It's a chud buzzword I hear often. It's something something "prioritizing diversity at the expense of quality" which makes no sense because the whole point of DEI is to make the workplace more welcoming not targeting obviously impossible and bullshit quotas. Yes DEI is handled horribly because usually the actual policies fail to help employees from marginalized groups work with the same level of proficiency required to do their job.
They're not real. I've worked at multiple places with DEI initiatives. They amount to a yearly training where white people get to vent their bigotry and a position within HR devoted to focusing on more inclusive recruitment tactics.
For the most part we still hired almost exclusively white people.
In reality DEI was just a way for companies to pretend they're cool places to work and DEI was dropped the moment it started getting backlash.
Hell, even places where affirmative action WAS used it was barely used. 5-4 had a good breakdown of it but essentially it went from actually being designed to fix structural inequality in college admissions to barely being a tie breaker when two equally qualified admissions applicants were fighting for one of the last possible seats. It was like a watered down marinara, weak sauce!
So effectively DEI meant nothin to begin with?
Pretty much in my experience. I'm sure there were some people who worked with companies to help with DEI initiatives who were doing so in good faith, but ultimately the system doesn't work in a way that would allow change.
HR departments are naturally responsible for any diversity training and practices, but HR is beholden to the interests of executives and investors who don't care at all.
That's why the only reason any inclusive practice is ever adopted is because of regulation or because companies think they can get an edge in marketing.
It just makes chud whining even dumber because if they understood how the businesses they pretend to worship work then they'd know that these practices are just capitalism doing capitalism things, which they claim to support.