Predatory DEI: How Racialized Organizations Exacerbate Workplace Racial Stratification through Exploitative Diversity Work

Abstract

Abstract In the wake of the so-called racial reckoning of 2020, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) grew rapidly as an industry and organizational logic. This study examines how DEI work in organizations is not simply performative, but exploitative. Drawing on observations and in-depth interviews from a four-year ethnographic project, this study traces the rollout and racial problematics of DEI programming at a public high school serving Black and Latinx students. It finds that the organization tasked Black women educators with the unsupported role of implementing the school’s vision to become “Pro-Black.” In doing so, it facilitated a process that is termed “predatory DEI.” Building on work theorizing predatory inclusion, “predatory DEI” refers to the organizational approaches to DEI work that purport to empower racially minoritized groups in racialized organizations while exploiting their personal and professional resources, all under the guise of an antiracist alibi that renders the predation opaque. In conceptualizing predatory DEI, three facets are discussed in detail: goal perversion, time theft, and role ambiguity/role conflict. These findings cast a critical eye on the pernicious forms of racism within social justice organizations.