The Necessity of Disruption: Examining the “Implementation” Gap in DEI

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (commonly referred to as “DEI”) has become a hot button topic in professional spaces during the past several years. It has been dubbed one of the fastest-growing professional fields in the United States. In fact, recent data from Indeed - one of the nation's largest online hiring platforms - shows that companies demand for D&I professionals shot up 23% in 2019. On one hand, this can be viewed as a generally positive development as more major corporations, NGOs and nonprofits are realizing that the shift in racial, economic and generational demographics across the United States in the 21st-century demands that employers create spaces that are not just “tolerant” or “welcoming” of employees, but that bravely, and genuinely, invite employees to bring their full selves to work. I am one of those millennial-aged employees shifting the workforce. I bring my many complex identities to the forefront to inform my professional practice. For almost a decade I have worked in non-profit organizations and in urban public school districts as an educator, community-based program manager and policy advocate taking on a variety of social justice related causes. I have done this work as an out queer, black, transgender person who comes from a low-income community and still to this day struggles with economic security. I came to this work as someone who dropped out of high school, and instead got a G.E.D, and as someone with a Masters degree from an elite Ivy League institution. My lived reality means that diversity, equity, and inclusion is not just a trendy concept for me, but a real part of my everyday life as I navigate the professional space.

While the professional world continues to embrace DEI as a marketable concept there is a dark, often unforeseen consequence: the necessary, uncomfortable deep work that needs to be done to create truly equitable work environments is often watered down into palatable soundbites that can comfortably market one-size fit all solutions. These palatable soundbites, catchphrases (even the phrase “DEI” itself can be critiqued as an over-simplification of the true problem at hand, but that is another article for another time), and the well-meaning but inadequate “implicit bias” trainings that often grow from the soundbites themselves are not designed to create true structural change. Instead, these band-aids peddled as long term “solutions” are designed to placate organizational leaders - who are still overwhelmingly white, male, straight and cisgender. In reality, organizational leaders (of all races and genders) are often using DEI to merely treat the symptoms of problems that stem from the roots of the isms’ and phobias’ of oppression: racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, xenophobia - the list goes on. This disconnect between treating symptoms versus roots leads to what I am calling an “implementation gap”: the very real dearth that exists between what the work needs to be to create true systemic change and the reality of how work is being carried out on the ground level. 

The implementation gap is not a new concept, it is an issue I commonly grappled with when I worked in education. When I worked in education policy people often thought the hardest part of my job was passing a law or school district-wide policy. What most people did not understand was that the easy part was passing a policy or law, the hard part was working with a variety of stakeholders with competing interests to implement said law or policy with integrity. This same concept applies to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work. The issue is not creating new inclusive policies or resources like employee resource groups (ERG’s), organization cultural climate surveys, or DEI strategy plans the issue is implementing those interventions to create true change. The other issue is innovating new solutions that fall outside the bounds of those traditional DEI ideas. The reasoning this implementation gap exists is both simple, and complex at the same time: capitalism. Capitalism has made a commodity of diversity. Companies are incentivized to engage in performative diversity initiatives by being lauded with awards and coveted spots in corporate equality indexes simply for doing the bare minimum of hiring staff who come from marginalized communities or having a sprinkling of marginalized people in leadership roles. Capitalism demands that ideas be profitable. On the surface, intensive DEI does not appear to be profitable. Quite frankly a lot of companies and organizations do not see it as profitable to do deep meaningful DEI work, because to do this means to interrogate and dismantle the very systems that create wealth and capital. It also means interrogating these systems that value productivity over people. The amount of time, money, effort, people power and personal reckoning it would take to do transformational work scares away some leaders before the work even has a chance to flourish. 

