She lives in Nebraska, but her inner conflicts resonate with people in Ohio, a state with the eighth-largest transgender population in the country, according to one estimate. Here are Jessica’s thoughts.
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I don’t want to be thought of as a DEI hire.
Does that mean I don’t want diversity and equality in hiring at my work? Goodness no. But I got my job due to hard work in school, as an intern, and my other qualifications.
The Focus Group podcast, by former conservative Sarah Longwell, is pretty amazing. While it can be painful from time to time to hear negative things from people, it can be extremely illuminating.
On a recent episode where participants discussed DEI, many of the loudest opponents were Black people. The interesting thing — no one seemed to be against the idea of diversity and being inclusive in hiring. Most responses talked either about not wanting qualified jobs taken away from people for the sake of diversity or being accused of unfairly receiving their position over someone better qualified.
We have a history of racial injustice, and it wasn’t until 1964 that the federal government outlawed racial discrimination in hiring. Then, in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed an executive order required government contracts to take “affirmative action” to expand job opportunities for minorities. (John Kennedy signed an order in 1961 requiring fair treatment). Affirmative action came under attack then just as DEI is now.
There’s no perfect program, no perfect way to combat racism or inequality. People are fallible, people make policies and policies are imperfect. Affirmative action wasn’t perfect, DEI policies aren’t, either.
But they aren’t evil.
As a trans person, I don’t want to be a DEI hire. All of a sudden, all my hard work, my struggle, my worth as a worker, are undermined because “I just got employed because they needed to fill a trans quota.”
I don’t think anyone wants that. The Black people on the program noted that the discussion wasn’t really about DEI; it was being perceived as getting a job you don’t deserve.
Besides the perception issue, DEI has historically been ineffective, according to the Harvard Business Review. As the HBR points out, you can’t outlaw bias.
Now, companies pulling back from DEI are the ones that crafted the policies in the first place. They thought, after George Floyd’s murder, that embracing DEI and social justice programs would make their companies more appealing.
We trans people didn’t ask everyone to stuff pronouns at the end of every email and on Zoom, for example. The CEOs and companies chose a lot of this, without asking Black people, or Queer people, or Hispanic people. So did Democrats, who rushed to appear accepting in hopes of a political advantage,
Right or wrong, changes take time. It wasn’t until 2015 that same-sex marriage became legal. You know what I think did it — decades of getting to know openly gay people.
Trans issues need time. There will always be bigots, but there are people we can reach. Course corrections happen.
This brings us to the irony of my initial statement. While my Transness doesn’t bring me advantages, my white skin color does. I don’t want favoritism, but I get it.
Until that changes, we’ll need things like DEI. Maybe just worded differently.
Ray Marcano’s column appears on these pages each Sunday.