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- January 5, 2024
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Elon Musk has never been a fan of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We know that because last month, he took to X—seemingly out of nowhere, but one never knows—to write, “DEI must DIE,” and on Wednesday—in response to a 4,000-word post by fellow billionaire Bill Ackman on the matter, and how it relates to former Harvard president Claudine Gay—he declared, “DEI is just another word for racism. Shame on anyone who uses it.” So, do we think a primer from another billionaire, Mark Cuban, on DEI and why it’s good for the workplace will change the guy’s mind? Probably not, but Cuban has taken a shot!
Responding to Musk’s claim, Cuban wrote: “Good businesses look where others don’t, to find the employees that will put your business in the best possible position to succeed. You may not agree, but I take it as a given that there are people of various races, ethnicities, orientation, etc that are regularly excluded from hiring consideration. By extending our hiring search to include them, we can find people that are more qualified. The loss of DEI-Phobic companies is my gain.” (Ackman, who waged a war against the former Harvard president, comes down on the Musk side of the argument, writing in his original post that diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are “racist,” that he’s worried about “reverse racism” and “racism against white people,” and that DEI is “a powerful movement that has not only pervaded Harvard, but the educational system at large” and must be stopped.)
Musk’s Tesla highlighted its DEI efforts in its 2022 Impact Report, saying, “We are proud to be a majority-minority company with a large representation of employees from communities that have long struggled to break through the historic roadblocks to equal opportunity in the US.” And as Bloomberg noted last month, Tesla has “held hiring events targeting women and students of historically Black colleges and universities and Hispanic-serving institutions, as well as several internal events to celebrate employee diversity. It also has several employee resource groups, and the company in 2022 launched a nationwide internal DEI newsletter.”
Last year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Tesla, with the federal agency accusing the company of “engaging and continuing to engage in discrimination against Black employees at the Fremont factory by subjecting them to severe or pervasive racial harassment and by creating a hostile work environment because of their race.” In response to a similar lawsuit from California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the company said is “strongly opposes” all discrimination.
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