We Didn’t Start the Fire.
The LA Fires are a tragedy. DEI is the solution, not the problem.
It is January 2025. Populous, beloved, and well-known neighborhoods in Los Angeles, one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the world, are on fire. For days, residents have been evacuating, firefighters have been going without sleep, and homes and iconic landmarks have been burning. Even those that are not in immediate danger are breathing in toxic air that can create diseases for generations. It seems like everyone in the city is grieving something or someone.
And yet, as the disaster unfolds, people in LA are engaging in a massive outpouring of collective mutual aid and community support for the people and animals who are displaced and suffering.
On the other hand, as Angelinos are left to cope with displacement, property damage, and loss, leading figures in right-leaning national politics have seized the moment, not to offer support, but to immediately go on the attack. They are placing blame on who they felt was the most likely culprit for these horrific fires and their aftermath: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
These accusations about DEI would be laughable were they not so problematic. Blaming DEI simplifies a large and complex problem related to a multitude of factors such as weather, infrastructure, and climate change. Indeed, we need to truly understand this problem in order to prevent future loss. Rather than vilifying DEI, we need to acknowledge that DEI is one of the best tools that we have to solve such a problem. We need to come together to leverage a diversity of experiences and perspectives.
Certainly, this is what typically is done during a well-run response to a natural disaster: leaders call upon a wide-range of experts in different fields, various stakeholders in the community, and people from different backgrounds and walks of life, to identify a solution moving forward that keeps us safe and works in the interests of everyone. This is why DEI experts say that diversity is valuable—because it increases our problem-solving capacity and leads to innovation.
DEI Hires as the Scapegoats
Although the value of DEI is well-researched and well-known, we are in a political moment in which DEI has become a scapegoat, strategically positioned to take the blame for economic and other hardships faced by so many in the wider United States.
In the case of the LA fires, DEI has been singled out as the primary culprit because it is perceived as impacting two important areas: competent leadership and resource distribution.
In blaming DEI for the LA Fires, the first major assumption is related to competent leadership. Certain leaders have been targeted for what was labeled as inadequate planning, resourcing, and response, such as Mayor Karen Bass and Fire Chief Kristin Crowley. These leaders have not only been labeled as incompetent, but also as “DEI hires.”
The labeling of these leaders as “DEI hires” is likely because they are a woman of color and a woman who is a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, respectively. They are holding positions that have historically been held by, and associated with, cisgender and heterosexual[1] (cis-het) white men. [2] Given the leadership positions that they hold, alongside their gender, sexuality, and race, any potential fallibility in their decision-making is not only labeled as incompetence, but is also tacitly attributed to their “DEI” status.
Furthermore, as in this case, any association of DEI with hiring is assumed to be the antithesis of meritocracy. In other words, DEI considerations in hiring are assumed to unfairly divert jobs and benefits to “minority” candidates, who are positioned as an undeserving majority that get an opportunity because of who they are instead of being considered for their skill sets, experiences, and past accomplishments. This narrative about “DEI” and hiring clearly overlooks the fact that women like Mayor Karen Bass and Fire Chief Kristin Crowley are hired based on merit, regardless of their identity, even as they often have to overcome additional hurdles to enter into historically masculine fields and gain the qualifications and experiences to succeed. In other words, historically it has been cis-het white men that are hired even when they lack competencies, because they are often presumed to be more qualified due to their gender, sexuality, and race. DEI initiatives aim to create actual meritocracy by creating and updating processes that mitigate biases that infringe upon more objective decision-making.
Furthermore, these assumptions about DEI, identity, and hiring overlook the ways in which “colorblind merit-based decisions” in hiring are, themselves, problematic. For instance, it is well documented that hiring decisions have often been made based on assumptions (implicit or unconscious biases) about “natural” aptitudes that candidates may possess given their (assumed) gender, regardless of the skill sets, experiences, and past accomplishments that they demonstrate. Historically, and in the present, hiring decisions and policies have been advanced based on the assumption that women are not qualified for physically dangerous or demanding jobs, such as firefighting, or that men are not qualified for care-based positions, such as nursing. These kinds of assumptions about “natural” aptitude and gender impact educational pathways and hiring decisions so broadly that certain applicants are unable to gain the experiences and skills needed to succeed in a seemingly merit-based system—or they have to work ten times as hard to accomplish them.
The touting of colorblind merit-based systems also overlooks family-based “legacy” systems, such as the one currently operating within the White House, and the networks needed for adequate recommendations and appointments, all of which benefit those who have historical wealth and family or personal connections.
