The Limits of D.E.I.

In the past few months, D.E.I, has been attacked by its critics and abandoned by many of its supporters.   Has it overstepped its boundaries?  Depends on how you see its purpose and its impact.

D..E.IO. did not start as a problem, but rather as a solution to a problem.  And the problem? In a nutshell, it’s white supremacy. Diversity aimed at an acknowledgement of others and otherness.  Equity aimed at repairing the damage of social harm.  Inclusion aimed at the very motto of our nation: the many as one.   All three aimed at changing the dominant social climate of white domination and scarcity into a social climate of multi-culturalism and abundance.

If D.E.I is a problem for some, it’s because of its impact.  What has it done?  That depends on one’s perspective.  The climate of justice perspective pays attention to the ways in which we can repair and protect—repair social injustices and protect vulnerable people.

From this perspective, D.E.I. policies have exposed the legacy of injustice that much of our society tries to avoid.

So, have D.E.I programs gone too far or have they not gone far enough?  That’s the kind of question the classical Greek philosopher Aristotle might have asked.  In his Ethics, he wrote about the virtues as striking a “golden mean” between the extremes of too much and too little.

I used Aristotle’s theory of the virtues for years in my Ethics classes.  I asked students whether they could imagine loving too much or loving not enough. Can one have too much integrity? Or not enough?  What would be an excess? A deficiency?  Aristotle has some good examples:

Where feelings of fear and confidence are concerned, then, courage is the medial condition, whereas of those people who are excessive, the one who is excessive in his fearlessness is nameless (many indeed are nameless), the one who is excessive in confidence is rash, and the one who is excessively fearful or deficient in confidence is cowardly.

You get the idea.  The right posture or activity is not based on binary thinking. D.E.I is neither all right nor all wrong.  It is only right when it stays within its limits: the limits that keep the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion from going too far or not far enough, which according to Aristotle are both vices rather than virtues.

If we were to approach white supremacy from some other ethical theory than Aristotle’s, say a Kantian ethic of principle, then one might argue that we should abolish white supremacy, because it violates human dignity.  The problem, of course, is that white supremacists are humans too.  To completely trounce them is not only practically impossible but also ethically questionable.  I would like to abolish white supremacy, but when I think of how to do it in a democratic context, it’s probably wise to avoid the extremes.

So, what are the names of the vices that we should try to avoid?  One option is to say that programs excessive in the promotion of D.E.I. would be overbearing, while programs excessive in the depreciation of D.E.I. would be measly.

Other words may be more appropriate.  Where should our words come from?  Should we listen to those who benefited from the legacy of white supremacy, or those who suffered from it?  Can we agree that when an injustice is exposed, we should deal with it? 

We can do this if we realize that a climate of justice is based on our shared humanity.  It sees our differences as social rather than essential.  It’s our shared humanity that finally sets the limits of D.E.I.  It becomes wrong when it denies our shared humanity, and wrong when it violates it.