"Bye Bye DEI": Death to Deification

The social justice wave of the 2010s brought about a wide-ranging change in how many of us behave, speak, and even write in our everyday lives. The capitalization of the word “Black”, the mainstreaming of terms like POC, BIPOC or QTBIPOC,  the proliferation of the phrase “Believe women”, and your dad knowing the word “woke” are but a few examples you are likely to come across in everyday life, far away from their origins in activist or academic spaces. This kind of mainstreaming is a double-edged sword: while more adoption of these concepts might move culture forward into progressiveness, wider accessibility can also mean specific terms or ideas are simplified greatly, divorcing them from their original meanings and objectives.   

For me, the most complicated of these changes was the mainstreaming of broad ideas related to feminist standpoint theory (a concept that emerged from several writers, philosophers and academics, most notably Sandra Harding and Patricia Hill Collins) and its manifestation in our social and professional lives. 

I cannot entirely pinpoint when I stopped trying to convince people of my experiences, and they started to believe me. I also cannot pinpoint when believing me became an adherence wholesale to anything that left my mouth or an enthusiastic co-sign to any opinion I’d ever had

To give a simplified version, the essential reasoning of standpoint theory is that those who experience exclusion and oppression are likely to have knowledge and perspectives unavailable to those who do not, making their inclusion primordial to the understanding of structures and dynamics present in our world. At its basis, there is, in my opinion and considering the context in which it emerged, great logic to standpoint theory: it seems evident that those who experience something might have insight into how that thing feels, where it comes from and why it appears in the way that it does. As someone who felt like my experiences of sexualized racism were often wholeheartedly dismissed, the idea of my perspectives holding weight and value was revolutionary to me. 

That was until the mid-2010s.  

I cannot entirely pinpoint when I stopped trying to convince people of my experiences, and they started to believe me. I also cannot pinpoint when believing me became an adherence wholesale to anything that left my mouth or an enthusiastic co-sign to any opinion I’d ever had, or consulting me on wide-ranging topics related to racism that I genuinely had little to no expertise in. I am ashamed to say some of this was welcome at first. I blame my youth, but I also blame the experiences of dismissal that preceded this change. No one had listened before, and now they were. Even more, they cared enough to ask me clarifying questions and considered me knowledgeable enough to turn to. But that welcome feeling didn’t last long, and I soon found myself uncomfortable with how I was engaging and how others were engaging with me

Dehumanization by any other name 

Deification is the term I use to describe a specific dynamic I began to identify in my early 20s. The cousin of tokenism, the nibling of fetishism, and the rogue great-grandchild of standpoint theory, deification raises the experience, opinions and feelings of a given marginalized person or group above all else, due specifically to their marginalization. These people can do no wrong, have never been wrong, and could never be wrong. While standpoint epistemologies theorize that people who are most excluded are more aware of the dynamics and causes of their exclusion and are thus more likely to be able to name and address these issues, deification removes engagement, inquiry and discussion, and replaces it with an amorphous idea of an all-knowing, all-wise marginalized individual or group, to be listened to over other all other people, on a myriad of issues. Navigating deification can be a strange and exhausting task, and even more so when encountered in employment. 

The cousin of tokenism, the nibling of fetishism, and the rogue great-grandchild of standpoint theory, deification raises the experience, opinions and feelings of a given marginalized person or group above all else

What we now call the George Floyd moment or the first few months of lockdown (I have personally always impishly christened this period White People Discover Racism Summer) had serious impacts on many white-collar workplaces: DEI workshops, urgent diverse hires, and workplace policy changes, among others (as discussed in previous articles in this series, the effectiveness of these changes is debatable and even negligible in some cases). With deification, a cause or identity group is chosen and uplifted within the workplace, certain employees are deferred to or consulted with more consistently on issues related to diversity, some instances of inappropriate behaviour are taken more seriously than others. Policy is unequally applied, and other workers feel less inclined or less secure in contributing. 

I see dismissal and deification as inherently interconnected. The first dehumanizes through minimization, gaslighting or outright neglect. “Is it that big of a deal?” “Are you sure that’s what you experienced?” “That probably didn’t happen!” The second dehumanizes through idolization and worship. You are not a regular person who can be mistaken or flawed. Even worse, your worship is a vehicle for exonerating guilt. How could an individual be a perpetrator of “-isms” if they spend their time wearing a shirt that says, “Let black women lead?” Through this weaponization and idolization of specific identity, organizations and companies also attempt to exonerate themselves of those “-isms” and potential labour impropriety. How could they be a perpetrator of isms or the mistreatment of workers if they spend their time crafting land acknowledgements and introducing themselves as settlers? 

