With an administration in Washington mistakenly believing that it has a mandate to join the world’s dictators in attacking our institutions, our security apparatus, our economy, and the values enshrined in the Constitution of the United States of America, we are called on to defend things that we don’t often think about.
Lately, I’ve had to explain why I believe democracy is better than authoritarianism, why we shouldn’t deport our essential, law-abiding workers when we have a labor shortage, and why we seek to build strong organizations and communities through proven management strategies like promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
This week I thought hard about that last question, the DEI one, in preparation for an interview with a Baltimore Sun / Capital reporter on the topic. The reporter’s primary question was, how much does the county spend on DEI?
After discussing with staff, we all came to the conclusion that the question could be answered by saying, “We don’t have a line item for that,” or “The whole $2.3 billion,” or “Not as much as we save by doing DEI.”
The more I thought about it, the more I looked forward to the interview, to breaking it all down, like this.
Diversity is simply who we are. We were taught in school that our country is the melting pot, where people from across the world escape repression, seek amnesty, and create prosperity together. That’s why we have different skin colors, different accents, and different beliefs.
Within every team, workplace, and community there is also diversity of talent, motivation, and priorities. The more we get to know these things about each other, the better we function.
When a coach, a boss, or a county executive wants a team, workplace, or county government to function effectively, the rational first step is to accept and celebrate the diversity, or differences, of the individuals, and then develop strategies to maximize the performance of each. That’s when we consider equity.
Equity is when you want three people of varying heights to all see over the top of a wall, and rather than giving each of them the same number of blocks to stand on, you provide to each only the number of blocks that it takes for them to see over the wall. You save on blocks, and the goal of all seeing over the wall is achieved.
If the tallest person is self-centered, he or she might complain that the shortest person got more blocks. If the tallest person cares about community, he or she will celebrate success with the other two.
If you’re a coach who wants each player to meet their potential, you may have a different strategy for each. If you’re a county executive who wants residents to be law-abiding taxpayers who work in local businesses, you look for ways to achieve that end. But rather than give everyone the same assistance, you offer specific services to veterans, to seniors, to people with disabilities, to neighborhoods with high levels of violence, to people who don’t speak English, and to single parents with low incomes.
We teach our managers in county government to honor diversity and approach their work with an equity lens, because we want our taxpayers’ dollars to be spent in ways that produce positive results for the enterprise.
Inclusion is the opposite of exclusion. It’s what coaches do to make all the players feel connected and accountable to one another. It’s listening for signs of exclusion and addressing them, things like the hate bias incidents that increased in 2017 and led us to add the last two words of the Pledge of Allegiance - For All - to our county slogan.
The welcome signs at the border of our county say “The Best Place For All” to make people who were excluded in the past feel included. When people feel part of something, they are more likely to nurture it, and less likely to harm it. So, our county practices inclusion.
The more I learn about diversity, equity, and inclusion, the more obvious it becomes to me that these concepts are the basic foundation of government in any democracy, and good management in any organization.
If these three concepts actually strengthen organizations, why is it that a political movement has made opposition to them a core principle of its platform?
Some of it is probably the sentiment expressed by the selfish tall person who complains that the short person got more blocks. Maybe the tall person was raised on stories that short people use blocks to hurt tall people.
The Trump administration, however, says things that aren’t true about DEI to turn people against it, and threatens to defund state and local governments that employ diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies.
We are told that DEI creates unlawful hiring preferences that result in discrimination against white men. That’s not true in theory or practice. Our county has an Office of Equity and Human Rights that encourages diversity, equity, and inclusion as a management strategy, but also advocates for merit-based hiring. It has never recommended preferences for any class of people in county hiring.
So why do some politicians and their followers insist that DEI discriminates against white men? Probably because DEI broadens the applicant pool for merit-based jobs by enforcing federal and local anti-discrimination laws. When you end discrimination against groups that were formerly excluded from job opportunities, those who benefited from discrimination (white men) actually have to compete in a larger and more competitive applicant pool. And therein lies their grievance.
Please don’t assume that I and my DEI-practicing friends don’t care about the plight of white men. They also face challenges as a group, and we want them to thrive. White men have a suicide rate that is double the rate of the total population in Anne Arundel County, and most involve a firearm. Our Mental Health Agency and our Gun Violence Intervention Team are actively working to lower those numbers, including by distributing suicide prevention literature where firearms are purchased.
In his State of the State Address earlier this month, Governor Moore lamented data on labor force participation, suicide, college attainment, and incarceration of men and boys. He said, “We need to better understand and address what’s happening with our men and boys.” I agree.
Human beings are diverse. We live in a complicated world. We face difficult challenges, and we all need to be at our best to overcome them.
In Anne Arundel County, we will not pretend that we are all the same. We will continue to celebrate one another, lift one another up, and defend ourselves against efforts to divide us.
And the signs that welcome all at our borders will remain in place.
As for the interview, we’ll see what shows up in the Capital, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The reporter pushed me and Asha Smith, our brilliant Director of Equity and Human Rights, to address the concerns of residents who don’t see the value of DEI. It’s a worthwhile conversation, and I hope to have more just like it. I’ll be discussing how to make that happen with my communications folks in the coming days.
Until next week…