Do DEI Practices Work as Intended?

When asked about the actual impact of DEI practices at the workplace, Americans surveyed by Pew Research Center broadly agreed that the programs work in so far as they help groups that have historically been disadvantaged. More than 50 percent of respondents said that DEI practices help Black women, Black men and Hispanic women in the workplace, while just under 50 percent of respondents think that DEI programs help Hispanic men and Asian women. Opinions are slightly more mixed, though still positive overall with respect to Asian men and white women, where 40 and 30 percent said that the effect of DEI initiatives was positive versus 15 and 23 percent, who described the effect as negative.

The only group for which more respondents saw negative effects is white men, who 36 percent of respondents saw negatively affected by DEI policies versus 14 percent who saw positive effects for this group and 34 percent who saw neither positive nor negative effects. Unsurprisingly, white adults were much more likely than the overall respondents to say that DEI practices hurt white women and men, while the same was true for Republicans compared to Democrats. While 56 percent of Republicans said that DEI programs hurt white men, just 19 percent of Democrats said the same.