Well, another one I want to add to the mix is the military. We know that the military was the first formal part of the federal government to desegregate. It has long been the tip of the spear, no pun intended, of DEI. And today, when we are taping, Pete Hegseth is sitting before the Senate committee to determine his appointment as the secretary of defense. And this is someone who has very openly disparaged women in combat. He has unfortunately been part of the Me Too movement. I want to talk for a second about the real world implications of someone like P. Hexeth becoming the Secretary of Defense in a Trump administration that is anti-DEI, in a Project 2025 world that has made restoring the patriarchy of the military to its, I guess, Revolutionary War era construction. Can you talk a bit about what worries you, but also what opportunities you see for DEI and the military going forward? First,

I think you're underscoring something that I was inattentive to in my earlier comment about the change that this new administration could wreak, because it's not just about policies, it's about people. So I don't want to at all undersell, you know, the impact that this new administration is going to have on the vector of who is actually going to be sitting in these chairs, and what kind of signal are they're going to be sending, and how are they going to be using their positions of power and their bully pulpits in order to advance or not, you know, particular norms or policies, like that's going to be a huge impact. I guess, you know, against all of that, like, a couple of things. I mean, I thought the segue into this was going to be, we're going to talk about the military, because I left out veterans, right, as another cohort. And I want to go back and pick that up because veterans are a huge cohort. They're individuals who have served our country honorably and deserve, you know, to be included and to belong. And oftentimes we have fallen short, you know, of that promise. And so that too is something that we need to really lean into, because once again, there is no, you can engage in formal affirmative action for veterans, right? And that is completely legal. So that's thought number one. But thought number two is, you know, I want to be, I always get sort of chastened by my executive director on this. So I'm going to be really honest and transparent here where I say, you know, demography is destiny, right? So, you know, the optimistic note is how far can somebody go? If I really believe that, you know, the people that I want to promote or associate with or have working for me need to be white, cisgender, straight men who are able-bodied, I mean, increasingly, it's going to be like a smaller and smaller tranche of the population. How on earth can I expect to get the best talent or the best, you know, colleagues, right, if I'm not willing to be inclusive as a leader, as an employer, or just as an ordinary member of the community, right? And if the idea is, oh, the law prevents us from doing that, the law absolutely doesn't prevent us from debiasing, right, our environments. And if anything, what I expect, and I hate to call this a hopeful note because I don't think, like, people suing each other is so hopeful, but, like, the organizations that run away from DEI are going to be in for a world of hurt from the other direction. Because traditional Title VII plaintiffs, like women or people of color, are going to sue these organizations that say, you know, we want to go back to a 1950s America and say, you've discriminated against me on the basis of race or gender. And I was just talking to a former commissioner of the EEOC, and I was asking her, I don't, I don't want to, I want you to be totally fair about this. So after SFFA, you know, how many of the lawsuits are coming from traditional plaintiffs and how many are reverse discrimination claims, right? So, you know, I didn't want to, I wanted her to count beginning with SFFA because I thought that clearly would lead to an uptick. And she said still the vast, vast, vast supermajority of claims that are made against employers or against governmental entities are from what we'll call the left rather than from the right, from traditional plaintiffs like women or people of color who have been sued. If you've gotten rid of all your DEI policies, then you've lost your line of defense against those lawsuits as an employer or as a governmental entity. Because usually what happens is if I get sued as an employer and someone says you discriminated against me on the basis of race and gender, I sort of cough up my track record and say, look at all the DEI policies that I've had to make sure that there wasn't bias in this workplace. Well, if I retired all those policies, good luck to me, right? You know, if you get rid of all your DEI policies, people are going to sue the pants off of you, right? And that if you talk to the EOC, the vast supermajority of claims are still coming from traditional plaintiffs rather than from the so-called reverse discrimination plaintiffs. I

believe the framing I use is that demography is destiny, but it's also opportunity. And given that in this moment, 17 years from now, the racial, ethnic and gender composition of this country will not be what it was. I want you to help us get to 17 years from now. So one thing we try to do here at Assembly Required is give people practical, actionable things to do. So I'm going to ask you two questions. One, what language, and I think you've given us a lot of rich opportunities here, what language should people use when they talk to their own families and friends about the importance of DEI? Give us a quick elevator pitch for DEI. My

