DEI Drops ‘E’ to Shield Diversity Efforts. Can It Mute Outrage?

Corporate executives don’t talk about diversity, equity and inclusion like they used to.

And for good reason: Companies don’t want to be the next target of conservatives on X, in the courtroom or during their annual meetings.

Taking hold after George Floyd’s murder by police in 2020, DEI held the promise of boosting companies’ bottom lines, retaining employees at higher rates and bestowing the anti-racist badge. What companies didn’t expect were claims that DEI made them racist, by supplanting a meritocracy of working hard to get ahead.

Harley-Davidson Inc., Lowe’s Cos. and Ford Motor Co. were among the big-name companies that tweaked their DEI programs under pressure from a campaign spearheaded by right-wing podcaster Robby Starbuck. Boeing masked its DEI tweaks by coupling claims of cost-savings with dismantling its global DEI teams.

So now companies are trying to retool the message — by dropping the E.

A majority of executives recently surveyed by the Conference Board said “equity” is the most triggering term of the three, and the one they’re looking to rebrand. Mostly, because equity invokes “reverse discrimination” fears, that white workers will be displaced or passed on because there are programs designed to help minorities and women—who have long actually been discriminated against because of their race, ethnicity or gender—advance their careers. That perspective mirrors the “great replacement theory,” that immigrants and people of color will replace white people as the new majority.

The 2023 Supreme Court decision striking down the use of affirmative action in college admissions opened the door to dismantling corporate DEI. The decision capped a decades-long campaign by conservatives dating back to the 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke Supreme Court decision that prohibited the University of California system from reserving student seats for minority students.

Like most things in politics, a policy is far more palatable when it’s explained. That’s why progressive activists are seizing on recent data showing wide support for DEI among voters—as long as it’s not constrained by the acronym.

It’s a similar playbook to the one that companies’ public relations and general counsel teams deployed when the backlash against environmental, social and governance hit a fever pitch last year. Democrats’ counterprogramming helped, but short explanations of what ESG actually is foiled anti-ESG messages.

Of course, at its core, ESG is simply a set of nonfinancial risk-mitigation strategies, which is a little harder to fan into something threatening to American culture and economic security the way DEI has. In public, when the veneer of “woke” faded, so did the opposition to ESG. Companies adjusted how they talked about ESG, using words like “sustainability” instead, but didn’t abandon their principles. They’re still investing in clean-energy solutions and staying by their net-zero emissions goals, because it’s good business.

DEI advocates similarly see a path for companies to diversify their rank and file, as well as top leaders; pay employees equitably, and help employees feel like they belong.

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ non-profit, America Pride Rises, says it has data showing voters respond far more positively to “diversity” than DEI—because in that word, people see themselves, not someone else.

“Diversity” means more than just gender, race and ethnicity, Abrams explained. It encompasses geography, neurodiversity—a term to include people with mental disabilities, sexual orientation and veteran status—basically anything that makes people different from each other.

“We’ve got to give the public the filter with which to process this information,” she said. “That when you say you’re ‘anti-DEI,’ does that mean you are no longer going to be enforcing and accommodating the Americans with Disabilities Act?”

Can evoking ADA—a bill passed in 1990 with strong support from Democrats and Republicans alike—take down naysayers that blame DEI for a host of corporate ills like Boeing’s safety issues? If nothing else, “diversity,” like “sustainability” for ESG, might be just vague enough for companies to skirt activists on both sides.