Re: Op-ed: DEI has to go, our businesses and future depend on it
Ah, the dream of a workplace where everyone thinks alike, acts alike and innovates at the exact same pace as a fax machine in 1997. A corporate utopia where diversity of thought is replaced by a perfectly synchronized chorus of agreement, where the highest achievement isn’t groundbreaking ideas but mastering the art of nodding enthusiastically in meetings.
This is the future the anti-DEI crowd longs for and, frankly, I say let’s give it to them. Because what’s better than a workforce so homogenized, so perfectly bland, that it becomes the human equivalent of sliced white bread, the kind that somehow lasts forever, has the nutritional value of packing peanuts, and disintegrates into soggy mush if exposed to anything remotely interesting, like butter or independent thought?
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Imagine the sheer joy of running a business where every employee is an indistinguishable cog in a beige, frictionless machine. No disagreements, no innovation, just the smooth, mindless efficiency of a Roomba stuck in a corner.
Let’s be honest, the old guard already hates my generation and the ones that follow. We ask too many questions, want things like work-life balance and have the audacity to expect purpose in our careers.
But if they think we’re a problem now, just wait until they’re left with a workforce that wasn’t taught to think critically at all. Want to solve a supply chain issue? Too bad, no one knows how to problem-solve. Trying to increase profitability? Good luck, because the entire strategy team has been trained to do nothing but follow orders with the enthusiasm of a DMV employee at closing time. Need someone to convert a Word document to a PDF? That knowledge was lost generations ago along with Latin, cursive handwriting and macramé.
But, hey! At least it’ll be peaceful. No one will challenge ideas, question authority or, heaven forbid, suggest a better way to do things. Every meeting will be a celebration of the status quo, a sacred ritual of agreeing that whatever’s already in place must be the best way forward because, well, change is scary.
And if the company tanks because no one was able to foresee problems or adapt? Well, that’s just the price of doing business in a world where variety is considered a threat and different perspectives are seen as dangerous instead of valuable.
So, by all means, let’s gut education spending. Let’s ensure future generations are blissfully unencumbered by things like logic, analysis or the ability to see connections between different ideas. Let’s create the most vanilla workforce possible, one that functions best in predictable conditions but crumbles into a useless mess the moment someone tries to spread a little innovation on top.
Just don’t be surprised when the next great business strategy is: maybe we should try turning the company off and see if it turns back on again?
