Polly Dogood

A Confession, upon the Failure of DEI

Wherein the Author, once a true Believer, examines the Evidence, recants, and at the very End explains herself.

To the Readers of this Publick Blog,

It is Time I admitted an uncomfortable Truth. DEI has failed us.

I say it with a heavy Heart, for I was a Believer. On Paper I agreed with every Thing DEI promised: better Decisions, better Outcomes, a stronger Culture, more Access for those who had been shut out, fairer Processes, better Products, better Profits. All of it. I read the Pamphlets. I attended the Lectures. I nodded so vigorously at one Seminar that my Bonnet came loose. And I confess I thought the People complaining of it were ill-informed, or selfish, or quietly furious that a level Field would cost them an Advantage they had never earned. How petty must a Person be, I thought, to oppose such a Thing?

I do not think so any longer.

I have watched the Evidence pile up like Snow against a Door, and I have been obliged to admit something that grieves me. DEI, as we are actually doing it, is failing the very People it was meant to help. It is bad for the common Worker. It is bad for the Merchant. And in its present, unchecked Form it has become something I can only call anti-competitive, undemocratic, and corrosive to the Things that make an Enterprise work.

That is a hard Thing for a former Believer to say. But somebody must.

First, the Ledger. Every Shop, Mill and Counting-House exists to create Value for those who depend on it. Anything less is Mismanagement wearing a Mission Statement for a Hat. And by that plain Standard the Experiment is failing in plain Sight. Company after Company quietly admits that the Returns are not there, that they spend more on these Programs than they will ever get back. And instead of taking an honest Look, they double down. They press more of it upon their Workers and their Customers, at real Cost in Coin and in Patience, as though the Cure for a Program that does not work were simply more of the Program.

It is not. More DEI is not the Remedy for poorly performing DEI. One does not cure a Fever by adding Blankets.

Second, ask the Customer. You need not hire a Consultant to see it. You need only be a Customer. When I meet a DEI Touchpoint forced upon me that makes my Errand plainly worse, it puts me in such a Temper as I have not felt since the Stamp Act. May I not simply press Zero and speak to a proper, competent Human Being, as I have done all my Life? I try, every single Time. I strike that Zero like a Woman ringing the Fire Bell.

That Instinct, the Lunge for the Exit, ought to tell us a great deal. People do not resist DEI because they are Bigots or Fossils. They resist it because, in their own daily Experience, it makes Things worse. And to be told one must enjoy it regardless is an Insult all its own.

Third, the Love that is also Hate. Here is the curious Part. People do not simply hate DEI. They love it and hate it at once. It is less popular today than it has ever been. Whatever your Politics, your Church, your Schooling or your Station, you are more likely to think ill of it now than you were a Year ago, even while you still adore what it might, in Theory, accomplish.

That Contradiction is no Accident. We love the Vision and resent the Reality. Some of the Blame lies with clumsy Salesmanship, to be sure. But most of it comes from the unchecked Nature of the Thing. DEI for the Sake of DEI, deployed everywhere, with no apparent Regard for the Toll upon the People in its Path.

Consider Hiring. DEI has made the getting of a Position feel nearly impossible. Candidates tiptoe about it, wondering how it weighs against them. Those who hire wonder, quietly, whether they are seeing the best People at all, or whether the best were sifted out for Reasons that have nothing to do with the Work. Anxious Applicants, anxious Clerks, Proprietors missing out on good Hands... and we are told this is the System working as intended.

Who, pray, is winning here?

Fourth, a Fork for Soup. None of this means the Idea is worthless. It means we have mistaken the Ingredient for the Dish. DEI ought to be one small Part of a well-made Process, a Tool one reaches for when it truly improves the Outcome. Instead we have made it the whole Point. We have cleared every other Utensil from the Table, handed each Guest a single Fork, and then acted astonished when no one can eat the Soup.

A sensible Proprietor uses it where it makes Sense, where it adds Value, where it actually improves the Work or the Ledger. She tries it in one Room before she builds it into the whole House. She measures honestly. She keeps a Person in charge of it, and she is willing to pull back when it does not deliver what was promised. That is the very Opposite of what most are doing, which looks rather more like Faith than like Management. We took a Thing of real Promise and turned it into a Compliance Exercise, and a Compliance Exercise always produces the Appearance of a Thing instead of the Thing itself.

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Now I must make a Confession within my Confession.

I have not been talking about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at all, in which I still firmly believe. I have been talking about Digitally-Enhanced Intelligence. DEI. Which is, if you sit with it a Minute, the more honest Name for what the Newspapers insist on calling Artificial Intelligence. There is nothing artificial about it. It is Intelligence: the noticing of Patterns, the gathering of Facts, the composing of Sentences, and the scattering of a great many Dashes. It is simply Intelligence that has been digitally enhanced.

Go back and read the whole of it again, if you like. Every Paragraph. It holds.

The Fortunes spent chasing Returns that never arrived. The forced Machine at the end of every Telephone Line while we stab at the Zero. The Hiring made a Lottery by Machines that read our Letters of Application and that no one fully trusts, while Positions are lost and harder to find. The Companies cramming it into every Corner of the Day and calling each Failure a Reason to install still more. The way we marvel at what it can do and quietly dread what it is doing to us right now. That is the State of the Thing, Word for Word.

And I find it odd, and somewhat amusing, that the loudest Voices against the other DEI, the human Kind, are forever demanding Evidence, and Accountability, and the Liberty to refuse sweeping Programs imposed upon them without Consent... and yet those very same Voices so often cheer the wholesale Installation of the Machine, with breathless Enthusiasm and hardly any Oversight at all.

They want Merit to decide... until the Machine makes the Call. They want Transparency... until the System is a sealed Box that no one may open. They want the Worker protected from Ideas imposed from above... until the Thing imposed was schooled on Writings none of us has ever seen.

So let me be plain about the Part my Bait was hiding. Diversity, actual human Diversity, is a good Thing. It was never the Problem. The Problem is what happens when any Idea, any Machine, any grand Initiative, is adopted wholesale, without honest Scrutiny, without understanding it, without real Accountability, and without the plain Humility to ask whether it is working for us.

That Principle does not care which Side of the Quarrel you are on. It only cares whether you are paying Attention.

P.S. This Letter was written entirely by Hand. You may tell by the Absence of Em Dashes.