In recent months, there has been lots of movement on the topic of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). Some companies, such as Target, have reduced their DEI efforts. Others, like Costco, have announced a recommitment to DEI. 

The Trump administration has moved to eliminate DEI in federal agencies and any organizations that receive federal funding. Universities have reacted to this with concern.

Meanwhile, professional associations in the public relations industry have also weighed in. For example, the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) has a panel in the next few weeks addressing DEI “pushback.” Recently, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) released a position affirming its own commitment to DEI. The position was discussed at a Member Monday session, in which PRSA 2025 Chair Ray Day insulted those with alternative views to DEI as “being confused.” But leaders like him have not bothered to eliminate their own confusion about the pushback to DEI. Much of it is well-reasoned.

All of the above turmoil about DEI is evidence of diversity. That is to say, there is a diversity of opinions about diversity. 

Diversity, as well as equity and inclusion, are general concepts for which there is a large majority of people in favor. But DEI as it manifests itself in some cases as a specific program to achieve diversity is where there are legitimate differences on the nature of the problem, the causes of the problem, the scope of the problem, and its attendant solutions. DEI, as a set of assertions, attributions, assumptions, programs and policies, in many organizations violates the very principles of diversity, equity and inclusion. This is why many people—including many persons from what would be called minority groups (examples listed below)—object to DEI even as they endorse diversity.

I heard from several veteran PRSA members who were upset about PRSA’s statement. It assumes there should be one perspective on DEI, and that all members do or should share it. It expects compliance. Comments on PRSA’s social sites showed that there are differing opinions on the many nuances of DEI. But the responses showed that  other PRSA members violated the premise of diversity—as well as PRSA’s previous statements on ethics and civility—by descending into gaslighting, stereotyping, ad hominem attack and other emotional and childish rhetoric that showed no consideration given to inclusion of multiple opinions and equity of expression. 

I have experienced the same form of hypocrisy from PRSA when leadership denied me a seat on the national board saying I had violated its diversity policy when I expressed my Christian worldview on my personal blog. Read more about that episode here. 

So what are the objections to DEI? Not all DEI programs manifest themselves in the same way. But many do claim to champion diversity even as they stifle it. Here’s a list or problems:

• It is based on anti-American values, namely critical race theory, which stems from critical theory, which emerged from the Frankfort School populated by Marxist philosophers. DEI’s roots are in the philosophy of Herbert Mercuse and his student Angela Davis, who basically claimed that dividing people by social class didn’t work so they would need to try division by race and gender. The whole point is division to gain power. Independent journalist Christopher Rufo does an excellent and objective summary of this—in which you can take Mercuse, Davis and others at their word—in his book “America’s Cultural Revolution.” 
• The insistence on the false dichotomy of seeing the world as if everyone is ether an oppressor or a victim. Another socialist philosopher, Paulo Freire, wrote a book called “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” to indoctrinate the next generation through school curriculum. Paradoxically, this curriculum was tried and was rejected in socialist nations yet has its advocates in the United States, more of a “land of opportunity” than many countries around the world. Many of the people who reject the false “oppressor-victim” perspective are the very people DEI oppressively insists are victims. Take for example Blexit, a grassroots organization of Black Americans who are taking a “Black exit” from the victim mentality. 70% of its members are formerly of the far left. Or look at the rampant rise in anti-Semitism on college campuses—the sad outcome of this false perspective.
• It favors category over individuality. Not only does DEI place everyone on a scale of either oppressor or victim, it maintains an unethical stereotypical categorization of people by race or “identity.” As such it does not acknowledge significant variation based on individual experience, condition, values and other individual attributes. In other words, it violates the central aspect of diversity. 
• It favors representation over competence. For this reason, some have proposed MEI—merit, excellence, intelligence—as an alternative to DEI. Professor Victor Davis Hanson elaborates on the 10 problems with DEI. 
• It makes unempirical assertions. Stemming from the above flaw, critical theory, unlike empirical theory, is based on speculative reasoning and not evidence. Thus, we have critical race theorists and others in DEI propagating false notions of universal “white privilege,” “white fragility,” “unconscious bias” and other fabrications. It would be insulting and preposterous to say all Africans are the same. Even in a single country like Nigeria, there are more than 300 languages spoken with associated tribes and cultures. It would be similarly preposterous to claim that all Asians are the same, all Hispanics are the same and so on. In the country from which my mother immigrated there are significant differences among provinces. Yet DEI insists on being prejudicial towards persons of a Caucasian heritage or white skin, without regard to actual experience, values, thoughts, behavior and other variables academics would study before making generalizable claims. 
• It seeks equity over equality. This is another result of the socialist roots of DEI. It seeks the same outcome, as opposed to the same opportunity for all. This is the hallmark of socialist central planning, which has worked exactly never wherever it has been tried. The lessons of Friedrich Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” have been ignored here. The fallacy of equity (not equality) produces disincentive, loss of industry, disappearance of innovation, and a personal loss of any sense of accomplishment including for the people DEI programs claim to champion. 
• It yields division, not unity. Numerous examples from diversity training show that the outcome often does not meet the objective. Employees or other members of a group come away divided, angry, silent, resentful, and offended. 
• It favors certain perspectives over others. In the case of sex and gender, DEI seeks to affirm and promote one perspective, that of the LGBTQ and transgender communities, over those whose worldview of sex and gender is different and based not on culture but on faith or science. Such differing worldviews can coexist in an attitude of mutual understanding. That would exemplify actual diversity. But compelling all to accept one singular worldview is the antithesis of diversity.

