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Identity Politics: Bad for Business, But Good for Management

Identity Politics: Bad for Business, But Good for Management

Message from Adam: “Intellectual Takeout depends on donors like you to continue sharing great ideas. If our work has ever made you stop to think, smile, or laugh, please consider donating today.”


In a market economy, businesses are supposed to pursue profits. Yet in recent years, many big corporations—including Disney, Target, and Bud Light—have become embroiled in costly scandals involving identity politics. As this year’s Pride Month is over, it’s worth asking why so many big businesses take such strong stances on culture war issues, even when consumers don’t like it.

At first glance, we might expect that privately owned and managed companies would be careful to avoid controversies. After all, any profit-oriented corporation should respond to the discipline of the market. Yet if that’s the case, why do America’s biggest corporations embrace ideological positions on issues such as gender theory and race?

Here’s an idea: They do so because even though woke policies may be bad for business, they’re great for management. The more identity politics becomes embedded into American life, the more high-paying jobs will be available to DEI bureaucrats in corporations, universities, and governments. Just type in “DEI jobs USA” to your search engine and see what comes up. As of July 2024, LinkedIn says there are over 339,000 diversity and inclusion positions in the United States.

And remember this: The people running these corporations are not their founders. Nor are they, in any meaningful sense, their owners. They are managers. Their incentive, then, is not to do what’s best for their employer—it’s to do what’s best for themselves.

Let’s say that you’re a manager at a large corporation. You don’t work directly with clients, you don’t create products, and you don’t do any hands-on work. Instead, your expertise lies in administering the organization. Process design, implementation, and enforcement is your forte.

If your organization adds a new product engineering division, that might be good for business, but it won’t change your life all that much. Sure, there will be some management positions attached to the division, but they’ll be limited in scope and number.

But if your corporation establishes a new DEI office, many of those limitations fall away. After all, DEI administrators frequently provide oversight and guidance over all major hiring and promotional activities. As the recently released Disney Tapes show, big businesses sometimes won’t even hire or promote white males to certain roles. Why not?

Because a DEI officer was given power to create and enforce a policy impacting every senior-level position at the corporation. That’s a lot of power.

DEI officer positions also come with other perks. According to the career site Glassdoor, the average diversity, equity, and inclusion specialist earns $124,000 a year. By comparison, the average human resources specialist earns $75,000 a year. If your goal is to maximize your own earnings and you have a talent for organizing people, you should support the creation of as many DEI jobs as possible. Then you and your peers can fill those roles, boosting your power, income, and prestige.

With these underlying incentives in place, the fight to recover America’s corporations from ideologues will be long and difficult. So while many corporations are dialing back on DEI rhetoric—thanks largely to Christopher Rufo’s efforts to inform the public about DEI programs—it’s worth exploring different avenues of resistance to the managerial regime.

One way to do this is to participate in the “parallel economy” and purposefully buy products from companies that haven’t been captured by radical ideology. Similarly, as corporate media empires die (Disney stock recently crashed below $100 a share), a growing number of alternatives have sprung up online.

If managers keep using their power to benefit themselves, consumers will have to become entrepreneurs, take on the corporate giants, and ensure that America’s companies support American capitalism again.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Adam De Gree
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  • Avatar
    John Broomfield
    August 6, 2024, 4:12 pm

    Companies that fail to focus on understanding and fulfilling customer needs are bound to lose their fascination with DEI.

    DEI had better show what value it adds for customers if it is to survive.

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