What Is the Difference Between DEI and D&I Anyway?
Adding “equity” to create “DEI” means we have to look beyond the business case.
By: Lucy Arciniega, Ph.D. & Missy Maceyko, Ph.D.
Co-Founders of Willing Observers LLC, an anthropology-based DEI firm
In the midst of a global pandemic, as many employees were adjusting to a new normal of working from home, the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police further destabilized places of work. The overwhelming world-wide response to this injustice made it clear—even to those who would rather not admit it—that organizations are embedded in and impacted by the everyday dynamics of society. Seemingly overnight, companies responded by re-branding, adding the term “equity” to their diversity and inclusion efforts to create “DEI.” As part of an “equity” focus, many human resource and diversity professionals hired guest lecturers and instructors to explain white supremacy, racism, and structural inequalities to their employees. A smaller number of companies began the meaningful work of re-examining their fundamental belief systems, values, and normative practices to ask: How is inequity reproduced every day in this organization?
So, what is the difference between DEI and D&I anyway? “Diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” are often grouped together, but they are distinct terms with different meanings. Because they are distinct terms, incorporating “equity” into “diversity and inclusion” is not only a matter of adding a new letter to an old acronym. Its addition transforms the concept and forces us to seriously grapple with D&I’s entanglement with profit.
As suggested, to unpack the fundamental difference between DEI and D&I, it is important to first understand each term on its own.
Diversity
The term “diversity” refers to the condition of having a variety of meaningful social and cultural differences, but it is more than a descriptive term: It is a political one. Diversity is most popularly used to refer to historical underrepresentation in major public institutions, which has undoubtedly been the result of the ways in which legacies of racism and sexism have been woven into bureaucracies, structures, and norms. Periodically, however, corporate employers use the term “diversity” more loosely to refer to any meaningful differences in an organization that impact the bottom line (e.g., Myers-Briggs personalities, types of university degrees held, performance on an aptitude test). These latter interpretations of diversity are often scrutinized when companies claim to be committed to diversity, but hire all white teams.
Diversity is how we make sense of who is in the room and who is not and why this is the case. While it can mean different things in different locations and contexts, it is also historically significant. Understanding this history is important for building a vision of the society in which we want to live. Abstracting diversity to mean almost anyone and linking the impetus for diversity to profit sabotages the difficult work of advocating for those who have been, and continue to be, marginalized.
Inclusion
“Inclusion” refers to the act of creating a sense of belonging among a particular group of people in a particular space. Employers may use inclusion to refer to acts that make people feel valued, respected, and appreciated. However, people feel included in different ways. For example, employees may express a sense of belonging when their employer schedules a work meeting at a restaurant that accommodates their dietary restrictions, when they know they are being paid equitably, and when they know their input is appreciated in team meetings. People express feelings of belonging differently across space and time. For instance, in interviews with specific companies, we have found that some employees know they are being paid under market value but would not leave a company because they feel supported in other ways (in one instance, because they feel empowered to correct their executives in meetings!). Others admit that while they could ask for a raise, they feel guilty because they already think they are “making too much.” These kinds of findings exemplify that inclusion initiatives cannot embrace a one-size-fits-all approach. Even as we continue working for pay equity, we also have to address employees’ qualitative needs and wants. This requires us to understand how our organization’s culture works and to intentionally create self-aware individuals who are appreciative of social differences. Inclusion requires us to live and work intentionally.
Equity (vs. Equality)
“Equity” refers to the idea of employing values and practices that aim to address the needs of individuals to ensure well-being across a group of people. When it comes to describing marginalization in society, those who advocate for the use of the term “equity,” do so intentionally, comparing it to “equality.”
“Equality” refers to the idea that everyone is, at the core, the same, and should be treated equally. Equality gained popularity, in an affirmative action context, as civil rights’ advocates argued that people should not be discriminated against in the workplace or in education. They invoked the Constitution of the United States, which states that “all men are created equal,” to demand equal treatment. In recent decades, however, others use the term equity to acknowledge the fact that we are not actually born equal: some individuals and groups have more access to opportunities and resources. As such, to address social harms, everyone must be treated differently, according to their needs. Children are often taught about equity using the Band-Aid example: if one child is hurt, it makes no sense to provide a Band-Aid to every child. We must recognize that treating everyone in the same way will not guarantee similar outcomes in a diverse society.
