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I actually come across this argument fairly often when engaging with people on platforms like this: “No, actually, I was directly involved with forming/inventing the very thing you're against.” It's a remarkably convenient argument.

But let's give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were, in fact, involved in forming some kind of DEI policy at the company level. You may very well have personally said, “We're doing this to combat nepotism by design.” I'll give you that.

But that's not what DEI, broadly speaking, was intended to accomplish. I literally cannot find anything indicating that combating nepotism was the defining purpose of DEI. As far as I can tell, the stated purpose of DEI was to address discrimination based on race, sex, disability, and other characteristics and to increase inclusion and representation in the workplace.

Now, here's where I think there is an important distinction. Some of the mechanisms used by DEI initiatives, such as standardized hiring processes, broader recruiting pools, structured interviews, and more objective qualification criteria, can absolutely have the unintended or secondary effect of reducing nepotism, cronyism, and favoritism.

I fully admit there is a connection there, and I would even argue that reducing those practices can be a significant benefit to society. But what something is intended to accomplish, how it accomplishes it, and what ultimately happens as a result are three different things.

A policy can have an outcome that wasn't its primary objective. If DEI hiring practices happened to reduce nepotism by forcing companies to rely less on personal connections and more on standardized qualifications, that's an observable outcome. It doesn't mean combating nepotism was the original purpose of DEI.

And that's where the “I helped create it, so I know what it was for” argument falls apart. Even if you personally designed a particular corporate DEI program with anti-nepotism objectives in mind, your individual intentions don't establish the universal purpose of DEI as a concept. You could have designed your program differently from other organizations.

What could have happened and what did happen are also completely different questions. I have no idea what would have happened if these companies had implemented the exact same anti-nepotism and merit-based hiring reforms under a different, less politically charged name. Maybe the outcomes would have been similar. Maybe they wouldn't have. That's a counterfactual, and we can't simply treat it as established fact.

You can sit here and yell at windmills until the cows come home, but changing the terminology doesn't change the underlying distinction: intent is not outcome, and correlation is not purpose.

And finally, the constant comparison to gay marriage doesn't really work. DEI and gay marriage are two completely different issues involving different historical circumstances, different policy mechanisms, and different desired outcomes. Whatever similarities exist in the political controversy surrounding them don't establish that the two issues will, or should, follow the same trajectory.