Workplaces are turning into woke temples
The Inclusivity includes everyone....unless you disagree with it.
I work in tech. I have been in this field for about two decades, but there has been an enormous shift in the past approximately five years or so.
Previously, the ethic at work was neutrality. People put aside religious and political beliefs in order to work together on a common goal. Your workplace certainly didn’t attempt to force ideological or religious beliefs on you; this was viewed as unethical, and probably illegal.
Something has massively changed in the last few years. Now, tech workplaces (and I imagine many other types) have turned into woke temples. It starts with the job ad, which nearly always includes a statement about how much they value “diversity” and encourages women, disabled people, and LGBTQ+ to apply. It continues with the interview, where they boast about how committed they are to “DEI” (diversity, equity, and inclusion). Since I am a woman, they may mention how glad they would be to hire a woman (this type of remark about immutable characteristics that have nothing to do with the job used to be verboten).
The interviewer simply assumes that I am fully on board with his or her worldview, and imagines that by boasting about their commitment to DEI, they are attracting me to the job. In reality, I have internally died a little and have mentally checked this job off the list of possibilities.
You see, I am the type of person that DEI most definitely excludes and will persecute joyfully given the chance. I am a person with the right set of chromosomes, but the wrong set of ideas. I do not agree with DEI.
In 2019, I got basically my dream job: a remote, full-time job at an agency. All went well until the summer of George Floyd, when the entire world went sideways at a funny angle and seems never to have recovered. All of a sudden we were getting BLM selfies in our chat app, self-loathing rants about one’s “privilege” and guilt, and lectures about correct language from the more “woke” team members. Then the company decided to form a “diversity committee”.
The first result of this “diversity committee” was language censorship, in the form of automated messages in the chat app rebuking the use of any words that they had found on some online list of woke forbidden language, horrible slurs such as “guys”, “savage”, “crazy”, etc. This had the immediate effect (on me) of stress, feeling totally demotivated and not wanting to be at work at all. Long story short, I objected to this policy and had a meeting and a few emails where I communicated my concerns to the higher-ups, who made it absolutely clear that they cared nothing about the distress this was causing me (it didn’t fit into their pre-conceived notions of discrimination and victimhood). Eventually I resigned that job, under duress.
So you can imagine I’m not super fond of the announcements about DEI in practically every job posting and interview.
Since that job, I have had a few interviews where DEI wasn’t brought up, but didn’t get those jobs. I have gone back to freelancing, as it does not seem possible right now to get a job in tech without being forced to submit to DEI ideology.
It’s utterly astonishing and bizarre to me that any workplace thinks it’s its place to inculcate its employees with an ideology that has nothing to do with the work they’re supposed to be doing. It’s equally astonishing and bizarre that they believe it is totally acceptable to discriminate against and persecute anyone who objects to this and wishes to simply do their work. They are so inclusive that they will immediately exclude anyone who isn’t willing to march in line with their beliefs.
This was brought home to me again just this week. Last year, I had a series of interviews with an agency that because of a miscommunication did not result in me getting the job. However, they encouraged me to reach out again in the future.
I did so recently, the reason being that when I’d interviewed with the owner of the company, he had told me he was a Christian, and in fact had been a pastor before starting his business. I thought that perhaps this would mean the company would be free of DEI infestation.
I was wrong.
This time, I had an interview with an HR person, who did the usual talk-up of how committed to DEI they were, and mentioned how she’d love to have a female on the team. My heart sank. She, however, was enthusiastic about me and emailed shortly after wanting to set up a second interview. I delayed answering that email, and she sent a second one. So I decided just to be honest. I figured, what did I have to lose?
I won’t include my entire email here for the sake of length, but I briefly described my concerns about DEI and said I’d had previous negative experiences with it in the workplace. I also stated that I’m a Christian, and that I find that provides all the guidance I need in order to treat people fairly and kindly. I concluded with this line:
If working at [company] would leave me free to do my work without being forced into ideological compliance with DEI in any way, I'd be delighted to proceed. If not, I wouldn't be the best fit and it's better to discover that now than later!
To be honest, I felt a bit bummed after sending that email. It’s extremely crappy to know that your qualifications to do a job are not enough to get you a job, you have to be in agreement or pretend to be with an obnoxious, all-consuming ideology.
I am very sure that there are many people in workplaces who do not agree with DEI, and simply keep quiet or pretend to agree in order to get along. I am not one of those people. I cannot keep silent or fake compliance with something I know with every fiber of my being is wrong and based on lies. What’s more, I consider it completely unacceptable that in the name of inclusivity and non-discrimination, these workplaces are happily discriminating against those who think differently.
I didn’t hear back for a few days, and figured that was probably the end of it. However, a reply from the HR lady eventually popped into my inbox. It included some pablum about how wonderful DEI was and how much they cared about their employees, then this gem:
In your last email you said you would be interested in working with us providing you weren’t “forced into ideological compliance with DEI in any way”. After thinking this over I cannot make guarantees about this and respect your choice to withdraw your application.
Astounding. As much as I know this to be the case, to have it clearly admitted is mind-blowing.
She cannot guarantee that I will not be forced into ideological compliance with a worldview that is against my beliefs.
And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. DEI, wokeness, critical theory, whatever you want to call it, is not, in reality, about “inclusion” except in the sense that it believes it has the right to colonize everyone’s mind and force them into compliance with it. It will exclude you right out of a job (or studies, or whatever) if you object.
I have to admit it’s disheartening, not just from a personal point of view (it looks like I’ll never again be able to get fulltime employment in my field), but from a wider societal one. The loss of Christianity didn’t result in a lack of religion; another one, DEI (ironically, in Latin that means “God”), has arisen to take its place. A colder, meaner, unforgiving, and hopeless one. Where do we go from here?
There used to be an odd classmate who sat in back of the grade 10 Geology class.
Every so often, when the class was quietly at work, he would bleat out, in a voice saved just for the task, "We are all going insane!"
I wish I had realized, 40 years ago, that this kid was a prophet.
Good on you!
I too just left an (ad) agency that was all in with DEI. Trainings, classes, videos—you name it. It was a shiny new toy. SO much of our time was allocated to making sure our work was DEI compliant (or at the very least not offensive). We even had a dedicated officer, who was better served as an account supervisor.
Long story short, since April, a quarter of the 110-member staff has been let go (hello) and about 10 others left on their own.
Maybe a little more focus on R.O.I. and a little less on D.E.I.