What is Diversity in the New Decade? - 5 Key Insights
Me, alongside dozens of future leaders from my hometown.
The premise for every speech I deliver to an organization requesting my DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) talk is this:
“The information in most of the DEI panels, presentations, and workshops you’ve had is entirely outdated. My generation, Gen Z, is more diverse and likely more progressive than any other. We have been shaped by the economic uncertainty of the pandemic and the social justice fervor following George Floyd’s murder. Every industry (and society at-large) trends toward our outlook. To be ahead of the curve in attracting us as talent and customers, there are a few key insights you need to know.”
More often than not, this claim immediately resonates with my fellow Gen Z’ers—who’ve debated their parents and bosses about workplace and cultural norms. Millennials often relate as well. But Gen X and Baby Boomer’s will often raise an eyebrow. They wonder, “how much can DEI evolve?”
For older generations, it’s simple: (1) DEI is about adding more women, LGBTQ+, and people of color to their organization, (2) getting employees not to say or do anything offensive, and (3) sharing a statement about their commitment to diversity when a major societal injustice occurs.
Unfortunately, those standards are old-fashioned. Even many older DEI professionals I’ve come across don’t understand the full scope of Gen Z’s disruptive perspective on the matter.
To make it clear, here are five real examples of when my ideas and those of DEI professionals of a different generation clashed:
(1) Clashes on the Case for Diversity
As I was discussing my speech in a prep-call with a finance firm, they told me that they had a really great DEI speaker (who’d been giving speeches for 20+ years) present them with the “business case for diversity”. I was familiar with the idea myself, having read multiple articles on the subject. And at the same time, I despised it. “The business case for diversity is dying,” I replied. I went on to describe a personal story I wrote about in my Harvard Business Review article:
“As a freshman, I attended an investment banking event for underrepresented minorities where a recruiter told us about the efforts of the company’s diversity recruiting team. The team struggled to get adequate buy-in and investment to build a more diverse and inclusive workplace. What finally broke the inertia was a robust business case that proved that diversity was good for profits.
Although the recruiter didn’t intend for her story to be received this way, our big takeaway was: When it comes to DEI, that firm would only make progress if it was directly framed around profits, not because it was the right thing to do. It told me that they may not value ideas I bring to the workplace unless there was a direct link to revenue growth. I stopped considering working there after that session. As one of my peers recounted, ‘If you care about your people, you care about what your people care about.’”
I’d say Gen Z’ers, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, prefer a values case of diversity. DEI work is a solution to the present-day effects of historical discrimination. It’s not meant to be some sort of cash grab. If you think of it in that way, you will lose us.
(2) Internal vs External Impact
I felt a moral unease when giving a DEI presentation alongside a seasoned DEI speaker who had worked their way up the corporate ladder and retired to give talks to large companies. They were discussing increased representation of BIPOC leadership at top companies. There was nothing wrong with this on its own, of course. However, it was how they framed their goal that was my issue. They said that having more diversity pipelines and Black leaders was how companies should react to George Floyd’s killing, the BLM movement, and the racial wealth gap.
On the surface, the logic looks fine. But many young people are fierce skeptics toward the idea of fighting societal injustice with “representation”. No Black CEO can single handedly make a dent in the issue of over-policing, police brutality, or mass incarceration. Simply put, these were issues external the corporation’s employee retainment strategy.
I stepped in to delineate the impact of internal DEI initiatives and external ones, and the need for both. Increasing diversity pipelines is great for increasing representation and diversity internal to your organization. However, it is not appropriate to tie these strategies to solutions related to larger societal injustice. Instead, donating to criminal justice advocacy organizations or even performing the calls-to-action for reparations that Justin Siegel, CEO of Snap, did is highly impactful externally.
Internal initiatives + grandiose claims of ending societal injustice = performative activism.
(3) Necessity of Intersectionality
Intersectionality is a concept coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. In its essence, it can be thought of as the compounded discrimination, oppression, and difficulties faced by people who identify with more than one marginalized group. For the sake of discussion, most people limit it to identities included as Federal protected classes in the United States:
“Race, Color, Religion or creed, National origin or ancestry, Sex (including gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity), Age, Physical or mental disability, Veteran status, Genetic information, Citizenship, [and Class].”
