DEI Fatigue: Real Tired or Just 'Tired' of Change?

A few weeks ago I wrote about white women winning DEI.

The response to that article was ?? It got over 40,000 views on LinkedIn. I'm still reading (but mostly ignoring) all the DMs. Please send help.

Conversations that came out of that post made me realize that people with race and class privilege (read: white & and wealthy) haven't just **won the most contracts, the best roles.

They've **won by sidelining the conversation/efforts/movement.

In the past month, every time I've asked:

? Why aren't people flocking to equity-focused learning?

? Why are organization's DEI budgets shrinking?

? Why has a leader stopped sponsoring an ERG?

? Why aren't 'data driven' companies opting out of using data on their people & communities for making decisions?

? Why are we stopping/pausing/divesting after just 3 years?

The answer has been one of two - economic uncertainty and DEI fatigue.

Economic uncertainty, I get. Especially when organizations reduce spending across all areas, not just DEI.

Fatigue on the other hand - has felt like a fib. ish. A cop-out.

So, I reached out to nearly two dozen colleagues for their views on DEI fatigue.

Of a dozen white women in DEI roles I messaged, only one agreed to share her POV publically. Just one. Many were happy to share their views, some recognizing their own complacency, others the need for safety.

In comparison, nearly every person of color was keen to bring their voice into the conversation.

The four leaders featured here helped me dig into the dynamics of DEI fatigue, unraveling the genuine exhaustion felt by DEI practitioners from the more resistant stances cleverly positioned as fatigue. Thank you Karen Fleshman, Esq. , Kris Martinez , Nadia Butt, MBA, ABD and Stefani C. .

You can read the full article on Forbes .

** Instead of winning, one might say 'succeeding' in upholding white supremacy.

Here's the high-level - yes, the fatigue felt by DEI practitioners and advocates is real.

Nadia Butt is a woman of color, who works with both SMEs and Fortune 500 companies, and is increasingly seeing, “sentiments of frustration, isolation and exhaustion” resulting from “a discernable decline in leadership support and commitment, and a reduction in investment and interest towards DEI programming which is inhibiting organizational DEI progress.”

There’s also exhaustion stemming from being one of the few or only in an organization. Kris Martinez, an Afro-Latino leader at Oyster, confessed to being tired of the continued lack of representation of people of color in leadership roles - “I'm tired of the fact that only 1% of Fortune 500 CEOs are Black. I'm tired of the fact that companies show a glimmer of hope and then fail to deliver.”

Stefani Coverson shared, "In my work, I find the folx who are truly "fatigued" are those experiencing inequitable and exclusionary work environments. The stories I hear almost every day are about people with racialized and minoritized identities choosing to leave careers without having another job, being diagnosed with stress-related health conditions, and seeking therapy to navigate the emotional and mental distress they are experiencing because the cost of leaving is too great."

People are not interested in piecemeal change.

Kris said, "We’ve been fighting for civil rights for decades, and corporations thought they could affect behavioral and societal change in just three years. Now we’re facing economic realities where DEI no longer fits in the P&L. Employees don’t want an all-hands meeting on DEI; they want to see people of color and those who identify within minority groups actually getting hired into positions, recognized for who they are and their work, and given opportunities for growth."

And yet, the roots of resistance run deep.

Karen Fleshman stated that "DEI resistance is real, organized and systemic, a continuation of the massive resistance white people organized against desegregation following the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education."

It reminds Stefani of "a more passive, yet still insidious, version of current efforts to rewrite US history curriculum in Florida's public school systems and efforts by Moms for Liberty across the nation-- except instead of "protecting" white children from learning about US history in its full context to avoid "making them feel bad about themselves," DEI Fatigue serves to protect adults from understanding systems of exclusion, the myth of meritocracy, and the imperative to dismantle systems of oppression."

This so-called fatigue experienced by those with racial and socio-economic privilege, many of whom faced the reality of deep and systemic inequities for the first time after the murder of George Floyd, feels comical in contrast to the experiences of marginalized groups.

So, what's the path forward?

We need a new social contract - not just new laws that govern the world of work (yes, those 4-day work weeks, and holy cr*p can we just give new parents time to recover).

But we don't get there simply by having people of color push the boulder uphill.

It will take people with race and class privilege to unlearn/relearn, address their trauma, heal and grow.

It requires us to believe that the power and resources we are hoarding are less important than the well being our communities/companies/coworkers.

There's no snappy strategy or tech startup that will get us there.

And look - the stakes have never been higher.

Our world is boiling. Maui is burning. COVID is peaking, again.

We can choose a future where we are all less tired.

?