Do Or Dei There S Little Merit In The New Bandwagon

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If you haven’t heard of DEI before, you will certainly be hearing about it now. A lot. The US initiatives based on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion were aimed at opening up more opportunities – education, jobs, promotions, etc – which were previously hard to come by for minorities.
Here, “minorities” holds a wide meaning – women (they’re indeed a minority in many areas of business), marginal ethnic groups, those with disabilities as well as those with different sexual and gender orientations.
DEI has been a big deal for many years. Many corporations, including huge US tech companies, went full-on into it, perhaps as part of their “do-no-evil” ethos. Then the backlash happened.
The “majority”, which in the West means white males, started claiming that these actions amounted to discrimination against them. “White males” is a stereotype. There are certainly some non-white and non-male in that segment, even if actual white males are the predominant group.
DEI then got dragged into the culture war, which in one instance, the recent US presidential election, resulted in a major political shift.
Donald Trump had campaigned for the US presidency by claiming, among others, that DEI initiatives had resulted in a weak America. According to him, merit was ignored by many “woke” organisations in favour of the desire to look good.
Boeing’s problems
DEI had been blamed for many things, up to the decline of western civilisation, and even bigger, more consequential things too.
For example, it’s been blamed for the woes facing Boeing, the aerospace company. The argument goes that because of DEI, Boeing hired unqualified people who built defective planes.
This supposedly led to the crashes of Boeing 737 aircrafts in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018 and 2019, and the serious mishap with the Alaska Airlines plane in early 2024.
Here, a version of DEI-shaming happened, that the pilots were not as good as Western pilots. Perhaps it should be described as brown-shaming instead, or perhaps DEI is just the modern version of the “N” word.
However, when Boeing agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges for lying to US aviation authorities regarding the crashes, people should have accepted that perhaps it wasn’t a DEI issue after all.
Greed, not DEI
Many actually blamed Boeing’s short-term culture of maximising profits rather than building safe aircraft as the main cause. In other words, greed, and not DEI.
How difficult is it to believe that greed can wreak havoc on people’s lives? But hey, why let facts ruin a good story, Trump certainly didn’t.
Many Americans now see DEI hiring, the use of gender pronouns, affirmative action in university admittance, etc, as being among the most important problems facing the US.
And since then, there was the unfortunate passenger jet collision with a military helicopter over Washington DC, also being blamed by Trump on DEI.
It’s too early to know what actually happened. The investigations would take months and the results would likely be less sensational than the anti-DEI claims being bandied about.
For many, that doesn’t matter. For them, the accident was evidence enough that DEI is bad, justifying Trump’s harsh actions to abolish it and the actions of many corporations anxious to fall in line with the prevailing political wind.
Malaysian bandwagon
Many Malaysian corporations had also jumped on the DEI bandwagon, happily shared in their glossy brochures and social media pages. However, they, and many Malaysian subsidiaries of American corporations, are likely to halt their DEI programmes soon. It’s just a matter of when, not if.
I’m not making a case for DEI. I know there are some weaknesses in it. But I’d argue also that “shareholder’s value” is a really dangerous creed, one that actually caused death and much destruction of life and the environment.
But why would greed that creates billionaires while impoverishing and endangering the rest of us be supported and desired by so many?
Here’s my take.
Even while we suffer the consequences of unbridled greed, many of us look with envy on those who profited from greed, and aspire to emulate them.
As far as I know, none of the supporters of DEI wish to cripple themselves to take advantage of DEI. Or turn themselves brown or black, or change their sexual orientation. It’s not fun being marginalised.
Why? Because there isn’t that much to be gained from it. DEI policies everywhere are just minor programmes most companies participate in without – as we’re now seeing – truly believing in it, while doing the least and shouting the loudest about it.
At this stage, there’s no business or political will to keep DEI going. Now that there’s “permission” from powerful, if malign, forces, ripping it up becomes easy.
Our affirmative action
Malaysians are certainly familiar with affirmative action – a core part of achieving DEI. This involves the Malays getting special treatment to help them move up the country’s economic ladder.
In fact, one particular kind of corporation – government-linked companies – was invented specifically for this purpose.
Given our own affirmative action is in its sixth decade, with no sign of ending despite much evidence it’s hurting the country while becoming more unaffordable, I’d say we have an actually valid DEI problem of our own.
For the many who have enjoyed the benefits of Malaysia’s affirmative action, I’d say opposing DEI is the most hypocritical thing.
DEI, while not perfect, is driven by a kinder instinct to give those less fortunate some help they’d never have otherwise received. It’s not charity, it’s rather the luckier among us being charitable.
All this talk about merit in arguing against DEI is, well, meritless. If you look at the nominations to the new US Cabinet (some of which had been withdrawn) you’d see that the only merit of most nominees is that they’re white, male, and loyal to Trump.
Another smokescreen
Being anti-DEI is just another smokescreen to detract from the many intractable problems facing the US – cost of living, unaffordable healthcare, environmental damage, wealth disparity and many other issues driven by unbridled greed.
It’s easy to blame things like DEI. Your enemies are mostly women, non-white and often disabled. Sign a few papers, declare victory and turn your eyes away from the real suffering of your fellow humans.
Being a beneficiary of Malaysia’s DEI myself, back from the days when it wasn’t called that, I certainly am grateful for it. But I also think it’s way past time we relook this policy, and examine whether it’s still achieving its original objectives.
But for this larger battle in the US –and soon the world – against DEI, please remember it’s always easy for the haves to hurt the have-nots.
It’s easy to set up a strawman – which here is mostly female, non-white, disabled, marginalised or just different from the majority – and use your power or wealth to beat them down.
But that’s hardly the sign of a society that has made progress. It’s just giving free rein to our worst instincts, and it’s not something that we should be proud of. - FMT
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.

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