I want to take a second to link my analysis on this issue to the analysis that Anand Giridharadas uses in his New York Times Best Seller book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. Winners Take All is not explicitly a book that tackles Diversity, Equity and Inclusion as a concept in the workplace, however, the more I read it a lot of the concepts Giridharadas dissects are 100% applicable to this field. Giridharads forces us to reckon with the question can elites, even the most well-meaning who start foundations and invest their money in social impact projects, change the world if they are not willing to cede the power they have that comes from capitalism? The very same system that allowed them to build their wealth in the first place. Basically, can elites save the world with their band-aid solutions to large societal problems if they are not willing to actually change the power structure of society? I believe the answer is no (Giridharads seems to believe this as well if you read the book), and this same concept of questioning and analysis can be applied to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. 

Many current leaders in the DEI space are what Giridharadas would define as “Thought Leaders”. He defines “thought leaders” in the following way:

“Thought leaders give TED talks that leave little space for criticism or rebuttal, and emphasize hopeful solutions over systemic change” -Winner Takes All (p. 92)

He also characterizes thought leaders as going easy on the powerful, people who are quick to propose overly optimistic “one size all” fit all solutions in order to appear as if they are solving critical issues. Giridharadas goes on about thought leaders: 

“In part, they [thought leaders] have given rise to watered-down theories of change that are personal, individual, depoliticized, respectful of the status quo and the system, and not in the least bit disruptive” - Winner Takes All (p. 120)

The Dire Need For Disruptors

I am arguing that instead of thought leaders, we need disruptors in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion field. Disruptors live on the opposite end of the spectrum from thought leaders. They aim for the roots first and view the symptoms from that lense, they actively fight for systemic change and they welcome discussion and critique regarding their ideas. Disruptors aim to tear down the status quo, they do not desire to continue working within the bounds of existing oppressive systems. 

Disruption is not comfortable and traditionally disruptors are painted in a negative light by social norms, the law, history and the court of public opinion. Think about your experiences in school as a child. From our early years, people are taught that shaking up the status quo is not welcome, that it is a punishable offense. Historically, disruptors who have worked to get to the roots of widespread social problems have been routinely assassinated, disenfranchised and put under government surveillance because disrupting the status quote is viewed as a threat. The Civil Rights movement is a perfect example of this. Throughout the Civil Rights movement disruption in the name of equity, justice and truth was commonplace and massively effective. From groups, and individuals, that were viewed as more “radical” such as the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X, Stokley Carmichael and others to groups/individuals that were viewed as more “moderate” or “peaceful” - Martin Luther King Jr and Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). On both ends of the paradigm, movement leaders were disruptive and as a result were routinely surveilled, followed, slandered and assassinated. One disruptor who is not as well known in history that models this concept well is Fred Hampton. Hampton was a revolutionary Black socialist and Black Panther Party (BPP) leader. He was a gifted orator, and community organizer, who brokered peace deals amongst Chicago gangs that were previously at war due to racial lines. Hampton was also instrumental in the BPP free lunch program - which fed tens of thousands of hungry kids of all races from Chicago to Oakland. We will never know what could have been with Hampton’s life of activism, we never got to see him carry out his many dreams for a more just, equitable society because he was assassinated by the Chicago Police, and the FBI. He was just twenty-one years old at the time of his death. This narrative played itself out time and time again throughout the Civil Rights movement - prominent disruptors were routinely assassinated: Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X succumbed to the same fate (just to name a few).

What if instead of looking at disruption, and those who carry out the work of being disruptors, as being threats that need to be eliminated (either literally in the case of many Civil Rights leaders, or figuratively in the context of watering down DEI work) we welcomed disruption for what it is: innovative, necessary, healthy and life-saving. Disruption breeds equity, it breeds “roots focussed” social change. The disruptors of the Civil Rights movement innovated to attack the roots of social challenges at a success rate, and pace, not matched since then. Ironically, the power structures of the U.S. government copied many of the solutions came up with, and implemented, by disruptors during the Civil Rights movement. The very disruptors they disenfranchised and attempted to silence. The Black Panthers Party free breakfast program is widely seen as a model, and precursor, for the federal government's Free and Reduced Lunch program which took off in the early 1970s. The federal government's version of the program became widespread and popular after the U.S. Government, largely led by the FBI, had effectively dismantled many of the Black Panthers programs and decimated their leadership ranks. 

