May 2024, Available to the Public from June 2024
The Third Culture
The Third Culture is a company that creates spaces for fearless and human inclusion conversations. It does this through three practice areas of Auditing, Learning and Intentions.
Under the Intentions strand, the Inclusion Conversations Series for practitioners who work or are connected to the inclusion field was launched in April 2024. The series seeks to address the gap in the market for safe, thought-provoking and honest spaces for practitioners to discuss more complex and problematic challenges related to ‘EDI’ (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) as a practice. The goal of each session is to enable further conversation in a positive way across all potential social or political positions. Using the Chatham House Rule allows all participants to share realistic experiences that can lead to more meaningful and impactful solutions, which will be drafted into a report.
This is the first report. Initially open to attendees of the workshop.
Open access. Some rights reserved
This report is available to workshop attendees within the first month of its publication. After this, The Third Culture will publish the report on its website and encourage the circulation of this work as widely as possible while retaining the copyright.
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This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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The Third Culture is grateful to the attendees of the Inclusion Conversation Series whose output contributes to the reports.
Dismantling EDI
The term ‘dismantling EDI (Equity, Diversity& Inclusion)’ can perhaps strike fear in the hearts of people who work in diversity and inclusion. The acronym ‘EDI’ itself is subject to some debate within companies and the practice. For example, should the letter E represent equity or equality? Companies with dedicated resources question whether they should use any of these words or call it something else. Many companies are starting to pull back budgets and resources for EDI four years after dedicating millions post-George Floyd. Why?
The current political climate has not helped. There appears to be a movement to think of the practice as a dangerous political ideology, and the word woke is being misused and weaponised despite its humanitarian definition. Various media outlets dedicate a high proportion of energy and space to tearing down companies spending money on EDI training programmes. This perceived attack to EDI practice happens under the assumption that that four primary areas of political focus drive an EDI ‘ideology’.
The first is the Jewish question, amplified by the current Israel-Palestinian conflict with an underlying message that EDI is antisemitic. The second is the trans ‘debate,’ which continues to be used as a political tool in what is being called the culture wars with an underlying message that EDI is anti-women or anti-feminist. The third is that EDI only believes that the world is divided into two: the oppressed and the oppressors. Lastly, the fourth is that EDI does not believe in a meritocratic system of society. The coverage espousing this narrative cannot be underestimated. For the practice, the result is that there is much work to do in clarifying and building the counter-narrative and ensuring that this type of attack is not a distraction from the work.
The truth is that ‘doing’ EDI in the workplace has become an empty signifier. The ‘tick box’ exercise, which detractors posit the work as, is precisely what practitioners also fear and feel is happening. So, how can a better conversation play out? Particularly when the world is experiencing collective trauma and turmoil economically and socially. It may be worthwhile for the community of professionals working in the space to leverage what seems to be a movement to dismantle EDI as an opportunity to dismantle it themselves, to break it down and build it back up again so that it is fit for purpose and so that it becomes clear what problem(s) the work is solving.
- Create a new EDI campaign.
A common argument is that language—words like privilege, marginalised, and oppression—is misused and inflammatory for some and that there is a political agenda attached to this misuse. Indeed, the EDI community could be guilty of oversimplifying the meanings, ultimately scoring an ‘own goal’ for the sceptics. Even words such as diversity and inclusion are misunderstood or not clear. When delivering programmes at a corporate level, leading with the word diversity often switches leaders off from engaging because focusing solely on ‘who is in the room?’ can quickly become just a numbers game instead of truly about meaningful organisational transformation.
It is key to recognise that there is a frozen or undecided middle that would benefit from clarity. This may include a high proportion of people in powerful leadership positions across a spectrum of industries and sectors—many of whom will be white straight men.
As a result, EDI needs to rebrand and create a new manifesto, to change how it speaks about EDI and who speaks about EDI. This requires people who work in it to (re)organise themselves, which demands more funding and sustainable corporate support (not just a one-off response to a traumatic event).
Any EDI content and information must be fact-checked and evidence-based, and language must be crystal clear, with practitioners being adept at explaining concepts and principles. Recalibrating the conversation to prioritise I for inclusion versus D for diversity will also help engage a wider audience and the frozen middle.
