From the beginning, Zedrick Applin suspected diversity, equity and inclusion might not be a focus for the long term.
“The reason I say that is that these sentiments in our culture, and especially here in America, don’t last long when you talk about diversity, equity and inclusion (also known as DEI),” said Applin, a former Wilmington DEI program manager in the private sector who has since moved to Dallas. “It was kind of the flavor at the time, just given what had been going on with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, all of the recent individuals that have been murdered by the police. America finally gave a time to shine a light on that.”
A white police officer shot and killed Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, in March 2020; Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died in Minneapolis in May 2020 when a white police officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes. The incidents fueled an effort to promote DEI goals nationally, but some say the DEI flame that gained traction in public arenas and corporate organizational charts four years ago has faded away. They cite the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions against affirmative action and LGBTQIA rights and reports of companies and institutions laying off employees in DEI roles.
“These movements, unless they have serious backing from the top down, don’t last long. And so it was kind of the ‘it’ thing to do at the time to show your commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion,” Applin said. “Once things start showing some slight improvements, or they can’t really quantify their efforts in putting where they’ve put their money, they’re going to move on to the next flavor of the day. That’s what’s happened.”
Applin, who served as global diversity and inclusion compliance program manager at Wilmington-based banking software firm nCino from 2021 to September of this year, was speaking generally. In Applin’s case, he moved to Texas because his wife got an opportunity to advance her career, not because of nCino, which he said is still committing resources “to make sure they are promoting a diverse and equitable” workforce.
Kyle Metzger-Gee, nCino’s senior inclusion, community and philanthropy specialist, confirmed Applin’s statement in answers to emailed questions.
“At nCino, we continue to lean into diversity and equity, while emphasizing inclusion, which aligns to the needs of our multicultural, global employee base. These principles are integral to our corporate values and initiatives,” Metzger-Gee wrote.
Metzger-Gee said nCino places an emphasis and resources “on employee-driven initiatives to guide our journey, which is best illustrated by the work of our DEI Council and our Employee Resource Groups. Since 2021, nCino has expanded the Council to include employee representation from all our global offices. Mostly recently, in 2023 we hosted our inaugural DEI Summit to set strategic objectives for the fiscal year.”
LOCAL PUBLIC SECTOR SHIFTS
In an opinion piece for The Carolina Journal titled, “Time for the UNC System to end DEI,” Wilmington attorney and UNC Board of Governors member Woody White wrote, “I had a front row seat in local government as New Hanover County, UNCW, and the City of Wilmington adopted official DEI policies and hired multiple staff persons for implementation.”
White, a Republican who was a New Hanover County commissioner through December 2020, went on to write in the April editorial, “Instead of the generically positive connotations these words (diversity, equity and inclusion) suggest, pernicious systems were constructed that imposed extreme ideology and allowed discrimination to occur before our very eyes in hiring practices and higher-education admission policies. The acronym ‘DEI’ has morphed into an unwieldy and un-American construct that teaches that, so long as it has an altruistic purpose, discrimination is acceptable.”
The UNC Board of Governors voted on May 23 to repeal a policy requiring DEI offices and positions at the state’s public universities “to reaffirm the University’s commitment to nondiscrimination, equality of opportunity, institutional neutrality, academic freedom, and student success,” according to guidance from the system’s legal affairs division.
As a result, UNCW eliminated its Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion (OIDI) and 16 positions within that office.
“While OIDI is being eliminated and its services reorganized, rest assured that our Chief Diversity Officer, Dr. Donyell Roseboro, will return to the faculty in the Watson College of Education. She graciously agreed to let me share this information about her future, but the university must keep information about other affected employees confidential until details are finalized. They were offered employment opportunities in Academic Affairs or Student Affairs,” wrote UNCW chancellor Aswani Volety in a statement to students, faculty and staff in August.
UNCW officials stated in an email in September that the university has no plans “to eliminate or rename” its cultural centers, which include the Upperman African American Cultural Center, Centro Hispano, the Asian Heritage Cultural Center, nor the Mohin-Scholz LGBTQIA Resource Center.
NOT ‘GOING ANYWHERE’?
New Hanover County commissioner Jonathan Barfield, a Democrat running for re-election, said diversity, equity and inclusion have not faded away for the county government.
“We have a DEI department that I don’t see going anywhere,” he said in September.
Barfield said the department’s roots go back to the COVID-19 pandemic when county employees were traveling to the New Hanover County Senior Resource Center to get masks.
Barfield visited the center one day to get a mask while wearing what he usually wears for his walks in Long Leaf Park – a T-shirt, shorts and a ball cap.
When he asked a county nurse for a mask, “her first comment to me was, ‘Do you work for the county?’ and one of the employees said, ‘You don’t know who he is?’ and she’s (the nurse) going on and on and on about why I can’t have a mask. ... And finally, a light bulb goes off, and her comment to me was, ‘You’re not dressed like (a commissioner).’ I said, ‘Well, these are my clothes. This is what I wear when I go to the park. I don’t wear a bow tie when I’m going to the park.’”
The same thing happened with a different nurse the next week, Barfield said.
He said he saw the incidents as potentially stemming from implicit bias and a lack of diversity when it came to hiring county nurses. Barfield said the encounters helped lead to the creation of the county’s Office of Diversity and Equity. The county’s chief diversity and equity officer, Linda Thompson, declined to comment for this story.
Joe Conway, former chief diversity and inclusion officer for the city of Wilmington who currently works as community health and engagement program manager for UNC Health, said DEI “is going to have to go through a shift.”
Conway, who is also chief DEI investor for ABIDE4US, a company he founded, said with regard to recent anti-DEI sentiment, “It’s not that you have to stop it; it’s more … how do you get more skillful at applying it?”
He said he doesn’t think DEI is gone forever, but “it’s a matter of having supportive leadership and more supportive boards.”
Applin, who currently serves as head of regulatory compliance for a UK-based firm, does not think focusing on DEI is harmful. It’s a multi-layered issue with different challenges in different sectors, Applin said.
“There would be no need for DEI departments and people to focus on DEI if things were equitable for people of color, for women, for people with disabilities, all of these categories” for which DEI tries to provide opportunities and “an equitable seat at the table,” Applin said.
White said he has not changed his stance since his April editorial.
“If anything, I feel stronger about it now, especially as it relates to higher ed, given the millions of dollars that has been wasted on DEI, much of which is now directed towards overall student success and applied in a neutral, broad-based manner that affects all students, equally,” White stated in a written response. “I am also encouraged by the national trends we are witnessing, away from DEI initiatives that focused on race and gender as qualifiers in admissions, hiring, and training and towards a merit-based approach to these things. The sooner our society returns to an ‘equality of opportunity’ as opposed to an ‘equity of outcomes’ standard – one that ranks merit above immutable characteristics – the better.”