I’m far from an expert, but I don’t feel preference to one group over another is the purpose of DEI. I think we can look at this a few ways and have that make sense.

I watched a video discussing DEI this morning, and it pointed out that these for-profit companies, run by wealthy individuals, would not be doing DEI to begin with if it didn’t have tangible benefits. Some of it can be the moral equivalent of greenwashing, but what business of any size would say, no, I don’t want to hire the best person, I need more X people instead? That would only be sabotaging yourself.

Well what benefits do employers get from DEI? If a talented person from a minority group is looking for work, and they had their choice of places to work, would they pick a place with a monoculture, or one that is making an effort to show they are welcoming to people of all backgrounds? If they take a job that embraces people of all walks of life, they’ll also retain those people as they won’t feel like someone who’s only there to check a box on a list of hiring requirements. If they hire people that went to the best schools in Europe, China, India, etc. they’re getting ideas and innovation from all over the world.

I’m at my second pharmaceutical job, and both facilities hire the best people they can from around the world. At both places, I’m the only white person on my team. It obviously did not impair me getting hired and I’ve never felt treated better or worse than anyone else. But I have greatly expanded my horizons from getting to know people from the other places and cultures. I’ve been able to give them different perspectives on things as well.

I wouldn’t want to get a job just because I was white more than anyone would want to get a job purely because they weren’t. I couldn’t imagine somewhere like that would be a place that I wanted to be at for very long. But being at places where I see everybody no matter who they are getting treated the same lets me see there’s at least some level of fairness going on. So DEI isn’t something to give something to some particular someone and not somebody else, it’s just to make sure everyone is getting something where that’s possible. It’s not a quota system, but a desire to prevent becoming one.

I think it’s worth picking this apart a bit to show just how complicated it all is. Your motivation seems right, but there’s an inherent contradiction in your suggestion. One of the purposes of DEI best practices is to have BIPOC people in the room at all levels of the organization, in decision-making roles, and normal worker roles. It helps everyone feel welcome, heard, and equal. Often this feeling is intangible but has very real impacts on how works gets done, how coworkers interact with each other, and how satisfied the workforce is. If you have a meeting full of diverse staff, its much less likely that the white folks will spew microaggressions and make everyone else uncomfortable.

That means yes, interviewers should absolutely be diverse themselves, because they’ll typically hire a more diverse workforce. But how do you suggest that we require interviewers be diverse to avoid bias? We need DEI training and enforceable policies for that. So we’re stuck in a vicious cycle.

Yes! Yes they should. I’m not sure they can be. Not with so many companies out there.

I work for a company in a location in a modest sized upper Midwest town. It is a decidedly white area. Yet, even with rather easy hiring requirements, the store is whiter than the area by a considerable margin. The GM sees fit to refuse staffing certain departments with women. At all. He’s openly used the n-word on the sales floor. He was called to the mat for that, and even with a history of bigoted activities and remarks, still has a job.

This is only an example. So yes, they should. But they don’t.

Utopic. Even if names are removed and replaced with a random generated number and interviews are done through text message exchange, significant bias will still show through. The interviewer will pick up on writing styles or maybe something in their education that gives a hint. The reason these quotas exist is because minority groups are discriminated against even by people who try not to. It is human nature to gravitate towards what you are comfortable with.

Source: I run a firm in the tech sector and have been in a hiring position for about 25 years.

PS: Bias is not exclusive to CIS straight white people as many articles try to allude to. Some of our clients have an ongoing struggle with entrenched Indian employees only hiring CIS straight Indians and caste discrimination.