Let’s face it: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives have largely failed to create the type of equitable change they intended. But what if—in an ironic twist—these initiatives sometimes directly harm underrepresented groups’ career prospects?
Don’t get us wrong. DEI initiatives are imperative to address the workplace inequities that persist across many industries. However, the most common DEI initiatives just don’t seem to work and can even have negative consequences. Specifically, organizational pro-diversity messaging and policies can themselves prompt backlash to the very idea of diversification, equitable hiring practices, and bias reduction. For example, simply having a DEI initiative can lead job candidates from overrepresented groups to feel threatened during interviews and worry more about being discriminated against, while, at the same time, underestimating discrimination against minority groups.
Of course, this backlash against pro-diversity messaging and policies could end up hurting underrepresented groups’ careers and well-being. But we thought that these may not be the only unintended harms of DEI initiatives. Perhaps their presence could also harm these groups’ career prospects more directly.
Does DEI Backlash Impact Hiring Decisions?
We set out to test whether DEI initiatives might have more direct negative consequences for the careers of minority groups by assessing whether hiring recommendations became more racially biased in the presence of DEI initiatives.
We ran several experiments involving over 3500 U.S. adults. We either informed participants of an organization’s pro-diversity values and initiatives or not. Then, we saw how they judged a White and Black male job candidate with equivalent qualifications. Given the ongoing politicization of DEI initiatives, we compared how conservatives and liberals were affected by pro-diversity messages.
Overall, the diversity messages nudged White respondents to make racially biased judgments, but in different ways depending on their political views. When there was no mention of diversity, they all evaluated the Black and White job candidates similarly. However, when they saw the pro-diversity message, White conservatives became more biased in favor of the White job candidate, but White liberals became more biased in favor of the Black job candidate.
For participants of color, the results were more complex. When diversity wasn’t mentioned, Black conservatives tended to be more biased in favor of the White job candidate than Black liberals. However, Black liberals and conservatives didn’t evaluate the candidates differently when the message highlighted diversity. The pro-diversity messages seemed to remind Black respondents of fairness values, leading them to a more objective, unbiased consideration of candidates, no matter their political views.
Conservative Backlash in the Context of DEI
DEI initiatives are inherently political because they focus on equitable change in relation to highly politicized identities, such as race, ethnicity, and gender. This helps explain why liberals and conservatives react differently to DEI initiatives. Nevertheless, there have been critics of DEI on both the left and right since JFK’s 1965 executive order requiring federal contractors to use affirmative action in hiring decisions. So why do pro-diversity messages have such a polarizing effect among White conservatives, in particular?
Compared to liberals, conservatives have been more vocally opposed to DEI initiatives and increasingly so under the Trump-led Republican party. The ongoing conservative war against DEI, led by Trump and other prominent conservative leaders, has been marked with anti-Black, anti-minority, and anti-immigrant rhetoric as well as an outright ban on diversity training.
This is not to say that conservative ideology is inherently anti-diversity or anti-minority. For example, when we didn’t show people a diversity message, neither White conservatives nor liberals discriminated against a Black job applicant. Instead, bias only emerged in the presence of pro-diversity messages that presumably remind conservatives of apparent threats to the status quo and the rhetoric portraying DEI as inherently unfair.
The Unintended Effects of Pro-Diversity Messaging
Overall, our research found that the presence of organizational pro-diversity messages affected how Black and White job candidates were evaluated, with substantial differences based on an individual’s political ideology and race/ethnicity. White conservatives become more pro-White in the presence of diversity messages, whereas White liberals become less pro-White. These patterns have critical implications for the widespread efforts to project organizations’ commitments to diversity.
Although these messages may seem virtuous in principle, they may also be posing practical challenges for achieving a more equitable society.
For Further Reading
Dover, T. L., Major, B., & Kaiser, C. R. (2014). Diversity initiatives, status, and system-justifying beliefs: When and how diversity efforts de-legitimize discrimination claims. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 17(4), 485–493. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430213502560
Dover, T. L., Kaiser, C. R., & Major, B. (2020). Mixed signals: The unintended effects of diversity initiatives. Social Issues and Policy Review, 14(1), 152–181. https://doi.org/10.1111/sipr.12059
Zeinab A. Hachem is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on understanding the experiences and needs of systemically marginalized groups across various contexts.
Tessa L. Dover is an associate professor and P.I. of the Stigma, Resilience, Inequality, Identity, and Diversity (StRIID) lab at Portland State University. She researches how inequities shape and are shaped by members of advantaged and disadvantaged groups.