Examples include someone who identifies as Black and LGBTQ+ or a Muslim Woman with a physical disability. More and more Gen Zers are identifying with multiple identity groups that have been historically disadvantaged in America. 1 in 5 of us are “not straight”. Almost 5% are gender minorities (transgender, nonbinary, gender-nonconforming or gender-fluid). However, the increasing need to be aware of intersectionality is lost among many DEI professionals.
At one of my internships, I joined the Black Affinity group and had a close friend who was Puerto Rican who joined the Latinx Affinity group. She found that she was one of the only non-white Latinos in the group and one of fewer who didn’t come from a wealthy family already in the finance industry. In the Black Affinity group, I found that there were almost no LGBTQ+ identifying individuals. The LGBTQ+ affinity group was almost entirely cisgender white males.
It was almost ironic that these issues weren’t being talked about in any way, and yet, the organization constantly lauded all of its DEI efforts. I always brought this up to recruiters and DEI strategists to a reaction of surprise. The common message I heard was that trying to address the issue this early in their diversity efforts was futile. I disagreed, and many of my peers do as well. There needs to be an eye toward intersectionality at every step of the process.
(4) Straight-talk on Scope
I have to be real: not all issues can be solved with a DEI talk or workshop. I recently had a consultation with a private school facing a slew of DEI-related issues. They brought me in initially to give them strategies for how academic faculty could make students of color feel like they belonged. In my research, I found a series of interventions, habits, and skills that would help. But at the end of the day, nothing I recommended would solve the underlying issue: if there is a classroom of 30 students at a wealthy, majority-white, elite school and there is one Black student in that classroom, they will almost never feel 100% like they belong.
A school (or organization) that prides itself on exclusivity of admissions (or recruitment) that then hopes to rebrand as completely inclusive needs some straight-talk. A lot of the issues you face are due to structural inequities that were present at the birth of your organization and still drive it. It’s a shame when I see DEI speakers imply that certain marginal changes will have a revolutionary impact. For example, Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean-In strategy for women empowerment in the workplace. There are no shortage of think pieces that call out her overemphasis on action-poses and personal mantras and underemphasis on gender bias and discrimination, the need for solidarity, and the oppressive behavior of men in male-dominated spaces.
We’ll tell it to you straight. Some of your issues will take years to fix and are much bigger than what can be addressed in one hour. And while I can point a lot of them out, it will take heaps of effort to truly reach your desired standards for DEI if your organization has contributed to the problem for decades.
(5) Reference and Sources
I’ve never seen a TikTok video used as an informational source in a professional presentation (DEI or otherwise). If I imagine a TikTok being featured, I couldn’t imagine that TikTok having been created by the presenter. That is, unless I looked in the mirror.
Gen Z grew up in the digital age and lived through the rise of social media. We share our perspectives with millions of people everyday on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. So why would this ocean of information be excluded from presentations to corporate audiences?
People might say it isn’t professional. Well as this CNBC article entitled, “TikTok resumes and Instagram portfolios: How college students are using social media to find jobs” (which I am quoted in) points out, the definition of professional is changing everyday as new modes of job sourcing and job creation blossom. In fact, if someone is giving a presentation about Gen Z employees or customers and doesn’t reference at least one TikTok, that’s a huge red flag. 🚩🚩🚩
Perhaps, amongst all of the insights listed here, the absence of social media insights in DEI presentations best displays the disconnect between me and other DEI professionals I have interacted with.
Don’t get me wrong, these beliefs aren’t neatly divided amongst generations. In fact, the only reason Gen Z has the perspectives we have is because of the research, contemplation, and knowledge of people older than us. However, many of these ideas were on the fringe for previous generations and often considered radical.
But strategies and reforms that were once too “outside of the box” to be considered are now our basic expectations. That is the definition of Diversity in the New Decade.
Thank you so much for reading. Here are few helpful links:
