9B: Episode 5: DEI and Business.

In this episode, we discuss DEI and Business. Where did it go? Is it truly gone? How does the culture in the US compare to other cultures, both historically and in modern times? 

This business and BS is hashed over a beer, a bourbon, and a Boulevardier cocktail by our three bombastic, bloviating blokes in Bryan, TX — the 9B’s.

Work with us  Fidelis Creative Agency 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

All right. So this is the 9B podcast. This is beer, bourbon, and a boulevardier from the distinguished gentleman on my right. And we are here.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

No.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

No. The guy in the vest. We're talking about business and BS from three bloviating bombastic bros in Bryan, Texas. That's the 9B part. You see?

SPEAKER_01 0:26

So impressive you have that memorized. It took a little bit. I couldn't do that. It took a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Today's topic is DEI in the workplace, or as I titled it, DEI. Where did you go? And is it hot in hell? So we might get into some very uh contested territory, and that's fine with me.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

So let's just quick, what's our take on this?

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Well, I know what my take is, but anybody's welcome to push back. Um so, Thaddeus, will you actually introduce the topic?

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Yeah, so our topic today is the woke corporate tightrope navigating the DEI backlash. If you haven't noticed, there's been a cultural, civic, corporate retreat from diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, DEI. The unwokening, some have called it. The question is, are companies truly retreating from DEI? Are they just taking a pause? Are they reconstituting and uh readying themselves for a second effort? Did it just move underground? Yeah. Um, in response to conservative pressure and consumer boycotts over the last few years, a growing number of companies are quietly scaling back. They're quiet quitting DEI, their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. It's sparked a heated debate about the role of corporations in social and political issues and how they are formed, how are how they're discussed, how uh momentum is moved on them. Today, our cop our topic's uh take or the little slice we're taking of it is uh we're delving into the culture wars and the clash between traditional values and progressive corporate activism. Join us as we get into the complexities of corporate social responsibility and the challenges of catering to a politically polarized customer. We will highlight the financial risks of corporate activism and the power of consumer boycotts. We're also gonna raise questions about the future of DEI in the workplace and the impact on employee morale, employee, employee cohesion, company culture, um, and brand reputation. So lots to dig into, um and it's a it's a spicy topic.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Let's let's take the most charitable position to start because it won't last long. But we could the charity of it all but the most charitable stance on this would be in its best form, it tried to do a thing that had some validity, right? Which is we want to see um people who didn't have access and opportunity to be able to have access and opportunity. That in its best form, that's what it was. Yeah, okay. Okay. So you can acknowledge that and then also say, and then what it became was a way of keeping a thumb on a scale and it essentially creating new gates and dividing people out and limiting opportunity for those who are capable and maybe even better suited for positions because we had that thumb on the scale. That's why the thing failed, correct?

SPEAKER_00 4:16

I I think that it's um America, like any human project, had shortcomings. It's not a perfect project. We know what those historical shortcomings are. We don't need to rehash that. Right. Right? This is cultural Marxists using the flaws and the guilt feelings and the sense of responsibility that Americans have over the status of their project, using that to take advantage and and gain social, political, and cultural power in our society by using these shortcoming, these historical shortcomings. They weaponized that as a as a weapon, as a way, as a piece of leverage to gain power.

SPEAKER_02 5:05

I have a I have a very good friend of mine. That's my opinion. I have a very good friend of mine who was in um a very I mean, a a name of a corporation that we would all recognize, and they had an office in Denver, and in 2021 uh the corporate came in, they did a big DEI struggle sesh where the uh executives had to come up and basically repent for all these sins, these cultural sins.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

And if I can jump in, if anyone doesn't know the struggle session idea, that is straight out of the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. I did not know that. Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Which is what what what what what was that kind of scene?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

It would be um young communists like communist Red Guard units coming into villages and taking the leaders and the most wealthy peasants or villagers, standing them up in front of the the entire population of the village and making them do exactly what you said. Repent for um the fact that their family had had owned land for so many generations, uh that they had been leaders and um like a public shaped shapers of that. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Like trying to atone for for my uh capitalistic.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

That's where that idea of uh of privilege came from, that you have you have privilege from your class position that you need to repent, repent for. This is like a playbook?

SPEAKER_02 6:37

Oh yeah. Wow, oh yeah. Okay, you can do some pretty deep dives and find all that. So didn't mean to deepen you. So this happens with the corporate leadership in front of all the staff, and my buddy is sitting at the back of the room just going, This is agonizing. This is like a form of it is, it is, and it's torturous and it's humiliating, and it's eroding any sort of like leadership actually has a mandate to lead and to take us places. It's it's subjugating the leadership of an organization to these standards and rules, and he said it was the weirdest thing ever, and he just thought And it erodes any sense of common bond between between different groups of people.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

So kill culture, sure. Yeah. And so and so those days are gone. We're not seeing that happen any longer. And I am curious to know why do you think that it eroded and why did it erode so fast? And do you think it's really gone, or is it just a matter of time before this stuff resurfaces? I have my opinion, but I don't want to monopolize the time.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Um I I'm a pretty staunch capitalist, and I put it as this in this sort of way. I don't think anybody actually believed any of it. I think that the thing that happens with capitalism is you have to you vote with your dollars, you speak with your money, uh money speaks, money talks, money is the thing. And before wokism, before DEI, if the market wasn't addressing it, I don't think I think that showed actual true belief. And I think that's why um you get like um it becomes these ideologies of capitalism versus versus communism. It's capitalism versus it's the ideology of it all because this this communistic kind of Marxistic thing comes in and it says, no, no, no, the dollars the dollars are lagging, they're they're not the issue. It's the these ideologies that are really the truth of the situation. I I stand back and say, no, actually the dollars are showing what people actually care about. And I think that's what overwhelms.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Why did so corporate allowed itself to be dragged in public?

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Yeah, it was all PR.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

Because they were fearful of a workforce leaving.

unknown 9:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Is that is that essentially what you're saying?

SPEAKER_01 9:28

I think so. I think they got fear in there. I think I think that's a huge crowbar. Fear moves things. Um but y history shows I think capitalism is a much stronger it's a stronger stance. It is a stronger push and power than we should feel bad for long periods of time. You can't really hold that.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

I mean, I think um this is not counter to what you're saying, it's c it's sort of addendum to what you're saying or goes alongside. Um I don't think any of this cultural Marxism would have leaked out into the general public, into the the common um thought space of the society without the internet. Internet culture, the the availability of the internet in the early 2000s is what allowed these, you know, theories and ideologies that were basically confined to academic humanities departments uh in the 1970s, eighties, and nineties to really start to to leech out into the into the society and start to be picked up and traded around and bandied about by citizens. Um I'm speaking in the United States specifically. And then interestingly, it's the it's the internet and social media that made so much of this visible to the the society and how it was being instituted in schools, how it was being instituted in corporations during the COVID lockdowns, because so much was being done online with with Zoom meetings, uh, struggle sessions were being taken onto onto Zoom. Parents were seeing the indoctrination that their children were facing in the public school system. And so the the internet played a really interesting role of letting all this out, but then also alerting people to how how far it had gone, how how bad it had gotten.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

We just had way too much time on our hands. I think that's what it did. Idle hands, man. I mean that's why I started making these boulevardiers in there first.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Um I wrote I wrote this. Uh I think part of what is eroding all of it is that there's the science is um infiltrating into people's thoughts. And I'm gonna make this point. In 2003, the Human Genome Project confirmed that 99.9% of the human genome is identical across all human ethnic groups. So there's just the human race.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

That should have been the cause for celebration.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

