Seven Myths About DEI Programs, Including That Critics Oppose Diversity

Folks, here is the odd thing about the great debate over diversity, equity and inclusion. Nobody who is for it will say what it is, and nobody who is against it gets to say what they are against. One side hears "I object to racial preferences in hiring" and reports it as "he hates diversity." It is a remarkable trick, like reporting that a man who objects to the price of a car must hate transportation.

So let us do this the old-fashioned way. Seven claims get repeated until they sound like facts. I am going to state each one, test it against the actual text of the law and the record, and give a verdict. A few of these myths live on the right as well as the left, and I will say so when they do, because a host who only scores points against one team is not a host, he is a cheerleader.

First, some terms you can hold in your hand

Diversity means a workplace or a campus whose people come from many backgrounds. Almost everyone is for it, and conservatives are no exception: the most diverse association in history is a free country that people travel across oceans to join.

Equity, as the programs use the word, is the one that causes the trouble. It means equal outcomes: results that are proportional across groups. That is different from equality, which means equal treatment under the same rules.

Inclusion means that people feel welcome. Nobody argues against being welcoming. The argument starts when welcoming is turned into a required set of beliefs.

Keep those three straight, because the whole debate is a shell game played with them. The program is sold under the first and third words. The controversy is about the second.

Myth one: "Critics of DEI oppose diversity"

Verdict: false. This is the headline myth, so it gets the longest treatment. The objection is not to people of different backgrounds working together. It is to three specific things: treating individuals differently because of their race or sex, requiring employees or students to affirm a particular set of political ideas, and measuring success by group outcomes rather than by fair rules.

Test it with the simplest possible question. Would a critic of DEI be satisfied by a company that recruited in every community, advertised every opening everywhere, published its pay scale, and judged every applicant by the same standard? Almost every critic would say yes, that is exactly what we want. A person who says that cannot be accused of opposing diversity. He is arguing for the means by which diverse people can succeed on equal terms.

The framing matters because the myth does a job. If the critic hates diversity, then nobody has to answer him. The accusation ends the conversation before the argument begins. That is not a rebuttal, it is a door slammed shut.

Myth two: "DEI is just equal opportunity with a new name"

Verdict: false, and the difference is the whole point. Equal opportunity is a rule about the starting line: the same doors open to everyone and the same test applied to all. The Fourteenth Amendment states it in a phrase that any child can memorise: no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction "the equal protection of the laws." The Civil Rights Act of 1964 states it for employment. Title VII makes it unlawful to discriminate against an individual because of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

Equity, in the way these programs define it, is a claim about the finish line. If the numbers at the finish do not match the numbers at the start, then something has gone wrong and must be corrected. Notice what this does. A rule that begins with fairness at the starting line can be satisfied by a fair process. A rule about the finish line can be satisfied only by adjusting the result, which means treating people differently on the way there.

Here is the thing nobody in that conference room wants to say out loud. You cannot guarantee equal outcomes without unequal treatment, and you cannot have equal treatment and promise equal outcomes. Pick one. The law picks equal treatment. The Founders picked it too, in the Declaration: all men are created equal. Equal in rights, not equal in results. The results are what free people make of their rights.

Myth three: "The Civil Rights Act requires DEI"

Verdict: false. The Act forbids discrimination. It does not mandate programs. Title VI says that no person shall, on the ground of race, color or national origin, be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination under any program receiving federal financial assistance. Title VII makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against any individual on those grounds.

Title VII also carries a clause, Section 703(j), saying that nothing in the title requires preferential treatment because of a numerical imbalance in a workforce. The drafters knew what they were doing. They were answering the exact worry that the Act would become a quota machine, and they answered it in the text. Sixty Years of Federal Affirmative Action Orders, From 1961 to 2025 follows how that answer was later stretched by executive order, which is a very different thing from a statute.

The fair counterpoint is that employers do have legitimate reasons to review their hiring pipelines and to protect themselves from discrimination claims, and a compliance office can do honest work. Nobody sensible objects to a firm checking whether its managers are following the law. The myth is the jump from "the law forbids discrimination" to "the law requires this particular apparatus." The text does not say it.

Myth four: "The Supreme Court's 2023 ruling banned DEI"

Verdict: false, and this one is a favourite on the right, so I will not let my own side off. Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, decided in 2023, held that the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the Equal Protection Clause. That was a ruling about admissions. It did not say a company cannot hold a mentoring lunch, and it did not outlaw the word "inclusion."

What the opinion did do is more interesting. The majority insisted that the diversity goals offered had to be measurable, that racial classifications could not be used as a negative against anyone, that they could not rest on stereotypes, and that they needed an end point. Those tests are not limited to colleges. Any program that sorts people by race, in any setting covered by Title VI or Title VII, now has to ask whether it could pass them. For the case in detail, see Students for Fair Admissions Ended an Experiment That Began With Bakke in 1978.

So the accurate version is this. The Court did not abolish a category called DEI. It put a heavy legal burden on any practice inside that category that classifies by race. A mentoring lunch open to all passes. A scholarship closed to everyone but one group has a problem. The difference between those two things is the entire legal question, and the headline writers on both sides skip it.

