why they were passed over. And it is corrosive to the broader public trust in institutions that are perceived to be playing political games with their hiring decisions.
The Backlash Was Predictable
The political right has weaponised the excesses of DEI culture with great effectiveness, because the excesses are real and the targets are legitimate. When a major corporation publishes a statement about its “commitment to anti-racism” while simultaneously having a board that is 95% white and paying its warehouse workers poverty wages, the hypocrisy is not subtle. When a university requires candidates for academic positions to submit a “diversity statement” alongside their research record, treating the ability to perform progressive virtue as a selection criterion, it has moved some distance from the original purpose of the exercise.
The voters who find this performative, condescending, and unconnected to their lives are not all racists and reactionaries. Many of them are people who support genuine equality and are frustrated by an apparatus that seems more interested in the optics of diversity than in the substance of it. Their frustration is legitimate, even when it gets channelled into political directions that are not.
What Actually Works
The evidence on what actually improves diversity outcomes is reasonably clear, and it is less exciting than most DEI programs suggest. Blind recruitment — removing names, schools, and demographic information from initial application assessments — consistently reduces bias in hiring. Structured interviews with standardised questions reduce the impact of affinity bias. Flexible working arrangements dramatically improve the representation of women and carers. Pay transparency reduces gender pay gaps. Expanding the pipeline — through scholarships, cadetships, and outreach to underrepresented communities — produces long-term improvement in who enters competitive fields.
None of these require lowering standards. All of them require sustained commitment rather than visible gestures. Most of them are considerably less photogenic than a rainbow logo or a “diversity hire” announcement. And most of them are considerably more effective.
The centrist position on DEI is not “abandon the project.” It is “do it properly.” Real equity work is unglamorous, structural, and measurable. It doesn’t generate great LinkedIn content. But it actually moves the numbers — and it does so in a way that strengthens rather than undermines public confidence in the organisations that take it seriously.
