STRANGE? IT'S COUNTERPRODUCTIVE:

[I] thought it better to talk to a professional to understand how DEI initiatives actually function. Mandice McAllister is the manager of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Warner Norcross & Judd, a corporate law firm headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We started out with the question one might naturally ask in such a situation: How is DEI defined by its practitioners?

"It's about fairness," says McAllister, who's managed DEI at the firm for the past five years. "It's about making sure people have fair access to opportunities and advancement. We're Americans; we want things to be fair." When asked what DEI practitioners are specifically looking for, she starts by addressing a common misconception about racial diversity in the workplace: "It's not quotas." Her team is looking for overrepresentation in hiring demographics and disparities in pay equity and promotion rates. To McAllister, meritocracy is what she's looking for--but there's a catch. "We love meritocracy; any organization taking this seriously knows that it's not one."

McAllister and her team have encountered their fair share of pushback at the various organizations for which they've carried out DEI training. When asked what some of the most common criticisms are, she gave me her top three: "We're focusing too much on DEI, we're wasting money and time, and it's racially divisive." And yet, McAllister, notes, "They're often just not interested in sitting down and having a conversation" about why they're so resistant.

One of the most controversial aspects of corporate DEI training is mandating it. For her part, McAllister says her thinking has evolved on the issue. "In 2020, I was pro-mandatory DEI. We had a required awareness training that covered sexual harassment, and it felt weird for one to be mandatory and one to not be." Yet, as time went by, she came to believe it was undercutting her goal: "I don't think making it mandatory is effective. When you try to mandate DEI, and we're going to talk about [workplace racial dynamics], it can inflame racial tensions. You don't have to come--you can decide to miss out on the information we present."

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