The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Diversity Hiring

Although the Trump administration continues to dismantle federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs through executive orders, the debate over diversity hiring remains intense. What began as efforts to broaden opportunity has, for many, become a source of division, resentment, and perceived injustice. 

In many workplaces, diversity is seen as a self-evident good—an enriching force that broadens perspectives, sparks creativity, and addresses historical inequities. For others, it has become a watchword for ideological overreach, reverse discrimination, or empty corporate virtue signaling. Still others feel caught between competing narratives, unsure which, if any, deserves their trust.

Over the past five years, I have come to think about it as having three distinct faces: the good (a noble vision worth pursuing), the bad (a distorted practice that undermines its own goals), and the ugly (an ideologically driven framework that divides and, at times, excludes entire groups of people). This essay attempts to explain how I think about diversity and the human toll of DEI ideology.

The Noble Vision: Diversity as Impartial Talent Expansion

Diversity hiring traces its roots to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, particularly to affirmative action policies. President Lyndon B. Johnson's Executive Order 11246 prohibited employment discrimination by federal contractors based on race, color, religion, and national origin; sex was added later by EO 11375. These measures were intended to ensure equal opportunity and were enforced through the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). Together, they laid the groundwork for what would eventually evolve into an entire ideology: hiring for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In its simplest form, diversity refers to bringing people from varied racial, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds into shared spaces such as workplaces and communities—an understanding commonly reflected in Human Resources definitions. Within Christian circles, this concept is sometimes given theological weight, with advocates citing verses such as Revelation 5:9 and 7:9 as evidence that Christians have a moral obligation to support diversity efforts.

At its best, diversity in hiring is neither quota-driven nor identity-obsessed. It is a disciplined effort to ensure that no qualified candidate is overlooked because of unconscious bias or unfair recruitment practices. In this vision, hiring processes are intentionally examined to reduce unfair considerations about a candidate’s age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or other personal characteristics unrelated to job performance. 

This is the definition of diversity most often provided by human resource professionals. Advocates also point to studies suggesting that diverse teams foster collaboration, outperform peers, and enhance a company’s profitability, while helping attract younger employees. In other words, diversity hiring is both fair and good for business.

The noble vision of diversity insists that merit remains king. The goal is not demographic parity for its own sake, but the removal of artificial barriers that exclude capable candidates. A mid-career professional should not be dismissed simply because the industry “tilts young.” A qualified applicant should not be ignored because a hiring manager unconsciously favors candidates who share his background or credentials.

From a Christian perspective, Scripture supports this impartial approach—God judges by the heart rather than outward appearance (1 Samuel 16:7) and commands us to act with fairness without favoritism (Leviticus 19:15, Proverbs 24:23). Scripture also encourages us to consider a person's character, wisdom, and competence when putting them in a place of leadership (Acts 6:3; 1 Timothy 3:1-3; Titus 1:7-9). 

This noble vision isn’t about filling racial quotas, but about asking practical, mission-aligned questions:

• Are we missing qualified candidates because our recruitment and marketing channels are too narrow?

• Is our HR department unfairly screening out qualified candidates for trivial reasons?

• Are we aiming to hire people who align with our mission and have the proper experience and skill set to help us accomplish our institutional goals?

The Noble Vision at Its Best: A Personal Experience

Monique (my ministry partner) and I often travel and speak together. When we do, I occasionally need to use airport assistance for passengers with disabilities. (It’s a long story.) We’ve noticed that in many large airports, these roles are filled almost exclusively by immigrants—often from the same country of origin—hired by national contractors. The service is competent, but the hiring pool appears strikingly uniform. For example, in the Minneapolis airport, almost all of the wheelchair runners are Somali, while in south Florida most are Haitian.

Recently, however, we traveled through a smaller airport where the staff were a little different. The young man who assisted me introduced himself as autistic, proudly wheeling me through security. He performed every required task flawlessly, radiated enthusiasm for his work, and told us how meaningful it was to earn a living alongside his brother (also autistic), who also worked as a wheelchair runner. He was quite open about it. We did notice that some coworkers, regrettably, treated him with subtle condescension. Still, the airport had clearly cast a wider net, tapping talent that larger contractors might overlook. I think that’s commendable.

This is diversity at its best: opening doors to capable people who might otherwise remain invisible, not because of their identity, but despite obstacles that identity sometimes creates. Such an approach aligns with a Christian commitment to human dignity and impartiality, treating each person as an image-bearer worthy of meaningful work. When pursued ethically, with safeguards such as blind reviews, this vision can foster unity rather than division.