Yes. The widest the widest variation It seems like it wasn't. It wasn't like it wasn't. The widest variation happens within an ethnic group, not across them. So 95.7 variation was the was uh the lowest within cultures. And so that means that 4.3% variance within a subgroup is not a lot of variance. There's just human race. We're just human. Okay. So I think this is deeply uncomfortable for race relation dynamics today because I don't know how you start privileging one group over another with any sort of claim to integrity, especially in the cultural melting pot that is the United States. I knew a kid, I taught a kid, who had this ethnic makeup. Okay. A white father married a black woman. They adopted a child, my student, who was part black and part Asian, and I can't remember the specifics, I think it was Korean. He had two other adopted siblings. One was fully Hispanic, one was another mixed-race little boy. I never met the siblings, I'm just going off what he told me. Both adopting parents were professors at the university, they were affluent. I remember thinking if Jonah, my student, marries a mixed-race girl from Boston and they have children, then the Christmas cards are just going to end up entirely tan. Just it's just what are we talking about, right? So I have, you know, Korean ethnicity, except I'm raised in the United States in a complete melting pot household, and now, you know, it's it's starting to like lose meaning. Yeah. Right? So what is ethnicity? What cultural soup did this kid stew in? He's American, and his culture is whatever they practiced in their home and what he learned at school. His hierarchy of goods and values and the importance he places on X, Y, or Z are a result of his unique context. Because now we're only talking about melanin in the skin and ethnic culture. We're no longer talking about race. We're just talking about culture. We know skin pigment is irrelevant. A black person can grow up culturally Korean in Korea, and a Korean can grow up in Botswana and behave very much like Botswanans. Cuisine, songs, clothing. So how does DEI address that? How does it help? It doesn't. It doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

It doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

It just makes it more, it just makes it harder. Yeah. It makes all of the work and value creation harder.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Well, I think I think one of the reasons it is a false project is that it actually, as much as it celebrates cultural um mixing, like that, that's the ultimate end of what we're trying to get to. It relies on these very um static, uh, very tightly defined like definitions of this is what black is, this is what Hispanic is. This there are these defined groups that everyone gets slotted into, and then they're they're put into these kind of contentious relationships with one another. They're pitted against each other. And your example would suggest that's not exactly what reality is. Right. Right?

SPEAKER_02 16:03

Right. Right. And so by focusing on the can I can I say one other thing?

SPEAKER_00 16:08

And then it has this incredibly um ahistorical definition of what white is, because some of the the books of the the very books of the race traders, um the the D the people who trade in DEI ideology, um, their their own corpus has books in it like How the Irish Became White, that when the Irish arrived in the United States in the 1840s, they weren't considered whites. They were kept out of polite society because they weren't English, because they were Catholic mostly, not Anglican. And the same was done, the same experience you know, could be documented for Italians, for Slavs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

Yeah. So the aims of more fairness and opportunity aren't delivered really by any DEI initiative. They're delivered by an open meritocracy where getting education, getting training, fighting hard, getting experience, getting uh, you know, being tutored through an organization to become more powerful, you're you're focused on an externalized goal versus this particalized, uh, splintered identity set, right? So instead of saying it's all of this splintering and particularization that is the strength, the common goal actually is the strength. And if you're running an organization, a business, that is by focusing on that, that is where there is the most appreciation for varied gifts and abilities, et cetera.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Yeah, and that that's supposed to be, that was supposed to be the original kind of good side of the coin of the hey, first it was, hey, make sure you get your high school diploma and follow this path, get a high school diploma, learn a trade, support your family. And then it shifted to after World War II, hey, get your get your um your bachelor's degree and follow this path and get into a company that has a pension for you. You know, that's that was the good path or the good vision for that structured path of advancement in this society. Now that's that's breaking down as we've talked about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

But so that kind of that kind of segues a little bit into what do corporations do who bought hard or bit hard on DEI? I there's a lot of websites out there with their DEI policy on their homepage.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Still on the website.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Yeah. It's it's I think there's a whole opportunity industry for uh DEI rollback advisors. How do you PR your way back to normalizing work? How do you go back to value creation? Or you just quietly let it roll. You just take that sucker off that front page and you walk away.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

Why why why spotlight it?

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

You know, just let it die under its own neglect.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Aaron Ross Powell I think if you do have that on your home page, one, it's uh silly how outdated that is. But also uh I I not is it not only is it just unpopular or uh ill-favored, it's it's more like oh you're you're kind of tet tipping your hand to you'll do anything. You'll say whatever they tell you to say. Yeah. There's there's a lack of uh integrity and fiber and backbone here. Well, you said it, not me. I say it, yeah. I I mean I I s I see that on the and I'm like, I know exactly who you are.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

Like Let's talk about that. What who are you? What what is the person who is able to fold like a cheap suit in every one of these sort of cultural uprisings? Because I see them. I've been on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

It's it's a weird, it's a weird uh I still think it's capitalism. I think it was popular and they were gonna take a dollar and they they knew I can land a better customer. Whether that's a government bid or a larger private equity thing that needs me to have it here. I I think it's just shifty. And I think I think that is what's becoming unpopular in corporate America right now is we need we need businesses and leaders who are going to do the thing well and right and with integrity on principle.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

On principle. And stand for a thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

That's the thing that's always And don't be a wuss. A corporate that's that's what's driven uh American commerce for generations. I think I I hope, I hope we are getting back to that.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

I think another um rallying cry from the consumer or the population, but how accurate is it? Is that idea of well business, businesses, corporations, they should kind of the the stay in their lane charge, like they just shouldn't get involved in social and political and corporate issues. But how what what does that mean? How accurate is that? I mean, you say some is it even possible. Is it even possible like in the in the society, the day and age that we live in? Um something as innocuous as the MLB um stadium cam that's going around in between innings and spotlighting couple. So that they the KISS cam, that's politically charged. That's politically charged because of Obergefell and what we have what we have decided or not decided about what the definition of marriage is and the status of heterosexual versus homosexual relationship.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

You're saying everything has become political.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

So how do you stay in your lane as a corporation? You see politics and pastors talking about politics. You see at my dinner table, I'm talking about uh I'm talking about politics, I'm talking about the church, I'm talking about what they're going to be experiencing and expecting. What I'm more in favor of is, okay, if all of the lanes, all the lines, the dotted lines that get erased, what we still have to create is people who know how to operate their world, that know how to have uh not just not just like common sense, but like wisdom. How do you do that? So a again, I have to go back to hope.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

A framework that transcends the categories, that no matter what category we're discussing, it all yields to a larger, coherent world view framework.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Yeah, there's actually an intersection somewhere in Europe, and I saw this time lapse of it. There's no stop signs, no lanes, no anything, and there's something like one, two, three, four, five, six intersections that all happen within this one little block. And no traffic lights, nothing. Is it a traffic circle? You were doing this motion with the. No, it's like uh it's like uh I was counting in my head. There's this city block that there's all these intersections and nothing, no police, no regulation of any kind. And it's one of the safest areas because everybody knows how everybody thinks, and they know how to have this like social contract of this traffic that's gonna happen here. And you look over at uh a highway with a four-lane traffic, I'm getting cut off all the time. People have a false safety in lanes. That's what I'm advocating for is like good drive. A shared culture. Yeah, which I call capitalism.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

People who are interested in value creation, solving other stuff that's gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

So would you are you saying, like, to take it back to my kiss cam example? You're saying, well, let the Dodgers have the KISS Cam that shows all varieties of of couples, and if the Milwaukee Brewers decide to we're we're only gonna put the KISS Cam on heterosexual couples, then then kind of let the dollars follow.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

See who has I think the dollars are probably gonna still follow whoever's winning the game. So in that sense.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

But I mean you're you're kind of saying like don't have any I'm not I'm not quite sure what you're what you're saying still on the particulars of I don't really know how it relates to the KISS Cam either. It's just that I'm my example of the KISS Cam is just everything is politically charged now because Is this where is this where I make my pitch for Western civilization?

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Yeah, go for it. Okay. So if you're a Tongan that has moved to the United States, you have an opportunity to assimilate into the United States of America, and that common framework of understanding is an out and uh a product of Western civilization. So I'm gonna make a pitch here. Because by the way, this is the 9B podcast podcast, this is the 9B podcast, and this means that we talk about whatever we want to talk about. When somebody asked me, Well, what is your podcast about? I just laughed and I was like, it's whatever topic anybody says. Wouldn't it be rad if we talked about this? All right, so here it is. I wrote a little thing. And so if the race issue is sort of been radically changed, and now we just have the human race, and now we can only evaluate the good or bad based on culture and like our society. Okay, uh, this is a fascinating moment because DNA racialization is off the table because of the actual science. Skin pigment, eye shape, hair texture are just other physical traits like short and tall. So we're left with only one question. What cultures are better than other cultures? Which is a very uncomfortable question. Right? So you're saying what culture produces the best flourishing, has the most virtue, what does virtue mean? Like is is is is this a culture that has more murder?

