Dangerous, demeaning and immoral

Among the flurry of executive orders issued by President Trump following his inauguration as the 47th President of the United States of America was one ordaining the cancellation of all federal programmes on diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

By 5pm on the Friday afternoon of Trump 2.0’s first week in office, all civil servants working in these programmes had had their contracts terminated. 

Earlier in the week, he had signed an order which abolishes decades of work towards diversity and equal opportunity dating back to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. 

According to the Executive Order, diversity, equity, and inclusion measures undertaken by federal institutions are “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral”. Companies such as Amazon, Target, and Meta responded to Trump’s actions by ceasing DEI activities and removing solidarity content from their pages. 

I’ve been reflecting a lot on all of this.

Quite aside from the well-known arguments that a diverse team makes for stronger decision making and is therefore better for business, as affirmed recently in Davos by Chuck Robbins of Cisco, and last week by Deutsche Bank CEO, there are many small changes that make a big difference that wouldn’t happen without someone thinking about inclusion. 

• Ensuring an accessible changing room really is accessible.
• Making sure there is space available for someone to use if they want to pray during office hours.
• Putting disabled and parental loading bays near the shop entrance rather than at the other end of the car park.
• Allowing someone of a non-Christian faith to work through Christmas holidays and swap those leave days so that they can observe their own religious festivals. 

Are these the dangerous, demeaning, and immoral activities the new President is referring to?

Alongside the pragmatic, workable changes that any organisation can put swiftly into place to show intent, are the big, systemic changes that aren’t just about convenience, they could be about life or death.

Here are some of those:

• Ensuring that car safety features are designed with women’s bodies in mind, as well as men’s.
• Working on inclusive communications to encourage LBT people to come forward for their cervical smears. 
• Communicating health care messages to citizens in the places and in the languages that will be best understood.

Maybe these are dangerous, demeaning, and immoral too?

More than ever, this is a time for leaders to lead. Meekly falling into line and rolling back activities and commitments that you previously stood behind is not leadership. 

More than ever, we need our leaders to lead.

Meekly falling into line and rolling back activities and commitments that you previously stood behind is not leadership.