'The DEI Industry Needs to Check Its Privilege'
tarahenley.substack.com
Jun 7 • 27M
'The DEI Industry Needs to Check Its Privilege'
My interview with Conor Friedersdorf, staff writer at The Atlantic
Appears in this episode
Tara Henley
Conversations with heterodox authors and journalists from around the world, asking the questions that are not being asked.
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In recent years, we have seen the diversity, equity, and inclusion industry explode in popularity and prevalence. But my guest on today’s program says that at its worst, DEI runs from useless to counterproductive. And he thinks companies would be better off giving the lavish DEI consulting fees directly to the poor.
Conor Friedersdorf is a staff writer at The Atlantic, and the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, a Substack newsletter that highlights exceptional non-fiction writing. Last week, he published a piece at The Atlantic titled “The DEI Industry Needs to Check Its Privilege.”
Conor Friedersdorf is my guest, today on Lean Out. Transcript to come for paid subscribers.
'The DEI Industry Needs to Check Its Privilege'
This guy actually thinks The Atlantic is an open minded publication. It is so progressive and self righteous that I can no longer bear to read it. It is good for me to hear his side of the issues you talked about. It reinforces my mistrust of the progressive lens, although I see a few cracks starting to form. Maybe there's hope yet.
“It’s the impact, not the intent”.
I am forced to sign up to that slogan annually courtesy of my employers HR diversity & inclusion program. I only discovered a few weeks ago it’s a direct quote from Jacques Derrida, who was building from Roland Barthes’ essays on ‘death of the author’. Both of these are core writers of postmodern Theory.
This innocent sounding slogan is a license to nitpick the speakers words to deliberately find fault with them and cause (‘beautiful’) trouble.
The purpose of the impact/intent line is to mute the speaker, which is exactly the effect it has had on my workplace. We walk around on eggshells scared to speak the truth lest we offend a DEI commissar hiding in the shadows somewhere.
Why is my employer pushing anti- science, anti-truth, anti-evidence, post-liberal ideology based on Marxism? The answer is they probably don’t even realize it, some DEI consultant in head office decided it was the solution for a higher DEI corporate score and no one dared challenge it.
It’s not just DEI, it’s also CEI, HEI, MEI.. all under the umbrella program of ESG. The only credible person speaking I’ve found speaking truth to power on this is Dr. James Lindsay with his ‘New Discourses’ Spotify and youtube channels. Do yourself a favor and listen to his ESG cartel podcast and if you really want to follow the white rabbit down the rabbit hole, then watch his 30min speech to an EU forum earlier this year.