The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established in 1965 to eliminate job discrimination.  Guaranteeing equal opportunity for historically discriminated-against groups became the nation’s top priority.  The nation implemented affirmative action policies in the 1970s to rapidly diversify American workplaces. Affirmative action was used in the hiring process, but diversity training programs were required to ensure that American companies maximized the benefits of having a diverse workforce. Dominique Hollis, who started a DEI consulting firm, explained that Ronald Reagan’s deregulation policies in the 1980s made it clear that corporations should address discrimination internally, and the federal push for diversity lost momentum. However, corporate America had already realized the importance of diversity by this point. In the 1990s and 2000s, diversity specialists and consultants emerged to assist businesses in tailoring their diversity programs to meet their specific needs. Numerous studies, however, began to reveal that diversity training did not make individuals more tolerant, as many employees resented having to go through training unrelated to the job they were paid to do. When Democrat Barack Obama became America’s first Black president in 2008, many people believed that the country had finally moved past its discriminatory past. During the Obama administration, businesses began to question the true value of diversity training programs. As time passed, and American society became more diverse and integrated, it was inevitable that a generation would emerge that was so accustomed to diverse settings that they did not require training to work well with people of different races, religions, and ethnicities. Republican Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory was considered a setback to diversity advocates. This was because the media painted Trump as a White supremacist who would allow businesses to revert to discriminatory practices from the 1960s and 1970s. Even if the media’s inflated rhetoric had nothing to do with reality, diversity professionals felt compelled to respond to the perceived threat. Three letters suddenly replaced the term “diversity training” DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). Diversity training used to teach employees how to be sensitive to differences, but DEI surpassed these measures by promoting diversity in representation, providing equitable access to opportunities, and cultivating an inclusive environment in which everyone felt valued. In 2020, a White Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. This sparked riots across the country, and 2020 became known as the “year of racial reckoning.” During this turbulent period, activist groups persuaded business leaders that America had returned to a state of inequality. Corporate America responded by launching new DEI programs. A LinkedIn analysis found that chief diversity and inclusion officers increased by 168.9 percent between 2019 and 2022. Following Trump’s reelection in 2024, numerous corporations eliminated their DEI initiatives. Activists feared these corporations were abandoning their commitment to diversity after Trump returned to office and vowed to boycott them. However, the activists confused a company’s DEI programs with its dedication to actual diversity, which are two different things. A recent study helped to clarify the distinction. Researchers from Rutgers’ Social Perception Lab and the Network Contagion Research Institute conducted a study to see whether the most brazen DEI training in the workplace increased empathy or hostility. The study concentrated on DEI training that included Robin DiAngelo’s radical whiteness theories, as described in her book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.  The researchers discovered that these types of DEI initiatives primed employees to see discrimination where none existed. This would create more problems than it solved, so businesses are phasing out these types of DEI initiatives. When activists call for a boycott of corporations that were eliminating DiAngelo-style DEI training because they incorrectly believe these companies are abandoning their commitment to diversity, they too are focusing on discrimination that does not exist. When DEI is mistaken for actual diversity, this error is bound to happen.     The post J. Pharoah Doss: Confusing DEI with actual diversity appeared first on Atlanta Daily World.