There is also the critical question of tackling politics head-on. Suppose EDI was borne out of a belief in democracy. In that case, there needs to be an open admission that the work is political versus positing that it is apolitical. After all, politics is about the people. This is not the same as partisanship, where a distinct loyalty to a particular party or faction exists. By being more open and more transparent about the belief system of EDI, it is harder for detractors to deem EDI work as coercing a dangerous political programme.
However, the ongoing challenge is that social media platforms often give voice to people working in EDI who post a personal agenda rather than encouraging thoughtful dialogue. This is an unhelpful situation that plays into the hands of an anti-woke agenda. Therefore, there is a need for EDI to professionalise itself.
2. Professionalise the EDI practice.
There has been a range of complex cases in the UK and the US where organisations have been called out and/or penalised for not running processes meritocratically or within the law. This has caused understandable confusion and misunderstanding, ultimately making the case of changing processes to drive more equity even more challenging to support. Can the industry blame leaders for taking a cautious approach when mistakes are made?
In addition, post-George-Floyd, newer people are working in the profession, leading from hurt, pain and anger. In many instances, lived experience has become the sole qualification for being an EDI expert. This is a potentially dangerous trend for the individual with that lived experience (where the effects of trauma cannot be underestimated) particularly when it is rare for organisations to have more than one person responsible for the EDI agenda, if at all.
Upskilling individuals and the community working in EDI is critical, as is providing a more supportive network to help people move through hurt and anger which will allow them to be more potent advocates for meaningful change transformation work.
People working in EDI could be accused of creating a sense of elitism and lacking diversity in its widest sense – for example, could it be said that white straight men are represented within the field? Is diversity of thought fully embraced?
A shared understanding can be critical in upskilling and removing the existing elitism.
3. Create a shared understanding of EDI, leveraging language positively.
The ‘scarcity’ discourse related to identity, i.e., focusing on oppressed individuals or communities, means that everyone else or others lose out or that meritocracy fails to be upheld, is rampant. It is an argument used in the media, and senior leaders often use it to justify exclusionary decisions. It is an argument heard up and down the country during training courses when the concept of privilege is explained.
Indeed, people working in EDI can also be guilty of creating a hierarchy or competition between ‘the most offended’ and the ‘most marginalised’, creating an even more polarising debate—an unhelpful conversation when work is needed to tackle inequity and when particular communities may be suffering significantly at any given point in time for various reasons.
Given the lack of clarity around language, there is an opportunity to revisit how the field speaks about privilege, intersections and oppression in a more helpful way to move the conversation forward. For example, codifying the impact of privilege through a common understanding of the return on investment of EDI may be more helpful for the undecided middle. There is a need to help people understand and truly believe that equity and inclusion benefit everyone in society, including those with privilege.
4. Create more intimate and more focused learning opportunities for all.
Learning opportunities continue to be critical, but this involves refocusing efforts into areas where leaders can see the real impact of change. For example, focusing solely on unconscious bias training (i.e., just helping people understand what unconscious bias is) in organisations has not created significant change despite the high budgets allocated to it. A more collective focus on how bias plays into the systems that ultimately create inequity would bring more impactful results (be it racial or gender bias, or others).
The field should evolve significantly by considering broader interventions to improve learning, including more intimate approaches rather than one-size-fits-all classroom-based approaches. These include podcasts, group and individual coaching, listening sessions, and reverse mentoring.
5. Make more conversational spaces.
As the world becomes more polarised and less understanding, there is an opportunity for the sector to pull away from this and take a more positive stand in creating more conversational spaces for dialogue to find common ground or, in some instances, to de-escalate tensions.
Conversational spaces can only be built when people with opposing views share the desire to move the conversation forward in a respectful way.
Running more facilitated sessions that provide absolute clarity on who is holding the space, who is in the space, who is speaking and why, as well as ensuring they are safe (allowing people to speak freely), ultimately builds a culture in which giving feedback and making amends is normalised.
In conclusion:
The EDI field has an opportunity to take its work to the next level despite the negative backlash. The first step is acknowledging where it may have fallen short, followed by taking accountability for how it communicates, supports and upskills its people, and operates as a profession. Moving towards more intimate learning or conversational opportunities for all can create the most powerful change.
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