Is DEI DOA…or Just Damn Good Business?

As a boy growing up in Rochester, Minnesota in the 1960s and 1970s, my father and I bonded by religiously watching our beloved Twins and Vikings games on TV.  That loyalty extended to rooting for whichever of our local heroes were chosen to play in their sport’s respective annual All-Star games.

I recall on one of our rare family vacations my Dad and I sitting in a $14–a–night roadside motel on a sweltering July night in Boulder, Colorado.  As the window air conditioner strained in a futile effort to provide some relief from the oppressive night air, my Dad and I peered at the 14” black-and-white TV to watch future Hall of Famer Rod Carew and 19-year-old rookie Butch (“I really like that kid!”) Wynegar of the Minnesota Twins compete in the 1976 Major League Baseball All-Star game.  If I tilted the rabbit ears at just the right angle, we were able to make out the shadowy figures through the blizzard of static snow on the tiny screen…although tracking the white ball was an exercise in futility.    

Behind a home run and three runs batted in by George Foster of the Cincinnati Reds, the National League All Stars beat their American League counterparts 7-1 (with the only AL run scoring on a home run by my third cousin, Fred Lynn) adding to their amazing run of 21 victories in 22 games from 1962-1982.   

Only recently did I discover that this odds defying winning streak was much more than an interesting tidbit of baseball trivia.  It was an important historical event and a valuable lesson regarding the cost of our nation’s long history of racial discrimination.

Simply put, the NL dominated the All-Star Classic for two decades because they had superior talent.  And they had superior talent because NL teams had the vision, courage and burning desire to win to break the “color barrier” and embrace racial integration.  

The Brooklyn Dodgers broke the color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson to a major league contract in 1947 followed shortly afterwards by Don Newcombe and Roy Campanella.  Other NL teams quickly followed suit by signing elite African American talents including Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Ernie Banks, all future Hall of Famers. 

Meanwhile, the more “traditional” AL teams lagged well behind, with the Boston Red Sox not signing their first Black player until 1959 (a full 12 years after Jackie Robinson’s debut).   So while the NL All Star rosters featured a who’s who of all-time greats like Aaron, Mays, Banks, Bob Gibson, Willie McCovey, Ferguson Jenkins, and Joe Morgan; the AL countered with a trickle of Black players like Larry Doby, Elston Howard, Vada Pinson, and Willie Horton (all fine players, but a far cry from the future African American legends packing the NL lineups). 

NL teams understood that tapping new talent pools is a powerful strategy for success on the field and at the ticket office while most AL teams left wins and money on the table by clinging to their antiquated ways and traditions (including racial prejudice).   

Exhibit A, the AL’s Boston Red Sox.  Not only were they the last team to integrate (turning down the opportunity to sign both Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays because of their race), their reluctance to embrace African American athletes for decades was much more responsible for their 86 year championship drought than the so called “Curse of the Bambino”.  (As legend has it…from the sale of the great Babe Ruth to their dreaded rival the New York Yankees).  

The compelling competitive advantage gained by those with the vision and courage to tap new talent pools and markets is far from unique to major league baseball.   My alma mater, the University of Minnesota football team was one of the first Northern schools to recruit African American athletes and African American standouts Sandy Stephens, Bobby Bell, Bill Munsey, Judge Dickson and Carl Eller led the Golden Gophers to the Rose Bowl in 1960 and 1961 and the 1960 national championship.  And tiny Texas Western University (known today as the University of Texas El Paso) shocked the world in 1966 by fielding an all African American starting lineup while beating the heavily favored “blue blood” all White Kentucky Wildcats coached by the legendary Adolph Rupp for the national NCAA basketball championship.

More recently, the San Antonio Spurs created a basketball dynasty by being the first to aggressively tap the international talent pool with Tim Duncan from the St. Croix, Tony Parker from France and Manu Ginobli from Argentina.   Similarly, the Houston Rockets dramatically elevated their competitiveness on the court and their bottom line when they acquired Yao Ming instantly creating hundreds of millions of NBA and Houston Rockets basketball fans in China.  Today, the five leading contenders for the NBA Most Valuable Player Award (Joel Embid, Nikola Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Luka Doncic and Giannis Antetokounmpo) are all foreign born players...while 20 year old French born Victor Wembanyama promises to eclipse them all in a few short years.  

The U.S. is becoming “Browner” and “Blacker” every day.  Based on the 2020 Census, it is likely that White people are already a minority in the four most populous states in the country (California, Texas, Florida and New York1).   White youth are a minority nation wide2 and within 20 years White people of all ages are projected to be a minority in the U.S.3  In my home state of Minnesota, 98% of the population was White when I was born in 19614.  Today White people under age 30 are already a minority and by the end of the decade White people under 50 are projected to be5.  

The days of being able to succeed with a White male dominated management team and work force are on life support.   The ability to a thrive in multi-cultural, multi-racial world is rapidly becoming a core competency requisite for success:

·       Racial minorities in the U.S. possess $4 trillion in purchasing power.5

·       The LGBTQIA community possesses $4 trillion in purchasing power.6

·       60% of undergrads in the U.S. are women, 40% or People of Color and 20% are members of the LGBTQ+ community.7

·       Ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely to outperform their competition.8

·       70% of job seekers want to work for an employer that embraces Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).9

·       On average, a 10% increase in diversity at the management level increases earnings almost 1%.10

As business executives, we have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders and employees to hire and retain the best and brightest across multiple races and cultures, to tap emerging new talent pools, to penetrate lucrative new markets and foster creativity and innovation.  DEI is an essential tool for achieving each of these imperatives.   

Compelling reasons exist to champion DEI on moral, ethical and equitable grounds.  Many of us believe it’s the right thing to do and/or we want to be on the right side of history.  Or maybe we just want to be able to hold our head up high and look our sons, daughters and grandchildren in the eye when they ask us what role we played in helping to level the playing field for all.

But DEI is also damn good business!   The demographics of our world are changing rapidly.  And when the world is changing faster than we are, our journey to irrelevance has already begun.  

While it’s possible that one of your competitors may have already demonstrated the vision and courage to become the Brooklyn Dodgers of your marketplace by being the first to strategically leverage DEI for competitive advantage, it’s not too late to avoid becoming the Boston Red Sox in your own cautionary tale.  The decision is yours.  Are you going to choose to reap the compelling ROI of DEI or run the very real risk of finding your company DOA in the near future?

1.  2020 Census Redistricting Data (Public Law 94-171) Summary File (U.S. Census Bureau)

2.  William H. Frey. The Nation is diversifying even faster than predicted, according to new census data (Brookings Institute, July 20, 2022)

3.  William H. Frey. The Nation is diversifying even faster than predicted, according to new census data (Brookings Institute, July 20, 2022)

4.  Laura K. Yax, Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals By Race, 17900199, and By Hispanic Origin, 1979-1990, For the United States (Census.gov, July 25, 2008)

5.  University of Georgia, Minority Markets Have $3.9 Trillion Buying Power (Newswise.com, March 21, 2019)

6.  Nick Wolny, The LGBTQ+ Community Has $3.7 Trillion In Purchasing Power (Entrepeneur.com, June, 10, 2019)

7.  LGBTQ+ Students in Higher Education (Postsecondary Natiional Policy Institute, November, 2023)

8-10.  Vivian Hunt, Dennis Layton, and Sara Prince, Why diversity matters (McKinsey&Company, January, 2015)