Bringing opportunity for all

From media to banking to law, leaders are championing diverse successes.

Reported by Erik Siemers – Editor, St. Louis Business Journal

Story Highlights

• DEI initiatives face backlash, with organizations withdrawing support.

• Corporate America dismantles diversity programs amid political pressure.

• St. Louis needs population growth, particularly from international immigrants.

"Read the room," the email said.

This hit our inboxes in early June, after we notified readers of open nominations for this awards program, the Champions for Diversity & Inclusion.

"Diversity awards? Really?," the full email read. "Read the room."

Read the room.

I'm guessing you understand the point this reader was trying to make, but in case you don't, I'll spell it out for you. They're saying that DEI is over, a side effect of the death of "wokeness," a term that used to suggest awareness of our implicit biases, but was somehow sloganeered into becoming the name of some disease spread by far-left extremists.

This sudden turning of the tables has brought a moment of American self-reflection to a screeching halt. This power shift has brought universities to heel, corporations to cower, and a nation to live in fear of association with an idea that just a few months ago they agreed would put us on the right side of history.

Think this is just hyperbole? Across our company, American City Business Journals, I've heard my peers share stories of sponsors backing out of programs similar to this one, an apparent move to disassociate their brands from an impolitic subject. One company, a local nonprofit, turned down a Champions for Diversity & Inclusion Award this year. While they said their cause was important, and the award would be a significant honor, it wasn't enough to overcome the fear of losing the federal funding their budget relies upon.

I won't fault them for that. Because, like that writer suggested, I'm reading the room.

I'm reading the room and seeing how the root words DEI — diversity, equity, inclusion — transitioned from being foundational principles to the keywords of a politically disfavored movement.

I'm watching a Corporate America that just two years ago extolled the necessity of embracing diversity and inclusion, and now is quietly dismantling those programs. Maybe they're shifting to the most convenient, risk-averse position they can find. Or maybe they never really believed in it.

I'm watching a federal government eliminate funding for diversity-related programs, calling them "radical." Just last month, the city of St. Louis temporarily froze its program for awarding contracts to women- and minority-owned businesses to redraft it in a way that would expose it to less scrutiny as it pursued federal funds for tornado recovery.

Yes, I'm reading the room, and I'm seeing a St. Louis metro area starving for population growth, that needs every person it can get, no matter their color, country of origin, religion or political ideology. It needs people willing to work and create, to be good neighbors. And I'm looking at data that shows how the biggest pocket of growth in this otherwise no-growth region comes from international immigrants, the one category the current political winds seem most likely to target as unwanted.

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