SPEAKER_01 27:11

You're saying that that's a good debate to have.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

I think that's a great debate to have, but people go, whoa, whoa, whoa, and they start getting, I don't know, about how do we evaluate one culture over another. Um and if you say, no, no, no, guy, you can't talk about the superiority of one culture over another, you jingoistic son of a brisket, then you need to pause and you need to think jummy brisket sounds pretty you need to pause and think about what you're saying. Are you really saying you can't criticize one culture as being worse than another culture? And there's some people who would say yes, and like anthropologists would say it's all cultural, so it doesn't really matter. Right. They would wipe it off. They would wipe it and say it. Tongan culture and Greek culture and whatever, Chinese culture, it's just different. You can't talk about one better than the other. That's what they would say. At which point I would say, really, are we prepared to say that? Are you saying Germany in 1938 is just as good as where we are now? Are you saying Aztec human sacrificing civilization is also just fine? Or a polygamous culture or the American South and say eighteen fifty-five? Of course you can differentiate. The dominant question is then by what standard? How are we judging the ethnic cultures? What do we mean good bad? Surely all ethnicities have some of both, right? Good and bad, of course, but some are clearly better for their population and better for ways in which they interact with other cultures, the way they treat their most vulnerable populations, the way they behave sexually, the way they conduct themselves in the mall, the quality of their art, right? I think all of us would have a very strong vote for Western civilization. And what do we mean by Western civilization? Could you define it please? Sure. Typically, when people say Western civilization, they say they mean Greek philosophy and natural philosophy, science and mathematics. It's a mix of that with Roman law and civil municipal order, plus the military, and it's Christianity that sprang out of Judaism. That in a nutshell is Western civilization. All the art, the culture, Rembrandt, Mozart, Shakespeare, all of that is embedded in the Greek, Roman, Christian tradition. That is actually the bedrock foundation upon which Texas is built, right? And that free market capitalism is built. It's different. It's a different culture than what's going on in Beijing or Guangzhou today.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

You invoke you invoke Texas, and I'm all in.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

Yeah. So I've got my last paragraph, and then I'll I'll be done, and you guys can tear it apart or agree. I think Western civilization may be the highest best culture the world has developed over the last 2,000 years. Perhaps Chinese Han civilization would have been the apex, but they rejected Christianity in favor of communism and total state control. A Christian China might have taken the podium and the gold medal, but Mao did his filthy work, and all the murdering and the persecuting, etc. The US has a ton to answer for what we've done in the Middle East, for example, how we treat our elderly today in these home factories, what passes for education these days, and what we're doing in Silicon Valley with AI. We have some real blemishes, I'd argue that. And some very bright, shiny moments as well. The abolition of chattel slavery in the South is a great thing. Equality under the law for voting, a great thing. The US has much to be proud of and much to repent for, but we are the last best expression of Western civilization as Europe continues its face plant and drag across the asphalt.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

And scene.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Yeah, I think that so much of this uh comes down to what you were talking about of um Western civilization often is taken to task for how it uh for the the actions, the historical record, you might say. Um but what allows Western civilization to be taken to task for its historical uh mistakes are the ideals that Western civilization values promoted and developed. And so it's it's this constant tug and pull between um actions of flawed humans and truly um uh a true a true set of of values, right, that allow those actions to be evaluated. Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:08

Yeah. It was like when uh all the riots and the burnings of 2021 and the summer of Floyd and all that, and burn it all down. I was like, you start um eroding the ideals and principles of the United States, it's one of the only nations that has the toggle switches and dials to correct injustice. If you erode that and you kick at its foundations, you're you're stopping the thing that has the best chance of improvement.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

I mean, like you were saying, you know, very much at base of the uh erosion of chattel slavery in the South, the the the the fighting of the civil war, the post-war amendments, where did that all come from? All men are created equal. That claim in the Declaration of Independence. And what's in back of that is Rome, Gre Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

That's right. That's right. And so I would argue to conclude, Western civilization has done a pretty good job, and we're resting on the laurels of that today. We get the benefits of two millennia, and we're reaping the war rewards at precisely the moment we're tearing it all down because of something a pouty someone said. Those are those are my complaints.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

I need another one.