Where DEI falls short — and how to rethink it | Y-Vonne Hutchinson

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. The term DEI is probably more contentious than ever right now, but it's worth reminding ourselves, what do we actually mean when we say DEI? Workplace inclusion expert Yvonne Hutchinson has spent her entire career thinking about the very real world implications of the words diversity, equity, and inclusion. Yvonne lays out why certain aspects of DEI are more effective than others and why for it to work, you've got to do more than just talk the talk.

0:48Okay. Let's do a little exercise. Everybody stand up and line up in the middle of the room. Actually, no, just me. Just me. Okay. Step forward if you went to private school. Step back if you got called a racial slur in elementary school. Step forward if your parents graduated from college. Step back if they didn't graduate high school. This is called a privilege walk. It's a popular DEI exercise taught to express the concept of privilege. The people in the front get some revelation about how many advantages they have, while the people in the back get to process their trauma. I hate privilege walks, just like I hate black squares on Instagram, allyship pins, unconscious bias training, because it's performative.

1:36The stuff doesn't work, but it's what sticks in our brains when we talk about DEI. DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion, refers to the set of tools that organizations use to prevent discrimination, comply with civil rights laws and create environments more welcoming to people from marginalized backgrounds. I run ReadySet, one of the country's largest DEI firms, and I started it after working for a toxic organization for years. And I often talk about the academic reasons why I started ReadySet, but in reality, I started it because I was traumatized, and I didn't want anyone to go through what I had been through.

2:18Now we're in the middle of a DEI backlash. DEI has been blamed for everything from airplane failures to internet outages to you name it. And I often get approached by journalists wanting me to talk about it. But I struggle because I'm conflicted. On the one hand, the discrimination that people like me face hasn't gone away. On the other hand, now it's up for the debate. On the one hand, DEI's become a political football, but that doesn't mean it's immune from criticism. To me, there are two reasons for the backlash. The first of which is that backlash is just a natural consequence to progress.

3:01Reagan-era lawsuits were a response to civil rights laws. This is no different. On the other hand, people and organizations made real mistakes after the Me Too and George Floyd movements. DEI became performative. They used approaches based in emotion rather than data. They tried to solve systemic problems with individual solutions. They failed. And today the world is changing. It affects my team. There's a woman on my team who zooms in from Florida with a breeze in her hair and a smile on her face until two weeks ago when she was evacuated. We have a contractor who has the most adorable little pug ever, who likes to snore on Zoom, and he really loves to share his hacks for working around the power cuts that he's experiencing because of the war in Ukraine.

3:5843 percent of Americans report being more anxious this year than last year. And over the same time period, we've seen an increase in workplace conflict, and disengagement. The outside is creeping in, and the models we have no longer work. We don't do privilege walks at my job, but we did do an anti-Semitism training on October 7th, because we couldn't work through that day like it was any other. The night before, I got news that my nephew was being deployed. We didn't all agree in that training, but what we did do was try to tackle misinformation, unpack our assumptions, and talk about how we treat each other with compassion and respect.

4:46That's what DEI could be. The next day, we did a training on anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia. We have tools for elder care and climate emergencies. We have training for how to talk about politics at work. And it's not just for us. Our clients are asking for these things as well. And while I may feel conflicted about giving interviews, I'm not conflicted about what's next. There's something really exciting about doing something new. And new is what we need if we're going to tackle these problems that face us. You know, I don't think we should be naive either. Discrimination still exists. The culture wars are happening in the office today.

5:28And all of the problems I've just described, climate change, political instability, care responsibilities affect people differently depending on the identities that they hold. You know, the one thing I do love about privilege walks, I will say, is they always come with a surprise. Like Chad from accounting will tell you he used to boost cars for fun and then he turned his life around. And you're reminded, you never know what people are carrying. So I wonder, what would it look like if we did a privilege walk updated for today? Step back if you're struggling with chronic illness. Step back if you're juggling elder care and child care.

6:10Step back if your life has been disrupted by a once-in-a-200-year weather event. Step back if you've been asked to work through it. Thank you.

6:27That was Wyvon Hutchinson at TED Next in 2024. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curationguidelines. And that's it for today's show. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar, and Tonsika Sarmanivon. It was mixed by Christopher Fazey-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Ballarezo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.