Sunday marked five years since the murder of George Floyd caused a nationwide reckoning on race — and approximately four years since much of Corporate America moved on from it.
Shameful? Sure.
Saddening? You bet.
Surprising? Not to Dee C. Marshall.
Marshall is the CEO and managing partner of Newark-based Diverse & Engaged — and a longtime leader in training and education on diversity, equity & inclusion to some of the country’s biggest companies.
Marshall said she knows how quickly DEI movements can come and go — when is the last time you saw the hashtag #MeToo or heard talk about “Asian Hate”? she asks.
She also knows this: Abandoning the ideas behind DEI is bad for a company. Doing so will impact its bottom line — and its ability to attract and retain top talent.
DEI, after all, never has been about giving people jobs and titles they didn’t deserve — that’s an idea that comes out of a lack of education or a desire to score political points, she said.
“DEI training is about helping a company become more diverse and more inclusive so that they can keep people,” she said. “People don’t want to work for companies where they don’t feel like they belong.”
That’s why Diverse & Engaged still is thriving and still in demand. In fact, the anti-DEI wave that seemingly is sweeping Corporate America is making her firm more relevant than ever.
“We’re still getting plenty of calls,” she said.
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It was only a few days after Floyd was brutally murdered on the streets of Minneapolis when Marshall got her first email from a concerned (read: scared) CEO.
“We are anti-racist,” the leader wrote.
Corporate America literally spent billions — more than $85 billion, Marshall estimates — to prove just that. Big checks, profound statements, listening sessions were everywhere. And in one sense, it was a transformative moment.
“It forced Corporate America to see Black people as more than just a business group,” she said. “They had to see the struggle. It was on a continuous loop; they couldn’t miss it.”
It didn’t last long.
Many companies — those who were just in it for show — exited as soon as they had to decide if they were going to continue their contributions in Year Two. And, when the Supreme Court essentially overturned affirmative action in the summer of 2023, it gave rise to the anti-DEI movement.
All the while, the true meaning of DEI was getting lost. Then, it got twisted.
Politicians, most notably President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, made it a campaign issue — not just suggesting, but flat-out saying that DEI was a policy in which people of color got jobs and promotions they didn’t deserve at the expense of white people.
The backlash was extreme: Marshall estimates there were more than 150 bills put up around the country. “Go woke and go broke” was one of DeSantis’ favorite lines.
Marshall just shakes her head at the lack of understanding.
“Here’s the miss,” she said. “DEI is never put in a social, cultural context, meaning people don’t see the full picture. They just see, ‘Oh, there’s a diversity program that is intended to get more people of color here, and so it automatically means that you lower the barrier or the benchmark or the standard’ — versus you have to create intentionality to get more people here, because people who are qualified have been left out.”
Marshall said DEI is an attempt to course correct.
“It is evidence-based,” she said. “Look at our history of housing discrimination and finance discrimination. It used to be illegal for Black and white people to live on the same street. If racism was that embedded, we have to have some parameters to course correct. DEI was an intention to do that.”
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Diverse & Engaged had its best quarter in the weeks and months after Floyd was murdered. And, while the surge certainly was spurred by what Marshall calls “the tipping point,” it wasn’t solely derived from it.
Diverse & Engaged was founded nearly a decade before the incident and had established itself as a firm that helps create a strategy for culture change.
Here’s how it works:
“Companies retain Diverse & Engaged to solve their workplace challenges,” Marshall said. “We help them become more diverse in terms of representation and more inclusive, so that they can keep people — because people don’t want to work for companies where they don’t feel like they belong.”
Her team will meet with top executives, do a needs assessment and come up with a strategy for implementation.
“Training is about behavior change,” she said.
Marshall said about 70% of its work is training and developing on how to be more inclusive, how to not cause harm, in terms of microaggressions and macroaggressions. It does a lot of bias training.
“We create a strategy,” she said. “What do you need to prioritize? What’s the good and the great here, and where are some areas for development? Here’s how you create an environment that is inclusive, where your team will thrive, where people will want to work here.”
***
Marshall likes to trace the history of DEI. It started in Corporate America a generation ago purely for legal reasons: How do we ensure we won’t get sued? Then studies showed it was good for the bottom line, so it was implemented as a revenue-generator.
It was humanized after Floyd. Companies realized programs had to be about doing the right thing, not just the things needed to profit.
The evolution continues. And it is movement based.
Marshall likes to call Floyd’s murder DEI 3.0. It follows #MeToo (DEI 2.0 was about gender discrimination) and was quickly followed by DEI 4.0 (Asian Hate).
DEI 5.0 is about the dismantling of programs.
Not everyone is participating.
The anti-DEI movement is a case study for companies. Those who publicly announce they are stepping back (see: Target) have seen huge financial losses. Those who publicly support DEI initiatives (see: Costco, Marriott) are benefiting.
New heroes are emerging (see: Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase).
“He doesn’t care about the administration,” Marshall said. “He doesn’t care about threats. He’s not honoring any obligatory or any anticipatory compliance.
“They have entire initiatives that are not just for people of color, but Black people. He says, ‘We’re going to continue advancing Black pathways.’”
Marshall does not expect every leader to act like Dimon, someone who is powerful enough to be unapologetic for his views.
But, she said, every leader can be thoughtful — and stand by the corporate ethos that got them to where they are today, rather than quickly responding to a sound bite.
“What we’re challenging our clients to do is this: Don’t move on executive orders,” she said. “Instead, go back to the bylaws of the company that’s 100 years old, and ask the question: When have we ever changed our internal operation based on an executive order? Never. So then, why would you move on an executive order that’s not yet law?”
***
The marches, the public proclamations, the moments of silence that lasted 9 minutes and 29 seconds … you didn’t see any of that this past weekend. You won’t see anything moving forward.
Marshall is not surprised.
“Corporate America is not going to touch this,” she said. “They have moved away from it. They will only touch diversity, equity & inclusion at the very surface. They are not going to go deep.”
Marshall said Juneteenth — the day that became a federal holiday in the wake of Floyd’s murder — will be the next time Corporate America is forced to make a statement: Will it give its employees off?
The shame, Marshall said, is that choosing to recognize (or not recognize) Juneteenth will not have a lasting impact on the success of a company. Proper training, which will improve the workplace, will.
“DEI isn’t about handing out jobs,” she said. “It’s about course correction. And it’s no different if you’re talking about programs for people of color or women or any other group that has been held back.
“You have to ask yourself: ‘Why were these initiatives set up in the first place?’ It’s because there is a history of holding that group back. Why is correcting that a bad thing?”
