After Diversity

A clear-eyed reckoning with the failures of the DEI industry, and a case for how its tools can be revived to build power

Before President Trump gutted federal DEI programs, and a quarter of corporations followed suit, the diversity, equity and inclusion industry was everyone’s favorite political punching bag. The right blamed DEI for everything from plane crashes to making white people feel bad, while some on the left were all too eager to celebrate its demise.

In After Diversity,writer, organizer, and former DEI consultant Kim Tran argues that while DEI was never the political horizon, at its core is an understanding that workplaces and educational institutions are sites of struggle. Tran takes a hard look at the DEI industry’s fraught history, explaining why, in the decades after the civil rights movement, it failed to deliver on its lofty promises. From union-busting personnel managers to celebrity influencers, DEI has offered feelings of belonging that foreclose politicization and encourage loyalty to companies and institutions.

Yet the same features that made DEI such a threat to the right are what makes it useful now. In creating spaces to address political feelings, build community, and confront institutional policies, DEI’s infrastructure can be mobilized in the urgent fight against fascism and white supremacy.