Why DEI Often Fails

Most people feel like they don’t belong, which is kind of crazy when you consider the concept.

If most people struggle with acceptance, love, value, and belonging, then when they devalue others, are they trying to increase their value or level set?

It's a bit of a backward concept, but my podcast guest this week, Karith Foster, and I aim to navigate it.

Narcissism and DEI

Karith Foster is a friend I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of years ago when she was a previous guest on the Impact Driven Leader Podcast, Episode 106.

I really enjoyed catching up with her, revisiting some old conversations, and discussing the here and now.

Karith has had a varied career working in television, as a stand-up comic, speaker, author, and mom.

Each role has given her a unique angle on leading the discussion of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI).

None as much as the season she finds herself in now, as a mother of 2 and navigating changes in her life.

These changes, fresh and in the moment, are giving Karith the most profound view of DEI she has had in her speaking career.

She termed it Narcissism and DEI. I find it pretty profound. The entire concept of DEI, as it is known in our corporate world, is that the general population of workers needs to change their view towards others in order to make them feel accepted and allow them acceptance in our work environments.

This has nothing to do with value, but as Karith mentioned, it is essential to establish victimhood when no tangible or actionable offense has occurred.

As I mentioned, this is a very new perspective that Karith shares and centers on her own experiences.

Finding Ourself

In the 2003 movie Finding Nemo, Nemo’s father, Marlin, goes on a quest to find his lost son.

But the journey has much more to do with Marlin finding himself and making sense of his life after his wife's death.

Marlin’s journey of finding himself went from being a victim of a father who lost his wife and son to being comfortable with himself and his son.

We are so lost in this world because people feel like they need to become something they aren’t or force others to become something different to find what they aren’t.

It's a never-ending cycle of victimhood.  I’m lost; because of that, you, too, are lost because you can’t be found if I’m lost.  So, for me to find myself, you need to lose.

This leads to more and more Gaslighting and Victimhood.

Gaslighting and Victimhood

Gaslighting has become wildly popular in the last six​​ years. In 2022, Websters-Mirriam named it the word of the year, and gaslight was the ‘most useful’ word.

Both of these facts I just learned and can't help but think of coincidences…but I digress.

Gaslighting, the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for one's own advantage, is all about creating victimhood.

Misleading someone for your advantage is best done when you are the victim, not the beneficiary.

For DEI to have legs, it must establish and reaffirm that victims are people who have been harmed or are actively being harmed by workplace dynamics, circumstances, policies, or actions.

While I am not trying to say these have never been the case, I contend there are many situations in which ‘victims’ have been created to justify.

I believe the biggest stand in the latest elections was taken by people who pushed against this phenomenon, and elected officials from both parties are sensing it.

Stalwarts of the cause have seen incongruent voting (voting for the Democratic candidate in one race and the Republican candidate in another race) and are asking, “What gives?”.

What gives is that people stand up and say enough is enough.

They are saying, ‘Stop convincing me I’m ‘wrong’; rather, let's all work to understand how we are all ‘right.’

No Victims Here

In his book Hero on a Mission, Donald Miller identifies the four characters in every story: the victim, the villain, The Hero, and The Guide.

Each great narrative has all four; the transformative opportunity is that one person can be all four at some point. Yet the Victim, or the villain, can’t become the Hero or ultimately the Guide if they stay as the Victim or the Villian.

The central character has to accept guidance from the Guide to become the Hero.

How does the Hero become the Hero? With the transformative guidance from the Guide, they find that the strength to be a Hero is inside them. The Hero simply needs to discover their superpower and often uses it to slay the villain and rescue the innocent Victim.

Yes, in case you are wondering, this is just like the Excel spreadsheet warning that there is a “circular reference”! It's one big connected loop.

Delivering the Punchline

Tragedy plus time becomes comedy. When someone says “too soon,” they aren’t saying it won't be funny at some point; they are saying the tragedy hasn’t aged enough to be a comedy.

The time will come; it's just not yet time.

The best comedians know how and when to deliver the punchline. They build the right amount of tension so the audience yearns for the relief of the laugh.

When Karith shared that she went to a 99% white school in Texas that did the production of “A Raisin in the Sun,” she delivered the punch line. She did not need to explain that, as one of the 12 black girls in the school, she might have been the Raisin. Her delivery told the story.

There will come a day when we will laugh about the time when DEI mandates forced office dynamics, training, and hiring practices.

Right now might be a little ‘too soon’ for some, but it's on the setlist.

We will all laugh when we do enough work on ourselves to understand that the joke is on us. Then, the victim becomes the hero, able to guide others.

Did you catch this podcast? If not, listen to it here.