This seems to be the way real viruses change over time. They start out as something novel and deadly but gradually they mutate into something that’s easy to transmit but far less threatening to health and well being. Something similar seems to be happening with the woke mind virus.

Corporate DEI has for a long time been dominated by people like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi. Their view of the world made race a fundamental part of people’s identity and promoted the idea that racism was everywhere. These voices got a big boost in 2020 after the death of George Floyd but eventually many in the corporate world got tired of the lectures both because they were anti-capitalist at base and also because there was no evidence the training worked.

So it seemed inevitable that eventually some less aggressive version of DEI would take hold and outcompete the old strain on the corporate lecture circuit. Today the NY Times reports that is starting to happen. The new DEI variant could be called B-variant because it adds the idea of belonging to the underlying DNA.

Interest in creating more inclusive workplaces exploded after George Floyd’s murder in 2020…

Now, nearly three years since that moment, some companies are amending their approach to D.E.I., even renaming their departments to include “belonging.” It’s the age of D.E.I.-B…

“Belonging is a way to help people who aren’t marginalized feel like they’re part of the conversation,” said Stephanie Creary, assistant professor of management at the Wharton School of Business who studies corporate strategies for diversity and inclusion…

Last year, the Society for Human Resource Management conducted its first survey on corporate belonging. Seventy-six percent of respondents said their organization prioritized belonging as part of its D.E.I. strategy and 64 percent said they planned to invest more in belonging initiatives this year.

Belonging is about welcoming white men (and women) into the conversation about DEI rather than framing them as the enemy. One proponent of the new focus told the Times that belonging was a “tacit acknowledgment that traditional D.E.I. hasn’t worked well.”

Again, there’s no evidence that DEI training works at all, at least not in any positive way. It may be doing some work in the sense of creating a backlash against the idea of equity, i.e. enforcing equal outcomes.

Corporations have spent millions on this in the last few years and they might as well have poured the money down a hole for all the good it did. Will the new DEI-B variation on the theme be any better? As one commenter points out, this isn’t the first time progressives have changed the name of their agenda once it took on a bad connotation. (This is the top comment on the story with more than 900 upvotes.)

First their was affirmative action. When that became a toxic term, it switched to equal opportunity. When that term became a joke it turned into deversity, equity, and inclusion. Now that DEI has become a parody of itself, it is morphing into “diversity and belonging.”

No matter how many new euphemisms you develop for preferential treatment of some at the expense of others, it will always be perceived as illegitimate to those of us who believe in Dr. King’s dream that we all be judged on the content of our character, not the color of our skin.

Another commenter who works at a university asks what exactly the goal of DEI is anyway beyond securing more jobs for DEI administrators.

In the past few years, the DEI department at the university I work for has grown quite a bit. But in all that time, there has never been a clear explanation of the problem the university is trying to solve. It’s always about “systemic bias” and “microaggressions” but I’ve never heard numbers backing up these claims or even examples of the problem.

Instead, the DEI department seems to keep itself busy by doing things like hosting the upcoming “identity-based graduation celebrations,” which are separate parties for graduates based on their race, gender identity, or sexual orientation. As though the experience of getting through college is one a person experiences primarily as a member of his/her race, gender, etc. instead of as a student. This is a prime example of how a group of people have something fundamentally in common but are encouraged to think of themselves as having separate experiences that only other of their race, gender, etc. can understand.

But there are a lot of people working in the DEI department and they’ve got to find something to do.

But I think my favorite comment is this one. Short and sweet:

What a nutty industry. They have exacerbated divisions and now sell “belonging.”

That is absolutely true. Belonging isn’t just a softening of Kendi-style DEI it’s a rejection of its most fundamental premise, i.e. the idea that one race (and mostly one sex) are responsible for all of the problems in the world and should be shunned and shamed into confessing their guilt. There are still lots of true believers in this view of course but I think the new focus on belonging cuts the knees out from under it. The whole point of DiAngelo’s book was about not letting people belong unless they fully confessed their sin. There’s no way to square that idea with belonging.

If you haven’t read this story about what DEI trainers actually believe, you should. These are left-wing extremists who have no real interest in seeing major corporations succeed. Corporate America brought them in anyway but now it should do some shunning of its own. Stop hiring Robin DiAngelo, Ibram Kendi and anyone who supports or defends them. They have nothing to offer corporate America but endless division.