Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Merit

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, at their worst, are one more brand of human resource corporate bullshit, cut from the same cloth as all those corporate trainings that taught managers they could get better work out of their subordinates if they pretended to treat those meat widgets like human beings. "Pretend to listen to them," they were taught, "so they'll buy into your initiative."

In short, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion can be part of that grand tradition of programs designed to get corporate leadership to pretend to act like decent human beings even if they aren't so inclined. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs can, at their worst, focus strictly on externals, emphasizing that Folks In Charge should try to look like they care about these things in the same way that HR taught your bad boss to signal interest in you by putting your name at the beginning of every sentence addressed to you.

The current attacks on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs are based on the notion that gender and race preferences have replaced consideration of merit. It's the same argument that was leveled against affirmative action-- a bunch of really deserving white guys aren't getting the prizes they're supposed to because some undeserving woman or minority was given the prize despite their lack of merit.

Part of our problem here is that word "merit." We can't define it, can't quantify it, can't agree what we're talking about in any meaningful way. But it's still at the center of this debate. There's lots more to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion than questions of merit, but for today, let's just deal with the arguments about merit.

Unfortunately, I have to blame the education system for a lot of that. With our over-simplified rat race version of evaluating students, we early on drive home the idea that all students are "competing" on the same scale with the same measure. The best students, the most chock-full of merit, are the ones with the highest grades. Easy peasy--at the end of the race, the Valedictorian is the one with the highest GPA and therefor the best, the most merit-packed student to emerge from the school. 

Everybody kind of understands that this model is bunk. The Valedictorian might be a horrible person. The most-beloved member of the class may be a low achiever (a term that reinforces the rat race model). The most beautiful person in the world may be a person you wouldn't want to marry for a gazillion dollars, and a person who appears to have won by amassing the world's largest pile of money may also be an obnoxious dope. 

"Merit" also incorporates the idea of being deserving, and again, we have arguments. Is someone deserving because they work hard? Is the hard worker more or less deserving than the person with innate talent? Or are both less important than whatever end result a person gets? Does the merit of good end results still hold regardless of what methods were used to get them? 

Merit depends on context. Mostly it depends on the context of what is required. If I need something from the top shelf in the store, it's the tall person or the person with access to a ladder that has the most merit. If I need someone to fit into a tiny space, then it's the short skinny person who has the most merit. 

We measure merit according to the specific criteria of the moment. Michael Jordan was the king of merit as a basketball player, and far down the meritocratic ladder for baseball. We get fuzzy on this one--we are forever deciding that since someone has merit as a singer, they probably also have merit as a legal expert. 

We also measure merit backwards. I have gotten this reward, so clearly I must deserve it. Mix all this together and you get some rich guy who decides "I have all this money, so I must have merit in the field in which I earned it, which means I must also have a meritocratic ability to redesign, say, the world's education systems."

And we operate within certain biases about where merit can be found. Back in the day, we assumed that the merit required to cast a vote or own property could only be found in white males, and it hasn't been that long since we still assumed that only men merited that ability to have a credit card or work full time. That job barrier was maintained two ways--by assuming that only men had the merit to deserve the job, and by assuming that the definition of merit included things like "will never need to take time off because they're pregnant." 

Note that that definition of merit doesn't even have to mention the word "woman," so at a quick glance it doesn't seem explicitly sexist. We do that with meritocracy a lot. For instance, folks don't argue that a Black person couldn't fill a particular role-- it's just that part of the definition of merit is to be comfortable in and familiar with a certain cultural background, the kind of background you have if you grow up in a middle class white neighborhood.

So here's the thing. The complaint against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (and affirmative action) programs is that they throw out considerations of merit and replace them with considerations of race and gender. 

But why not open up and examine our definitions of merit? First of all, what is really needed for this particular role in this particular place and time? Second of all, are we making assumptions about merit that we don't have to make that tie it to class, race, or gender? 

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs have many functions. But when it comes to the question of merit, a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program is not about saying, "Let's stop looking for merit." It's about saying "Let's check our definition of merit, and let's look for it in places we haven't always looked before." 

Getting it right is a challenge. It's not simply making a minority hire so you can check it off the list. It's also not the technique that too many school districts have used, the ones where they say, "Well, we've been singling one group of students out for honors classes, so rather than try to identify and correct for our biased merit measures, we'll just stop having the program." To give up trying to recognize any merit at all is not the way.

To put it another way, the goal here is not to eliminate the use of merit as a yardstick, but to improve the definition of merit and widen the search for it. 

It's a challenging task. Will there be schools, businesses and organizations that fumble and botch it? Absolutely, just as even the best-handled programs will piss off some mediocre white guys who are sure they've been robbed. 

We should keep trying anyway. We should keep trying because it will help us become a more just society. Why have avoided the usual initials DEI in this piece? Because they make it too easy for people to reject the whole thing. If you are opposed to diversity, equity and inclusion, then don't hide behind an acronym. I've seen people bitch about "forced DEI," and I don't even know what that is--you're being put in a situation where you have to deal with diversity and you don't want to? I don't know how you take a stance against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion any more than I know how you take a stance against justice.

And if the appeal to justice doesn't move you, consider that it will help us function better as a society. We are increasingly pluralistic, and the sheer effort involved in a futile attempt to enforce a monoculture is just so wasteful and destructive. It's also wasteful to miss out on so many folks loaded with merit just because we are using a narrow definition of merit and applying it through narrow search criteria. Diversity has always been part of our strength as a country, and our history is marked by a long, stumbling hike toward equity and inclusion, and the further we get, the stronger we become.