The DEI Reckoning Is Upon Us

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has been a dominant force in corporate America for years, at least since the George Floyd incident and the ‘Black Lives Matter’ riots of 2020. Since the dust settled and the first historic statues came down, DEI began influencing hiring practices, workplace culture, and even executive compensation. But something is shifting. Major companies—including Walmart, Amazon, Disney, Lowe’s, and even some tech giants—are quietly backing away from their DEI commitments.

So, what’s going on? Is this a sign of corporate regression, as DEI advocates claim, or are businesses waking up to the unintended consequences of these programs?

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One of Many Problems With Corporate DEI

For years, DEI had been positioned as an ethical imperative—a way for businesses to demonstrate an embrace of diversity and create “more inclusive” workplaces. The work of race hustlers like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo led C-suites and corporate boards to believe that “anti-racism” was a real thing. This idea argued that everyone not in an oppressed class was preordained to be racist. It’s like an incurable condition you have. Your only absolution is to fight back against your encoded racism by buying the right books (their books), saying the right words (their words), and being silent if any member of a minority group is present. Major corporations have poured billions of dollars into these initiatives and rebuilt their internal structures around DEI.

At its peak, 75% of S&P 500 companies tied executive compensation to DEI-related metrics, and U.S. businesses were spending $8 billion annually on DEI programs.

Now it’s all being thrown out the window since President Trump won reelection.

The obvious question: Why? We were told this was a moral imperative.

A revealing study by the Network Contagion Research Institute suggests that DEI training might not have the effects intended by corporate HR departments. Instead of reducing bias, the study found that DEI programs increased division and hostility, and even encouraged punitive, authoritarian tendencies in staff.

The study, titled Instructing Animosity: How DEI Pedagogy Produces the Hostile Attribution Bias, examined how exposure to DEI messaging impacts people’s perceptions and behaviors. The findings were eye-opening:

• People who underwent DEI-style training were 35% more likely to perceive microaggressions where none existed.

• Participants were significantly more likely to assume racial discrimination played a role in neutral situations.

• Exposure to DEI messaging increased support for punitive measures against perceived offenders—regardless of whether actual discrimination was evident.

In short, DEI training didn’t just make people more aware of bias—it conditioned them to see it everywhere.

And yes, it gets worse.

To test whether these effects were specific to American racial dynamics, researchers applied the same DEI framework to the caste system in India—a subject that most Americans have little prior knowledge about. The results? Participants, after receiving DEI-style training on caste oppression, began expressing extreme hostility toward the high-caste Brahmin group.

• They were 35% more likely to agree with the statement: “Brahmins are parasites.”

• They were 34% more likely to agree with: “Brahmins are a virus.”

This is dangerous rhetoric and a bizarre transformation in the people who go through these supposedly unifying programs. Throughout history, similar dehumanizing language has been used to justify some of the worst atrocities—from ethnic cleansing to totalitarian crackdowns.

If DEI programs are fostering this level of hostility, or any at all, it’s no wonder businesses are quietly backing away with the aid of political cover in Washington.

A Return To Real Inclusion?

None of this means businesses are rejecting actual diversity in the workplace. What we may be witnessing is a shift from ideological DEI enforcement to a more practical approach—one that values individual merit, professional development, and genuine inclusivity, without the heavy baggage of political activism.

The actor Morgan Freeman once said:

“How do we get rid of racism? Stop talking about it. I’m going to stop calling you a white man, and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.”

That message—which asks us to treat people as individuals rather than members of an identity group—might just be the lesson corporate America is finally taking under consideration.

Or it’s just pure cowardice and opportunism. We’ll see!

The DEI experiment isn’t over, but the tide is turning. And for companies focused on creating workplaces that truly work for everyone, that may not be such a bad thing.