Disruptors, like those of the Civil Rights movement, ask “How can we remake this system to serve everyone equitably?” Serving everyone equitably often requires some people to give up a semblance of power or wealth. To truly disrupt spaces this has to happen. Those on top who have benefited from capitalist power structures, along with traditional hierarchy - a socio-political structure that values maleness, whiteness, formal education, heterosexuality, gender conformity, and able-bodiedness at the expense of everyone whose identity is in opposition to that - will have to give up something in a disruption model. This “something” can be monetary but it does not necessarily have to be. Serving people equitably is the work of the disruptor. It is important to distinguish that this is not the same as serving people equally. Serving people equally is the work of the thought leader. There is a lot of good scholarship, and social analysis about equity v. equality but I will break it down like this: Equity says that those who have been historically most disenfranchised by the isms’ and phobias’ must get more access to resources and capital, versus equality which says everyone should get the same piece of the pie regardless. 

Equity is not a popular cause to take up. Imagine if a company gave out end of year bonuses: those who benefit from traditional power structures received $1,000 and those who were historically marginalized received $1,500. Many of those who received only $1,000 would likely cry foul, would likely be outraged at this act of reparations. Reparations have long been discussed as a concept - both in the private sector and in government - and the idea is controversial and not popular amongst the masses. Why? Because it comes from a disruptor model. Let us use a non-financial example: A company creates a special leadership pipeline program where staff of color, LGBTQ staff, and staff from other marginalized groups have opportunities to attend leadership training at no cost, get 1-on-1 mentoring and receive other professional perks. Let's say this pipeline program is exclusively designed for impacted staff and is not available to staff who benefit from power structures. Is this equal? Absolutely not. Is this equitable? Absolutely, yes - because the demographics of who traditionally serve in Senior level roles at organizations still frequently replicate the socio-political hierarchy described earlier. These are just two abstract examples of how a disruptor model can be implemented in a DEI framework. In the DEI space disrupting is no easy task, and it will look different at every organization based on climate, culture, and needs. 

Moving towards people-centered work environments where equity is the foundation is inherently disruptive. This is true in all types of workplaces: large well-funded non-profits, grassroots non-profit organizations, corporations, foundations, schools, etc. Equity requires disruption. There is no nice, or easy, way to create systemic change despite the thought leader, status-quo model that says otherwise. You can not simply package down DEI into soundbites, into TED talks, into one-off implicit bias training. That is not to say that these resources can’t be useful - they can be when encapsulated in a larger disruptor model - but on their own they are inadequate, to say the least. Disruption is the path forward to close the implementation gap. It leads us to a place where organizations can sincerely and holistically enact strategies and policies that serve everyone. More importantly, disruption is the path forward to create work environments that are healing versus hostile - because for far too long people in the workplace with marginalized identities have had to work in an actively hostile environment due to economic necessity driven by capitalism. We have a responsibility in the 21st-century workplace and society to create a new way forward to uplift everyone. The good news is we have the opportunity to do just that.

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About the Author

?Bryce J. Celotto is a 28-year-old policy advocate, educator, and community-based program manager with almost a decade of experience taking on challenging social issues such as racial justice, youth leadership development, student success, and LGBTQ rights. Throughout his work, he has trained hundreds of teachers on equitable education practices, advocated at the U.S. Department of Education for Title IX protections for transgender students, created leadership programming for historically disenfranchised youth, and worked on DEI initiatives at Brown University. Bryce is a graduate of the Honors College at the University of Massachusetts at Boston where he earned his B.A. in History - Magna Cum Laude. He is also a graduate of Brown University where he earned his Masters's degree in Education. When he is not working he enjoys reading, cooking, rooting on the Oakland A's and spending time at Lake Merritt.