Ep.142 I Deciding Against DEI: A Diversity Trainer Speaks Out with Erec Smith, Ph.D.

DEI training has shifted from promoting equity to being weakly replaced with critical social justice, which today’s guest claims is inherently racist. Dr. Erec Smith, an anti-racist activist, shares how business owners can foster a diverse company culture – without the guise of generic performative activism.

KEY TOPICS

The ways that contemporary DEI trainings are “inherently racist.”

How to “climate check” your company.

Ways to organically foster diversity in your company – WITHOUT QUOTAS.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction and Mission of Decidedly

00:52 Boring Required Trainings

04:13 Dr. Eric Smith's Experience with DEI Training

06:11 Prescriptive Racism

09:09 Limitations of Modern DEI Initiatives

12:29 Shortcomings of Critical Social Justice

19:00 Changing Definitions of Words

27:54 White People’s Involvement in DEI

29:20 The Pressure to Conform

32:42 Root Motivations of DEI

35:07 Fostering a Diverse Business

37:58 The Culture of Your Company

41:25 Getting 1:1 with Your Team

44:00 Social Groups

48:00 Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

51:02 Bridging Relationships

52:58 Empowerment Theory

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Thank you to Shelby Peterson of Transcend Media for editing and post-production of the Decidedly podcast.

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CONNECT WITH EREC SMITH, PH.D.

Website: www.freeblackthought.com

Erec Smith is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and
an Associate Professor of Rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania. Although he has eclectic scholarly interests, his primary work focuses on the rhetoric of anti-racist activism, theory, and pedagogy, as well as the role of rhetoric in a free, pluralistic, and civil society. 

He co-founded Free Black Thought, a nonprofit highlighting viewpoint diversity within black communities. Free Black Thought includes a compendium of black artists, writers, academics, and public intellectuals not discussed in mainstream media. The organization also has a Journal of Free Black Thought, which publishes anything–from poetry to scholarly work—that discusses or displays a variety of viewpoints within the black diaspora. 

Smith is the author of A Critique of Anti-Racism in Rhetoric and Composition: The Semblance of Empowerment (2020), a book in which he scrutinizes contemporary modes of anti-racism in his field. The book was conceived after Smith's observations of his field led him to conclude that anti‐​racist initiatives did more to disempower students and faculty than empower
them. 

Smith is an advisor for both the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism and Counterweight, an organization that advocates for classical liberal concepts of social justice.