elevator pitch is one sentence, and I think it shouldn't be longer than that, which is talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not everywhere. Diversity, equity, inclusion closes the gap so that everyone can have a shot, period, full stop. Awesome. So like if someone says, well, I don't think talent is everywhere, then we're having a totally different conversation. I take this to be the point of the confessorio piece, right? To say like, you're saying merit, merit, merit. Okay, like merit, like let's let merit shine, right? Let's find merit. Let's give merit an opportunity. But I think most Americans would agree that talent is everywhere. So if you believe that talent is everywhere, if you believe that opportunity is not everywhere, which I think are both incontrovertible, then isn't there a need to close the gap just in the name of fundamental human decency and fairness, right? And then in a more self-interested way, right, for our loved ones and people in our families and our communities to give them a fair shot, right, so that we can all benefit from the talents that we know that they have. Like all of us have someone we care about. We know is unbelievably talented, but we worry that they're not going to get a fair shake to express that talent simply because of, you know, non-merit aspects of their, you know, identity. So that's my elevator pitch. Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not, and DEI is what closes the gap.

Excellent. And we're going to close with this. What are one or two actions that individuals can take to support DEI in their communities, in their workplace? But these are things that you think are either underrated or underestimated as actions they can take. Yes.

So I will begin with something that's, you got me with the underappreciated point. So I do a lot of work on allyship. And so being an ally was going to be my initial answer and speaking out, you know, so when someone says, oh, the bridge fell down, that was because there was a DEI mayor. And the mayor in question said, I think DEI stands for duly elected incumbent. So he won my heart when he said that. So that's beautiful. But making sure that you speak up and you sort of clap back, right? If someone says DEI stands for didn't earn it, I think we need to have the, well, that's interesting because I think DEI means doubly earned it. Being an ally to me means being an ally to the person that you regard to be the source of non-inclusive behavior. So I love Loretta Ross's work about calling people in rather than calling people out. So I think oftentimes in these very polarized times, the instinct is to say, oh, if you say something against DEI, like, it's not just that I'm going to defend the affected person or the program. It's also that I'm going to come down on you like a ton of bricks, and I'm going to make you feel like a terrible person. And that, to me, is not either tactically or morally right. Because I think all of us will be the source of non-inclusive behavior at some point in our lives. I know I have been, I'm just sort of waiting with, you know, not particularly eager anticipation for the next time I, you know, mess up, you know, and I say something that is non-inclusive, I misgender a colleague, I confuse two students with each other simply because they share the same ethnicity. We've all done these things, right, that put us in the kind of bad books, right, of DEI. So if we're all going to be, you know, sources of non-inclusive behavior, we have to ask, how do we want the people around us to behave? And one of the things that I hope is happening is that we've seen a waning of cancel culture, where people say, you made one mistake, and so therefore we're going to ostracize or punish you, right? And this is where I think I get a little bit controversial, because I think a lot of people say, well, just cancel culture is just consequence culture. So why are you against that? And of course, if it's something egregious like illegal harassment or discrimination, like you don't need to be an ally to the source. But if it's like a run of the mill error where somebody is making a statement and they've just messed up, then I think it's really important to extend grace to that individual and to surprise them by saying, I'm really interested in what you just said. Could you say more on that? I want to understand that. Right. Rather than saying your persona non grata. Because what I worry about, Stacey, is that when we come down on sources of non-inclusive behavior, like a ton of bricks, that that becomes its own villain origin story. So many people I know who are adamantly opposed to DEI today, yesterday were kind of on the fence, but then, you know, they just got burned too badly. They felt that they themselves got treated unfairly with regard to DEI issue. And I think, like, particularly in this moment when it just feels like, I don't want to empathize, I want to smite, right? And this is Melissa Harris-Perry talking about, the kind of constant dilemma of the good progressive, like deciding whether to fight or to empathize and be kind. Right. I think it's we need to choose. But I think we need to keep that kind of space of empathizing, of being generous, of calling in rather than calling out open.