A DEI Hire for President? The Value of Diversity in the Workplace
Within days of Vice President Kamala Harris’s emergence as the 2024 presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, Republicans began targeting her race (non-white) and gender (female).
She’s a DEI hire, the New York Post, which is closely connected to the FOX TV network, declared on its Op-ed page. The Op-ed piece was written by Charles Gasparino, a FOX Business Network senior correspondent. Never mind that hardly anyone ever has heard of him. The Post ran his piece because it wanted to get that idea into the minds of Trump Republicans. The name of the author was irrelevant. The strategy worked.
The clear intention was to imply that if Harris were to be elected President, it would be because of her race and gender; because she is not otherwise qualified to be President. That is what the term “DEI hire” has come to mean in America.
The outrageous foundation of this idea is that it is not possible for someone who is not a white male to be the best person for a top job.
“DEI hire,” thus, has become code for people who are believed to have been hired because their race, gender, sexual preferences, or sexual orientation does not match the majority of people in most workplaces, specifically, white males. Many Republicans today find it convenient to believe that if hiring were based strictly on qualifications for a particular job, only white males would be hired for top jobs.
But let’s back up a bit. DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) grew out of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and the dawn of Affirmative Action as a guiding philosophy in hiring. DEI, essentially, is a rebranding of Affirmative Action, which, under Federal law, could not compromise valid job qualifications.
Affirmative Action has been thrown out by the Supreme Court, but it was binding at the time DEI emerged. Thus, the original idea behind DEI was that persons being hired – in addition to being highly qualified for a position – also would bring the perspective of a member of one or more non-majority groups in the American workplace.
Kamala Harris definitely fits this intended meaning of DEI. She is as highly qualified in terms of experience, education, and achievement as any person in America might be for the job of President. She also would look at America and her job differently than any previous President because she would be the first woman and the first non-white multi-ethnic person to become president in the 235-year history of the country. The result absolutely would be beneficial for the entire country.
No Such Thing as the Single Most Qualified Candidate for a Job
For more than a quarter century, I worked as a supervising editor and then a media executive in the newspaper industry. I hired or played a major role in hiring more than 100 people, all of them professionals and in key positions.
Each of those hiring decisions was among the most important decisions of any kind that I made. I used to explain it this way: If I make five hires this year, when I sit down at the end of the year to make a list of the 10 most important decisions I made during the year, the list will include all five of those hires.
A hiring opportunity always is a gift to the organization, a chance to grow, improve, and infuse new thinking into an organization. There are few decisions in business – or any organization – that are as critical to the success of the entity as hiring decisions.
Moreover, it did not take me long to learn that contrary to popular thinking, there seldom, if ever, is a single person who clearly rises above all other candidates for any particular job opening. Instead, there almost always are several applicants who rise to the top tier of candidacy and each of them brings a somewhat different set of assets, credentials, and qualifications.
The hiring choice ultimately is made from this small pool of candidates, all of whom are technically qualified for the job and all of whom would likely do well in the job. The choice, then, has to be based on the specific set of qualifications as well as the personal history factors that seem to bring the best total package into the workplace.
A key element here is that personal history can include several things that are important in the workplace. One of them, for example, is having overcome a setback in work history, or even in personal life.
It has been well established in many studies that people who overcome a career setback or a personal obstacle often develop a resolve to succeed, a determination to excel, or an understanding of how to overcome obstacles that can be beneficial in the workplace.
History is full of such examples.
Thomas Edison was expelled from school because he was considered incapable of learning. His mother pushed him to continue his education on his own. He did. The result was the light bulb, the electrification of America, and more than 1,000 patents.
Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first job as a television news anchor in Baltimore. She went on to use television as her primary tool for becoming the wealthiest woman in America.
Howard Schultz was rebuffed by his employer, Starbucks Coffee, for efforts to get the company to use its packaged-coffee retail outlets to sell coffee by the cup. He quit his job, started his own coffee company, and four years later bought Starbucks and its 20 stores for $3.8 million. He quickly began brewing and selling coffee by the cup in the stores. The company now has 38,000 stores and $36 billion in annual sales.
Abraham Lincoln failed in several attempts to operate a small business. Harry Truman was co-owner of a haberdashery in Kansas City, Missouri, that went broke in 1921 after two years of operation. As Presidents, Lincoln won the Civil War and Truman made the final decisions in winning World War II. Both are ranked by historians among the ten best presidents in American history.
Another factor that can and should come into play in making a hiring decision is the makeup of a management team or workgroup.
Having a diverse management team or workgroup is essential in today’s world. A management team or a workgroup composed entirely or mostly of people with similar backgrounds limits any organization in terms of growth, understanding its customer base, finding solutions to difficult problems, and adapting to changing conditions in society.
The bottom line here is that any business, organization, or workgroup that wants to prosper, grow, and meet the needs of a changing America requires a diverse group of thinkers, planners, and doers. It must be inclusive of people with different backgrounds.
Studies, for example, have found that women are more ethical, empathetic, and able to work out compromises than men. They often spend more time than men studying and preparing for discussions involving complex issues.
Studies also have shown that racial minorities can bring a broader range of ideas and improved communications into the workplace.
Diversity brings a group of people to the table who are able to see and understand a particular situation in different ways. The more factors you can foresee in designing a solution to a problem or understanding market change, the better your chance to create a winning solution.
Today’s term: Inclusion
Since the Supreme Court overturned Affirmative Action last year, DEI has been on the wane in terms of usage.
Recent thinking now has focused on the simple idea of inclusion – making sure that policies and practices in the workplace are inclusive for persons of all races, genders, sexual orientations, religions, national origins, and levels of physical ability/disability.
Such inclusion can be an asset of inestimable importance for any organization.
Or for a democratic country.
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Interesting observation and worth thinking about. My point, perhaps poorly made, was that he isn't the kind name that often lands on an op-ed piece in a big-city newspaper; the Post, perhaps, was desperate for someone to make the point he made because it didn't want to make it themselves but wanted the idea to be planted with its audience.
Thanks for putting DEI in context.