Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is chief executive of the New America think-tank and an FT contributing editor
For 200 years, roughly 80 per cent of the American population had European origins. It is hardly surprising then that the thickest global flows of trade and investment run across the north Atlantic. Today, however, the “old country” is equally likely to be in Latin America, Africa or Asia.
If you are a leader, manager, strategist or planner you must take note of where your workforce, customers, clients, suppliers, donors and supporters come from and adapt accordingly. In the US, that means acknowledging some dramatic demographic shifts. One way to achieve this is with a business coalition for diversity, equity and inclusion.
DEI has become a politicised term. Indeed, some Republican politicians have called Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris a “DEI hire”, implying that she was selected because of her racial identity rather than her talent and experience.
But if you are a business person, you should read DEI as short for demographic and economic imperative. This is not a fad or a woke conspiracy, but a simple matter of maths and marketing.
Look at college campuses across the US. The 2020 census was the first in which less than half of children under 18 identified as white. By 2027, Americans under 30 will be a plurality nation, with no majority ethnic or racial group.
They are a large market. In 20 more years, the demographics of that market will become the entire American population.
For businesspeople, regardless of your political stripe, adapting to the demographic change should be an economic priority.
Recall the 19th and early 20th centuries, when US population change was largely driven by European immigrants. Chicago, which has always been a mosaic of communities, boasted a Little Italy, Greektown, Pilsen (Czech), Polish Downtown, Little Lithuania, Ukrainian Village, Swede Town, Germans, Norwegians, and Russians on the North Side, Irish on the South Side, and a number of mixed Slavic and eastern European neighbourhoods on the West Side.
These communities generated their own businesses. But over time any Chicago business owner wanting to expand their market share would have to figure out how to design and sell products that took account of cultural differences and practices. The best way to do that was to hire people from different communities who were able to participate in every dimension of the business, from strategy to sales.
Many of these neighbourhoods are now filled with newer concentrations of immigrants from Central and Latin America and Asia.
You might hate or fear these changes. But even with mass deportations of the sort suggested by Trump, you cannot stop the generation currently in their twenties from ageing, marrying and having children any more than you can change the ageing and dying of European-American baby boomers.
In a world full of digital communications and purchasing, businesses that have the sense to plug into many different groups get an extra bonus.
Reading DEI to stand for demographic and economic imperative does not exclude a simultaneous embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion. Indeed, diverse workforces are unlikely to work well together without strategies of equity and inclusion to ensure that everyone gets the training and support they need to succeed and to create the cohesion and productivity that happen when everyone feels they belong. Many employers will find that those strategies are equally necessary to navigate harsh political divides that make it harder for employees to trust one another.
Indeed, major changes in the US have long been achieved through coalitions of individuals and groups who are convinced that at least some members of the coalition are doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. That is the origin of the phrase “Baptist-bootlegger coalition”: Prohibition was brought about through a combination of those who wanted no drinking at all, on religious grounds, and black marketeers who saw a huge opportunity to make a profit.
A business coalition for DEI should have a simple goal. Your workforce should look like America, at every dimension and level. To recruit, hire and retain that workforce and to ensure that your employees can work together, you must ensure that everyone feels both fairly treated and included.
Anything else is just bad business.
