DEI in Today’s Workplace

From Newsweek:

Cracker Barrel has been targeted by a law firm seeking to defend President Donald Trump‘s policies amid allegations that the restaurant’s diversity drives are “discriminatory.”

America First Legal (AFL) has called for an official probe into the Southern restaurant chain “for potential violations of federal and state civil rights laws stemming from its discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.”

Some of Cracker Barrel’s initiatives to develop employees are focused specifically on supporting workers who are women, Black, LGBTQ+, or Latino, according to AFL. This means they “appear to offer employment benefits that are only available based on an employees’ race or sex,” the Washington D.C.-based law group said in a press release on Monday.

At my company’s high-water mark in the late 1990s, I employed approximately 115 people, and we were most definitely “DEI.”  I gave explicit instructions to my HR people to hire, all other things being equal, women and people of color, because I thought that it was the best thing for the company, and the right thing to do for our world.

Of course, this was thirty years before the Donald Trump / Stephen Miller era of hate and stupidity.  Moreover, my business was part of the  public sector, and it never dawned on me that someone would challenge me here, given that I was the one writing the paychecks.  I figured that had to count for something.

Today, apparently, all bets are off.