“Inequality” and “inequity” are also distinct terms. Inequality refers to the idea that individuals are treated differently and/or receive resources disproportionately in terms of size, degree, or amount. Inequity refers specifically to a lack of fairness inherent in structures that provide these resources. Whereas inequality indicates an imbalance, inequity points to unfairness or injustice. For example, some schools may receive an unequal amount of federal funding according to public or private status (inequality). Yet, racial and economic inequity is embedded in public school funding, because this funding itself is tied to property taxation. Public schools in poor neighborhoods, therefore, receive less funding as compared to those in wealthier neighborhoods (inequity). This results in larger class sizes and under-resourced classrooms.
DEI vs. D&I: Challenges to the Profit Motive
Many scholars of diversity have shown that diversity, as a concept, emerged in the 1980s, as public support for affirmative action declined. On one hand, opponents to race-focused initiatives sued, arguing that certain practices such as hiring and university admission quotas were an example of “reverse discrimination.” On the other hand, diversity advocates argued that similar initiatives could benefit everyone. Most notably, R. Roosevelt Thomas (1991), now widely recognized as one of the founders of the diversity movement, wrote that promoting women and minorities in the workplace was a business imperative, as it made companies more competitive. This “turn” in diversity management led to a burgeoning literature on how diversity is different from affirmative action initiatives, as the former can improve individual and team productivity, address employee and customer needs, and reduce turnover, among other things.
In 2022, many diversity scholars, consultants, and emergent practitioners continue to argue that mentorship, sponsorship, succession programs, training, community engagements, social responsibility initiatives, etc. will only be sustainable if people (i.e., managers and executives) understand how it helps them achieve their bottom-line. This is despite feminist and antiracism scholars demonstrating how diversity carried out in this way helps reproduce and even legitimize exploitative practices of corporations at home and abroad. For instance, critics have argued that diversity management is a decentered way to control and exploit workers, helps legitimize wars in racialized countries when they are led by American women and men of color, and that it can help reproduce white supremacy, as “diversity” has long been a way to appeal to white men who otherwise resisted initiatives to address racism and sexism at work.
Thus, those who work in social justice and equity spaces suggest that there is incompatibility between equity—and thus the move to DEI—and exclusively pursuing profit.
Moreover, there is enough history and analysis of the way political economic systems work to support this argument. For example, enslaving individuals into unpaid labor, paying women less than men, overburdening individuals with work, not paying for care-related responsibilities, and ignoring responsibilities to communities and environments, all are examples of inequitable practices that result in profits. For instance, after George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police, calls for abolition, that is, dismantling the prison system and police, gained popularity, especially as critics called into question the profit motive and ethical imperative of private prisons. When economic growth is the only motivation to structuring organizations, this leads to justifying inequities, which reproduce hierarchies across race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, sexual identities, ability, and other socially marginalized differences. As such, these understandings of the profit incentive have led many to have a cynical view of diversity work, in general. Yet, we also contend that racial and gendered forms of exploitation exist across industries, regardless of the existence of a profit motive.
Individual organizational efforts will not eliminate inequities in toto but, for many of us, they are a good starting place. At Willing Observers LLC, we believe that one way to do equity work well, as part of DEI strategy, is to re-examine everyday, mundane practices, norms, values and beliefs that are integral to how our workplaces operate. This necessarily entails re-envisioning what “diversity work” could look like, including re-visiting our relationship to the profit motive. Through this awareness and self-reflexivity, we can create the culture-shift necessary to create a radical transformation of our society.
It is true that in contemporary American society profits motivate most businesses and organizations. Yet, at Willing Observers LLC, we share two fundamental beliefs: that we cannot wait to topple exploitative economic systems to create cultural change and that the pursuit of profit is not the only way to institutionalize DEI work. Through our sustained research and consulting, we have seen nonprofit and community organizations innovatively weave diversity, equity, and inclusion practices into their mission, transforming the way they recruit, organize meetings and events, communicate with each other, and provide resources for their communities. We have also seen firsthand how businesses are working to integrate DEI into the fabric of their organizations by taking accountability seriously. For example, some organizations are working to identify key behaviors and practices that make up DEI values so they can more effectively assess managers and employees during their review processes. Additionally, scorecards have become a popular way to track progress of DEI initiatives across time, allowing professionals the opportunity to re-evaluate and fine-tune their strategies.
To be clear, as anthropologists, we do not believe that DEI work will solve the world’s problems (in fact, it is likely that in their implementation, we may even produce new ones). However, it is clear to us that doing nothing means reproducing the status quo and, with it, practices, norms, and behaviors that reproduce inequities along race, gender, sexuality, and other historically marginalized differences. We are optimistic that introducing “equity” into diversity and inclusion, moving from D&I to DEI, can help us challenge some of the most basic cultural assumptions we have made about how our societies function. This re-examination is necessary if we truly are serious about re-making our workplace to reflect the kind of society in which we want to live.