The Bad: When Good Intentions Meet Perverse Incentives

Unfortunately, the noble vision is not always what shows up in practice. Instead, it often ruins work culture, fueling perceptions of hypocrisy and reverse discrimination.

Public sentiment reflects this growing unease. A Resume Builder survey found that one in six hiring managers reported being instructed to de-prioritize white men. Over half believed their companies engaged in reverse discrimination, and more than two-thirds suspected DEI initiatives existed primarily for appearances.

Corporate America’s post-2020 hiring surge intensified these concerns. In the year following the Black Lives Matter protests, S&P 100 companies added over 300,000 jobs, 94 percent of which went to people of color, according to Bloomberg analysis. Reasonable people can debate the data and context, but the pattern fueled a widespread perception that “diversity” can function as a euphemism for exclusion.

High salaries for diversity administrators further erode trust. At the University of Virginia, senior DEI administrators earned between $312,000 and nearly $452,000 annually. Taxpayers and tuition-paying parents understandably ask whether such compensation reflects genuine educational priorities.

In response, some universities have begun dismantling their DEI offices. In March 2024, the University of Florida eliminated its chief diversity officer position, cut thirteen full-time DEI roles, and ended related contracts following Governor Ron DeSantis’s 2023 ban on state DEI funding. Similar actions elsewhere signal a broader backlash against bureaucratic bloat and ideological capture.

The bad face of diversity, then, is the widening gap between rhetoric and reality: promises of impartial merit-based opportunity that gave way to quotas. Talk of “broadening the pool” becomes a mask for exclusion, and performative DEI erodes trust and breeds resentment.

The Ugly: Critical Social Theory and the Matrix of Oppression

At its ugliest, diversity hiring abandons the noble vision entirely and becomes an instrument of critical social theory (CST).

CST views society through a “matrix of oppression,” sorting people into privileged oppressors and marginalized victims across intersecting identity categories: race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, class, ability, religion, and age.

Typical “privileged” categories include:

• White

• Male

• Cisgender

• Heterosexual

• Christian

• Middle- or owning-class

• Able-bodied

• Middle-aged

• English-speaking

Typical “targeted” or “underrepresented” categories include:

• People of color

• Women

• Transgender or gender-nonconforming individuals

• LGBTQ+ people

• Working-class or poor

• Disabled

• Religious minorities (historically Jews, Muslims, and Hindus)

• Very young or very old (categories that shift over time)

The critical theory-influenced version of DEI often views diversity through a lens of power dynamics, oppression, and systemic inequities, sometimes pitting groups against one another in a zero-sum struggle. (For a thorough academic treatment of contemporary critical social theories from a Christian perspective, I recommend Critical Dilemma by Dr. Neil Shenvi and Dr. Pat Sawyer. It's a comprehensive book with extensive footnotes examining where these theories align or conflict with the Christian worldview, urging believers to test all ideas against Scripture (1 Thessalonians 5:21).)

Once this framework is adopted, the goal of diversity hiring shifts. The focus is no longer on expanding opportunity or removing unfair barriers but on achieving proportional representation of designated groups—often at the expense of “privileged” ones. Hiring decisions, workplace relationships, and even ordinary conversations are filtered through power dynamics: Who holds privilege? Who bears oppression?

In practice, DEI tools such as implicit bias training and privilege walks often reinforce this shift, moving the focus away from individual merit and toward proportional representation, even to the point of explicitly excluding certain demographics.

Real-world examples abound.

Disney’s ABC Entertainment once published inclusion standards requiring that at least 50 percent of regular and recurring characters, actors, production heads, and crew come from “underrepresented groups.” Such numerical targets function as quotas, raising inevitable questions: What happens when qualified candidates from non-preferred groups outnumber those from preferred ones? Are standards lowered to meet the numbers?

At Johns Hopkins University, a former chief diversity officer sparked outrage in early 2024 by declaring “privilege” the diversity word of the month and listing white, male, Christian, cisgender, able-bodied, heterosexual, middle-class, middle-aged, and English-speaking people as its beneficiaries—advantages framed as unearned and independent of individual effort. The backlash was swift; she soon departed the administrative role.

Perhaps most emblematic was the controversy surrounding former Harvard president Claudine Gay. After plagiarism allegations surfaced, Harvard’s governing board characterized the issue as “inadequate citation” rather than research misconduct. Critics asked whether a flagship diversity hire received leniency that others might  not, reinforcing perceptions of double standards—one set of rules for the “protected,” another for everyone else.