These and other complaints are borne out in scholarship and other research. The Heritage Foundation has pointed this out in a commentary on its website that also was published in the Washington Times: “Research has already shown that (1) diversity training programs have failed to improve attitudes and behaviors for years, and (2) attempts to reduce bias through measuring just how much each of us has stored away in the recesses of our mind have been a spectacular bust. Anthropology Now reports that “hundreds of studies dating back to the 1930s suggest that anti-bias training doesn’t reduce bias.” The National Association of Scholars has determined that ‘implicit bias’ training hijacks justice.

Hal Arkes, an emeritus professor of psychology at Ohio State University, points out in an op-ed that typical DEI “training” has tests for “implicit bias” that fail tests of validity and reliability that any academic would consider. These trainings also do not accomplish more than awareness of flawed concepts because  the companies that do and profit from such “trainings” never measure to see if there were changes in racial attitudes, an elimination of so-called “implicit bias,” or tangible result of any kind. What really happens is a perpetuation of an unproven myth that America is systemically racist. Studies have found that DEI training causes people to find racism where none exists.

The negative effects of DEI seeping into scholarship are also documented in the book ‘Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody‘ by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay. They blame the postmodern principles embedded in DEI orthodoxy, including knowledge (radical skepticism of objective truth) and politics (society is formed by systems of power hierarchies). In addition, DEI has damaged American higher education’s purpose and practice with its four themes of blurring boundaries, asserting the power of language, creating cultural relativism, and encouraging the loss of the individual perspective and universal truth.

As noted previously, many people in minority categories whom DEI would claim to support have started speaking out to resist the advance of a DEI system that is singular in focus and damaging to the very nature of diversity. They offer their own alternative perspectives and prescriptions, based on experience and evidence. Here are summaries of a the work and perspectives of some of them:

• Candace Owens, “Blackout”—In this book, Owens, a Black woman who grew up in poverty, argues with evidence how the liberal policies intended to help Black Americans actually works against them, how the left ignores the importance of faith in the Black community, and how fathers in the home is the key to Black Americans rising out of the cycle of poverty.
• Carol Swain, “The Adversity of Diversity” — Swain is a prominent Black political science professor, recently retired (and plagiarized by Harvard President Claudine Gay), who speaks against the billion dollar DEI industry that, in her words, “has become an aggressive force that takes organizations away from their core missions and often transforms them into divisive and disruptive institutions that openly violate the rights of members of disfavored groups.” Swain’s recommended alternative of Real Unity Training Solutions entails a return to core American principles that embrace nondiscrimination and equal opportunity in a meritocratic system that recognizes individual effort rather than group rights.
• Teresa Manning, policy director for the National Association of Scholars, strongly insists from an academic perspective that DEI is a ‘false religion that will destroy America’:
• Thomas Sowell, “Social Justice Fallacies” — The prolific Black Stanford Professor and economist’s most recent book points to the fact that “many things that are thought to be true simply cannot stand up to documented facts, which are often the opposite of what is widely believed. However attractive the social justice vision , the crucial question is whether the social justice agenda will get us to the fulfillment of that vision. History shows that the social justice agenda has often led in the opposite direction, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.” 
• John McWhorter’s book “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America” details how “claims to “dismantle racist structures” is actually harming his fellow Black Americans by infantilizing Black people, setting Black students up for failure, and passing policies that disproportionately damage Black communities. What is called “antiracism” actually features a “racial essentialism that’s barely distinguishable from racist arguments of the past.”
• Shelby Steele, a Black New York Times columnist, argues in his book “The Content of Our Character” (invoking MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech) that our culture has been trapped in putting color before character, or considering only racial categories and not individual attributes.  (Also see his son Eli Steele’s Substack newsletter ‘Man of Steele’)
• Coleman Hughes, a young Black intellectual wrote “The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America.” Hughes argues for a return to the ideals that inspired the American Civil Rights movement, showing how our departure from the colorblind ideal has ushered in a new era of fear, paranoia, and resentment marked by draconian interpersonal etiquette, failed corporate diversity and inclusion efforts, and poisonous race-based policies that hurt the very people they intend to help. 
• Robert Woodson, a contemporary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, founded the Woodson Center to help underserved communities fight crime and violence and restore families by applying the principles of market economy, faith, and personal responsibility. Woodson also edited the book “Red, White and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers” which features prominent Black scholars telling the story of Black people “living the grand American experience, however bumpy the road may be  along the way.”
• Bari Weiss, a Jewish woman who left the New York Times to start her own media company The Free Press, writes how DEI is a movement focused not on diversity but power in her poignant article “End DEI.”

It should be obvious that when it comes to diversity, there is a diversity of perspectives. Yet certain people, and companies or organizations like PRSA, are unwelcoming to alternative perspectives. I have asked diversity officers about the concept of including and welcoming a diversity of perspectives and they get visibly upset. Sadly, people who bristle at consideration of diversity of perspective reveal that they are not about diversity—they are about conformity. They are not about equality—they are about power. And they are not about inclusion—they are about control.  

Diversity programs should stress non-discrimination, and at the same time be non-celebratory. Individuals and organizations should not double down on oppressive persuasion, but work  toward common understanding of legitimate differences, including perspectives on diversity. PR is based on communication, and the root of communication is “common.” Creating environments where people can disagree on particulars but nevertheless work toward common general goals would be productive. This would be good, ethical and civil public relations. It is also a picture of true diversity.