Anointing our "leaders"

Research has already demonstrated the negative impacts of tokenism, including adverse long-term career outcomes, increased competition between marginalized individuals, and mental health issues like burnout. This is the same in the case of deification, where a person has outsized responsibility placed upon them by others, and potentially by themselves. Much has also been written about dynamics in activist movements in which individual leaders are placed on pedestals and idolized by people they are meant to be working alongside. Aiko Fukuchi describes this process aptly, stating:

 ‘... I see us doing this by placing leaders and individuals in our movements on pedestals, ascribing excessive weight and value to their opinions, disproportionately rewarding one person’s efforts in a collaborative project or process, and applying unobtainable (sic) expectations to them and their work. It leads to a shift from thinking of someone as a valuable part of a larger, collective movement, into idealizing their efforts, personal lives, personalities, and relationships, thinking of them as the individualized personification of an entire social movement.”  

Deification only exacerbates these same dynamics, with identity being the determining factor in one's anointment as a leader. In her book Minority Rule, writer Ash Sarkar discusses the Left’s bestowment of social capital onto those considered victims, due to their marginalized identity, such as sex, race, gender and sexuality. 

“We turn individuals into standard-bearers for their entire identity community: whatever follows the phrase ‘speaking as a….’ is treated as nothing less than gospel”.  

The individual, or the specific group, as the standard-bearer, is deification at work. 

Sarkar further complicates the long-held notion of lived experience, arguing that materialism has historically been a central focus in identity-related organizing, but has since been replaced by individual experiences and understandings, to organizing’s detriment. “Subjective judgements- when uttered from the throne of victimhood and given the title of “lived experience”- are given sacred status. To question someone’s lived experience is to undermine their very identity.” 

There is always the question of who is chosen to be deified, when, and why. In a context in which most of the social justice advances we’ve seen, principally representation, have impacted those of higher socio-economic status more than they have working-class individuals

This can result in dysfunction. Social environments embedded in these practices extract space for good faith dialogue, discussion, and disagreement that result in moments of mutual learning and community growth. In the workplace, an environment where competition and scarcity already abound, and especially where these dynamics can be utilized cynically by management at companies and organizations with little to no labour protections, deification can pose a genuine threat to workplace cohesion and feelings of security. 

Lastly, there is always the question of who is chosen to be deified, when, and why. In a context in which most of the social justice advances we’ve seen, principally representation, have impacted those of higher socio-economic status more than they have working-class individuals, I have skepticism that the poorest among us are those whom organizations and companies choose to deify. 

Consideration, not contrition

Considering the very real history of dismissal, I understand why deification became so popular. The instinct to centre those who for so long were pushed aside can be a gallant one, if misguided in its execution. And given the hostile social environments we can find ourselves in, where having a differing perspective feels tantamount to group betrayal. Deciding someone else gets to oversee how we address issues and feel a sense of group cohesion makes sense! None of that means any of this behaviour is a good idea, nor does it get us closer to anything sucking less, in our personal or professional lives. 

My desire as a person who has experienced racialized sexism is not that people decide that everything I say is perfect, unable to be critiqued or built upon, or definitively accurate. Far from it.

I can only speak for myself, but my desire as a person who has experienced racialized sexism is not that people decide that everything I say is perfect, unable to be critiqued or built upon, or definitively accurate. Far from it.  I am, as we all are, a human person with biases, shortcomings, and specific experiences, a relatively young one who is not immune to being genuinely a bit stupid from time to time. What I want is for my experience to be considered: utilized to form a perspective, even if the formulated perspective ends up differing from my own. I want my lived experience to be a part of a broader discussion, one in which I would like to share and learn, not be appointed (by myself or others) to teach. In the workplace, that means I want to be engaged in ongoing conversations that are diverse in experience and opinion, that do not shy away from healthy conflict, and that are bolstered by humane and relevant policy that humanizes and seriously engages with every employee, not just those deemed worthy of deification.  

Want to read more? We suggest this article from Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference.