Has America's experiment with diversity ended?

Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) had become a big thing a few years back. There was a big political push and Silicon Valley embraced the concept. But off late it is seeing some backlash. Tech giants like Google, Facebook and Zoom have slashed their DEI programs. Hiring in this sector has started to shrink. DEI advocacy groups are seeing a decline in funding.

BlackRock is a giant investment company with $11.5 trillion in “assets under management”. Their Aladdin tech platform introduced in 2013 was a big success. It successfully picks up which companies to invest automatically. BlackRock introduced a DEI like ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) which was integrated into Aladdin. Companies now had no choice but to concentrate on things like DEI and sustainability or else they would be downgraded. Now Republican states are going after BlackRock for the same. There was also the US Supreme Court decision to end affirmative action at colleges.

Hollywood was big on DEI. It used GenAI to make sure that it was being followed. The algorithms would ensure diverse characters were created and that they would follow a storyline integrating DEI. The results have been disastrous. The box office has virtually crashed, and many big budget movies are in the red. The biggest disappointments have been the lucrative MCU and Star Wars franchises which have totally collapsed in the age of DEI.

DEI and US politics

The same thing has happened in US politics. Kamala Harris is the ultimate diversity candidate. She is a woman. She is half African American. She is half Indian American. She was a new fresh face which the Democratic party unanimously selected. She collapsed on the Internet and Donald Trump (much hated by the Liberals) secured a victory which could probably be called the best Republican one since 1988.

US Conservatives have been against forced diversity from the very beginning. Donald Trump in his first term had curbed DEI. He is expected to be much tougher in his second term. 

As you can see, it’s just not Silicon Valley but elsewhere in the corporate and political world that DEI is falling out of favour. The question to be asked is: Is this a blip or is it the end of America’s experiment with diversity?

In this context, the man of the moment Elon Musk posted a scathing Tweet…

DEI must DIE.

The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different discrimination.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2023

A startup founder went on to talk of MEI instead of DEI…

Today we’ve formalized an important hiring policy at Scale. We hire for MEI: merit, excellence, and intelligence.

This is the email I’ve shared with our @scale_AI team.

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MERITOCRACY AT SCALE

In the wake of our fundraise, I’ve been getting a lot of questions…

— Alexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang) June 13, 2024