Myth five: "The trainings are harmless sensitivity sessions"

Verdict: it depends on the training, and that is exactly why you should read the materials. I am not going to tell you that every workshop is the same. Some are dull slide decks about treating colleagues politely, and nobody has ever been harmed by a polite colleague. The complaint is about a particular kind of content: sessions that teach that individuals bear collective moral responsibility because of their race, that certain groups are oppressors and others victims by category, or that ordinary workplace habits are signs of bias to be confessed.

The federal government itself drew this line in a 2020 executive order on "divisive concepts," which listed ideas such as one race being inherently superior, or an individual being inherently racist or oppressive by virtue of race. That order was rescinded in 2021, and the question of how far the government may go in regulating private training content has stayed in dispute. My point here is narrower. It is that critics did not invent a category: the order itself listed concepts it treated as divisive, among them the ideas that the United States is fundamentally racist, or that an individual bears responsibility for past acts of members of the same race or sex.

You do not have to take my word, or anyone's. If you work for a government agency or a public university, the training materials are very likely public records. Ask for them. A training that is really about treating people with respect will survive daylight. A training that does not want to be read has told you what you need to know.

Myth six: "Settled research proves DEI programs improve companies"

Verdict: not proven, and anybody who says otherwise should be asked for the citation. I want to be careful here, because I am not going to wave around a number I cannot check. What I can say is that the claim is a causal one, and causal claims need evidence that the program, not some other factor, produced the result. Firms that prosper tend to be able to afford programs of every kind, and that makes it very hard to tell what caused what.

Notice what the claim is doing in the public debate. It is a defence of a method by pointing to a promised result. If the result is profit, there is a name for the discipline that tests whether a practice produces profit: it is called competition. A firm that believes a program makes it more productive has every incentive to keep it, and nobody on the right proposes to stop a private firm from running a lawful program that its owners think pays. The objection is to the unlawful kind, and to the kind imposed by government or by pressure rather than chosen by owners. Corporate Activism Breaks the Deal Between a Company and Its Customers picks up that thread.

The burden of proof sits with the one who claims a benefit. Until the studies are shown, the honest position is: we do not know, and we should not require anyone to pay for a program on the strength of a slogan.

Myth seven: "Ending DEI means ending the fight against discrimination"

Verdict: false, and it is the myth most worth correcting. Discrimination because of race, sex, religion or national origin is illegal whether or not a firm has a DEI office. The 1964 Act is on the books. An employee who is fired for being black, or for being white, has a claim under it. The Supreme Court said in 1976, in McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Co., that Title VII protects white employees on the same terms as black ones. The statute says "any individual," and the Court read it to mean exactly that.

That is worth saying twice, because the myth rests on a hidden assumption: that the only way to fight discrimination is to have a specialised office with preferences built in. The conservative claim is the opposite. The most powerful anti-discrimination tool ever written is the plain rule of equal treatment, enforced by courts, with remedies that go to the person who was wronged. It does not need a goals-and-timetables apparatus, and it does not need a mandatory training. It needs a plaintiff, a judge and a jury.

I would go further. A person who believes in equal treatment should be the loudest enforcer of it. If a company passes over a qualified applicant because of race, that is the wrong the Act was written to stop, and it does not matter who the applicant is. Defending that principle for everyone is what makes it a principle instead of a tactic. Colorblind Law Is Not a Code Word, It Is Harlan's Dissent Made Good makes the longer case that this was the civil rights movement's own position.

What the other side deserves to have said for it

Fairness demands the strongest version of the defence, and here it is. Many people who run these programs did not set out to divide anyone. They saw real gaps, real stories of closed doors, and they built something to address them. Some trainings did get colleagues talking honestly. Some mentoring programs did help people who had no one to ask. A supporter may say that the critics have taken the worst example and treated it as the whole category, which is a charge conservatives make against the media all the time.

That argument deserves an answer, not an eye-roll. My answer is to take the defence at its word and keep what it describes: open recruiting, open mentoring, fair processes, clear standards, and strong enforcement of the law against actual discrimination. None of that requires classifying anyone by race to decide who gets the opportunity. If the programs are as good as their defenders say, they will survive being opened to everyone. If they cannot survive that, then the programme was never what the brochure said. For how these offices grew on campus and what closing them takes, see How DEI Offices Grew on Campus and What Closing Them Requires, and for the compelled-belief problem in hiring, DEI Statements Were Loyalty Oaths, and the Old Oath Cases Show Why.

There is also a question the myths never ask: who is better off when a rule treats people as members of a category? A family in Ohio that works two jobs does not experience life as an average of its demographic group. The Founders understood this. The Declaration speaks of the rights of individuals, and the Constitution protects "persons." The whole American experiment was a bet that people should be judged one at a time. I would keep making that bet. It has paid off before.

The case in brief

1. Critics of DEI are not against diversity. They object to racial preferences, required ideology and equal-outcome mandates, and they welcome fair recruiting open to all.
2. Equal opportunity and equity are different rules. The Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act choose equal treatment, and you cannot guarantee equal outcomes without unequal treatment.
3. The 2023 admissions ruling did not ban DEI as such, but it set tests of measurability, no negative use of race, no stereotyping and an end point, which any race-sorting practice must now face.
4. Claims about training content and business results should be checked: ask for the materials, ask for the study, and put the burden on the party claiming the benefit.
5. Ending preference programs does not end the fight against discrimination, because the 1964 Act protects every individual and anyone who is wronged can sue.

What you can do: if you work for or study at a public institution, file a public-records request for its diversity training materials, read them yourself, and form your own view.