Incorporating an Anti-Ageist and Anti-Ableist Lens into DEI Work

In the wake of the racial justice uprisings triggered by the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, organizations across the United States pivoted quickly to incorporate programs focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into their long-term operations. Though the inequities laid bare by Mr. Floyd’s killing are, in the American context, not new, the barbaric and very public nature of his Calvary seemed to convince business leaders across sectors that, no matter our profession, we all have a role to play in healing our society’s long festering social fissures.

In the years since, the political winds have again shifted and an increasing number of pundits, media personalities, and politicians have levied vociferous attacks targeting DEI as a concept. A slew of think pieces have been published by right-leaning publications and authors in recent months that characterize DEI as a Pollyannaish and/or untenable collection of “elitist” mores that are unrelated at best and detrimental at worst to realizing most businesses’ core raisons d’être (Butcher, 2023; Maranto et al., 2022). Some commentators went so far as to blame DEI initiatives for the rapid collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in early 2023 (Kessler, 2023; Otten, 2023; Qiu, 2023).

While many of these critiques are rooted in unqualified political bias or outright racial animus, I believe there has been a fundamental flaw in the way many organizations have approached the creation and development of their DEI departments. In the summer of 2020, DEI programs were assembled in such haste that many companies seem not to have given themselves time to figure out which specific problems those programs would solve. This has led to the creation of many DEI departments that suffer from a lack of specificity in their objectives. DEI encompasses a wide breadth of work and the term—because it has become common parlance—can mean very different things to different stakeholders. Specificity is key, and before creating a DEI department, organizations need to have a concrete sense of which issues they are looking to address. […]