In blaming DEI for the LA Fires, the second major assumption at play is that any leader who promotes DEI has diverted critical resources away from “more important” time and monetary investments and instead put them into making DEI programs run. This claim not only assumes that these agencies have massive DEI budgets that take away from other assets, an assumption that is wildly inaccurate, but also that DEI is somehow separate from the everyday work, strategies, and business goals of these departments, cities, and organizations.
All of these claims about the harms of DEI, which are frequently stated without evidence, shows a lack of understanding of what DEI is and/or what strategic DEI policies and integrations can do for organizations—and for the world. As research has shown over and over again since the mid-20th century, diversity and inclusion is necessary for innovative problem-solving and for building functional teams in an increasingly diverse world and already global economy.
Innovative Thinking to Solve Complex Problems: DEI as the Solution
Diversity management has been shown to lead to positive outcomes for organizations and institutions in a multitude of ways, including by helping organizations adjust to shifting population needs and workforce demographics, locally and globally. For instance, in the business sector, the top 25% of companies most diverse in terms of gender and ethnicity were 39% more likely to outperform those that were lowest ranked in diversity. The likelihood that gender and ethnic diversity leads to financial outperformance has increased over time.
Both inside and outside of the business world, diversity is associated with higher engagement, reduced turnover, better decision-making, and improved, and more objective, decision-making and problem-solving. Diversity of thought in inclusive teams has been found to lead to more innovation and better, higher-impact ideas. Indeed, as University of Michigan professor of Complexity, Social Science, and Management, Scott Brown notes, to solve complex problems in the 21st century, like climate change, we need diverse teams who can communicate across difference: “groups of experts, at least as we’re accustomed to thinking about them, are going to have a hard time competing with talented teams of people with relevant diverse perspectives.”
Indeed, ideas and collaborators that come from outside of a given field or industry have often been shown to lead to important solutions and innovations. For instance, when the Oil Spill Recovery Institute (OSRI) was struggling to develop a method for separating frozen oil from water on oil-recovery barges in Alaska in the early 2000s, an issue that they had been attempting to solve internally for years, they finally agreed to put out a general call for help. A general chemical researcher at Illinois State University who had no background in the oil industry—having spent his career working on solving issues with construction equipment and cement—saw the call and was able to find a viable solution within hours.
Not only is diversity of thought crucial to solving complex problems, so too is the ability for all team members to feel empowered and inspired to work well together—to be included in a team where they feel like they belong and that their contributions matter. Only when diverse voices and perspectives are sought out, heard, taken seriously, and understood by all team members, can we come to viable and workable solutions.
So, what caused the LA fires? What hindered a more impactful response?
It is absolutely necessary to scrutinize the policy and planning of all leaders and decision-makers in LA in order to fully answer these questions. However, to pin the blame on DEI is to tacitly pin the blame on only those decision makers who are not cis-het white men and/or who are supportive of expanding and engaging a range of perspectives.
This is incredibly problematic and incredibly unhelpful.
Accusations about the harms of DEI proliferate in the current political environment, rife with threats of increased regulation and retribution. Over the last few years, and accelerating after January 20, 2025, state and federal level policy changes and pronouncements in the United States have created a chilling effect, leading some large corporations and public universities to (seemingly) pull back from DEI initiatives. However, given the well-known benefits of business-integrated DEI strategies in a globalized economy, DEI work will—and must—continue in order to solve big problems.
It is critically important to understand how and why the fires in LA were able to burn with such velocity and ferocity that they could turn entire neighborhoods to ash in a matter of hours. To meaningfully address the underlying problems that led to a disaster of this magnitude, we need to ask serious questions and conduct serious inquiries, and we need to engage a range of perspectives to get the best outcomes possible. We are confident that, given its value and the commitment from people all over the U.S., the work to amplify diverse voices, build inclusive teams, and create equitable and accessible structures will continue—just as it always has every time it has come under attack. DEI did not start the fires, but we do need it to make us all safer in the future.
[1] Cisgender is a term that means that the sex/gender you were assigned at birth aligns with your internal sense of a gendered self (gender identity) and your external gender expression. Heterosexual is a term that means that you believe that there are only two genders and that you are sexually, physically, and romantically attracted to someone of the opposite gender.
[2] Cisgender is now considered a “slur” that violates community standards on the “free speech” platform formerly known as Twitter.