These concerns were explored at length in a recent essay by Jacob Savage, The Lost Generation, published in Compact magazine. It provides a stark illustration of the ugly version of diversity hiring. Savage argues that the institutionalization of DEI around 2014 produced a “lost generation” of white male millennials—particularly in elite cultural fields—who faced systematic barriers unrelated to merit.

Key evidence from Savage:

• Hollywood: White men dropped from 48% of lower-level TV writers in 2011 to 11.9% in 2024; women of color rose to 34.6%. Entry-level roles reserved for diverse candidates; millennial white men under 40 have received zero Emmy nominations since 2021.

• Media/Journalism: The Atlantic shifted from 53% male/89% white (2013) to 36% male/66% white (2024); post-2020 hires heavily favored women and people of color. Condé Nast 2021 hires: 25% male, 49% white. Internships/fellowships often <10% white men.

• Academia: Harvard humanities tenure-track white men: 39% (2014) to 18% (2023). Yale: One white man among 16 millennial hires since 2018. Brown: 6.7% white American men in recent tenure-track. UC programs used DEI statements as initial cuts, slashing white male hires (e.g., Berkeley from 52.7% in 2015 to 21.5% in 2023).

• Broader Fields: White men in law/medical school matriculants and tech/management roles declined sharply post-2014. Awards like MacArthur Fellows and National Book Awards showed near-total exclusion of millennial white men.

Savage’s story emphasizes the human toll: offers rescinded for demographic reasons; repeated rejections despite strong credentials; stalled careers as younger “diverse” hires advanced; and delayed life milestones—marriage, children—amid debt and bitterness. According to Savage, older white men (Gen-X/Boomers) often retained power, while the ladder was pulled up behind them.

Savage concludes that DEI was a “profound shift” toward the abandonment of meritocracy, displacing talent and contributing to institutional decline. This approach merely replaced one form of discrimination with another. When diversity becomes a vehicle for redistributing power along identity lines, it ceases to be about impartial opportunity and becomes ideological social engineering. Elon Musk’s blunt declaration that “DEI must die” captures the frustration of those who believe the cure has become worse than the disease: one form of discrimination replaced by different discrimination.

Toward a Better Way

We have drifted far from a simple definition of diversity. What once meant assembling people from varied racial, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds has expanded into a massive project of structural reorganization and social engineering. This shift reflects a classic motte-and-bailey fallacy. Christian DEI advocates often defend the modest “motte”—assembling people from various backgrounds—while advancing the far more controversial “bailey” of applying critical social theory within workplaces and institutions. When the latter is challenged, the Christian DEI advocate retreats to familiar refrains: “Diversity is biblical! Just look at Revelation 7:9!”

A biblical case can be made for some version of the noble vision of diversity. God created humans in His image and then commanded them to “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28; cf. Gen. 9:1), establishing their “appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands” (Acts 17:26). As they migrated, humanity reflected an array of ethnic and cultural diversity, across nations and languages. This is simply an observable fact.

In addition, there is nothing unbiblical about Christian business owners, university leaders, and ministry directors seeking the best possible talent—people who do their work well, regardless of background. Practices such as blind application reviews, broader recruitment channels, and deliberate efforts to overcome personal bias remain worthwhile.

The challenge is setting ethical guardrails and resisting the slide into secular DEI ideology (the “bad” and “ugly”). When merit becomes secondary, confidence erodes—not only in workplaces but in institutions that touch our lives profoundly, including hospitals, universities, courts, and airlines. It is telling that some critical theorists dismiss meritocracy itself as a construct of “whiteness,” a claim that reveals how far the conversation has drifted from a biblical sense of fairness.

When engaging friends or colleagues who champion diversity, it’s good to begin with common ground: We all want to hire skilled, capable people. We all oppose unjust exclusion. From there, gently probe: Is merit still primary? Are we expanding opportunities—or enforcing outcomes? Are we uniting around a shared mission or dividing along identity lines?

Clarity in definitions and consistency in practice are the antidotes to confusion and cynicism. Diversity need not be a dirty word, nor an untouchable sacred cow. Done rightly, it reflects the simple conviction that talent is distributed widely, and no one should be arbitrarily shut out from contributing theirs.

The choice before us is not between indifferent homogeneity and ideological coercion. Instead, we can choose impartial excellence that welcomes every qualified contributor. That is the good worth keeping. The bad and the ugly we can—and should—leave behind.