When DEI Spells Opportunity for All, It’s Not so Scary
Why is DEI upsetting so many people when so few people seem to know what the heck it really is?
Such is the confusion I perceive in the dialogue that two well-known rich guys who love to tweet recently had with each other on X, formerly Twitter.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk poked Dallas Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban on Thursday as the two got into a tweet-spat over the hot-button issue of diversity, equity and inclusion, known as “DEI” for short, in the business world.
Musk got things going on his X platform by writing that DEI was “just another word for racism” and “shame on anyone who uses it.”
Cuban responded with a string of tweets praising DEI.
“These are the same people that work for you or are your co-workers,” he wrote. “Everyone is entitled to their POV, but these same feelings, even if they are not said out-loud, are heard loud and clear at work.”
Musk responded with a snippy reference to the makeup of Cuban’s Mavericks.
“Cool,” he said, “so when should we expect to see a short white/Asian women on the Mavs?”
Ho, ho. Cuban didn’t immediately respond to Musk’s reply, which is an old anti-affirmative action joke — old enough to have whiskers on it.
But, in a serious debate-discussion, he could have said something about efforts by NBA and other professional sports team executives to improve their embarrassingly low numbers of Black head coaches, a long-running gripe among Black athletes and many of us who root for them.
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