On 19 March, it was announced that the ten-campus University of California (UC) system would no longer require academic job applicants to supply so-called “diversity statements”—documents testifying to one’s embrace of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as guiding professional values. The move made national news, both because of the size of the UC system, and because UC’s original adoption of diversity statements in the late 2010s had been instrumental in establishing a wider trend throughout academia.

That trend has been in decline since 2023, a policy reversal that is now accelerating thanks to the Trump administration’s strenuous opposition to DEI. In a parallel development, numerous corporations have been abandoning the DEI campaigns that they ramped up with much fanfare following the murder of George Floyd and the heyday of the Black Lives Matter movement in late 2020 and 2021.

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QuilletteAri David Blaff

Even in highly progressive nations such as Canada, there are signs that DEI is coming to be seen as a tarnished concept (a development that DEI consultants, somewhat predictably, have denounced as a betrayal of Canadian values). In one widely reported scandal, a Toronto school principal committed suicide after he’d been falsely accused of white supremacist beliefs by a well-known DEI trainer named Kike Ojo-Thompson. In January, the University of Alberta became the first Canadian school to publicly reject its DEI framework (even if the school’s new “access, community, and belonging” paradigm would seem to incorporate some of the same principles under a new label).

As veteran workplace diversity expert Evelina Silveira wrote in Quillette last year, the backlash against DEI is largely connected with the field’s ideologically fuelled transformation over the last decade. During this period, well-known consultants stopped presenting themselves as mere coaches who could help employees collaborate professionally, and began casting themselves as morally enlightened savants with the power to detect—and exorcise—invisible forms of bigotry lodged in the subconscious minds of their trainees.

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QuilletteEvelina Silveira

“Many of [the field’s] practitioners (including me) were [originally] inspired by the civil-rights movement, feminism, and gay rights—creeds that focused on extending society’s benefits to all,” Silveira wrote. “Instead of delivering abstract sermons on the evils of ‘whiteness,’ ’toxic masculinity,’ ’settler colonialism,’ or the ’gender binary,’ diversity trainers [once] tended to focus on our shared human characteristics… Yes, participants learned about biases, cultural sensitivity, and the problem of intolerance—but in a friendly environment where they were free to debate ideas. Our points of difference were recognised (and sometimes called ‘diversity dimensions’), but they weren’t bolted into a paradigm of identity that focused on trauma.”

What we are likely witnessing now isn’t the full rollback of the DEI industry, but rather its gradual reversion to the more pragmatic, less ideological mission that Silveira describes. No organisation is free of internal conflict, and so good workplace coaches will always be in demand. But the same isn’t true of priests, whose services become unnecessary once their parishioners abandon the underlying faith.

I’m using the term “priest” metaphorically. But at the field’s radicalised fringes, some practitioners truly have come to cast themselves as agents of salvation. One example is Sabrina Meherally, a “change alchemist” and “liberation worker” based in British Columbia—or, as she calls it, “stolen Coast Salish territories of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ (Hul’q’umi’num’) and Skwxuwú7mesh (Squamish) speaking people.” Meherally isn’t a household name in the DEI space on the level of Ibram X. Kendi or Robin DiAngelo. But for reasons explained below, her position within the field offers a unique opportunity to examine the characteristics of its most rarefied subculture.

Meherally’s company, Pause and Effect, markets itself as a “decolonial design studio” that will help deliver the planet from a coming “social, political, and environmental” collapse—largely by overthrowing “Eurocentric approaches” that “exploit the labour and resources of Black and Indigenous communities.” Ancestor worship and shamanistic spiritualism figure prominently in her methodology. She also instructs clients to draw inspiration from non-human life forms—such as fungi, which “remind us that on the other side of decay is transformation.” Among the “colonial” concepts she rejects are “ownership,” “linearity of time,” and “Eurocentric intellectualism.”

Meanwhile, her corporate partner, Sahibzada Mayed, focuses on “disrupting the gender binary” and battling “muslimahgyny”—a term of Mayed’s invention that indicates “the nuanced ways in which Muslim women experience misogyny and sexism.” Together, they advise attendees at their training sessions to expect “intrigue, weirdness, and wonder,” alongside (unspecified) forms of “somatic processing.” (Interested readers can sign up here. If you are a “Fern,” the fee is US$917. “Dandelions” pay only US$618. No matter how you botanically self-identify, I’d be interested in hearing a report.)

Why we're reimagining research | Sabrina Meherally

Why we're reimagining research

LinkedInSabrina Meherally

What makes Meherally’s methods worth scrutinising is that she’s become something of an activist within the diversity, equity, and inclusion field itself—calling out “so-called ‘white allies’ in DEI” (her term) whom she believes have been derelict in assisting the “Black women [who] have been leading efforts around pay transparency.” The suggestion here is that black women are being systematically cheated by DEI clients who opt to pay white people—white women, in particular—at higher rates,

As part of this project, she’s invited such “white allies” to fill out a spreadsheet indicating their earnings and demographic data—in part because she thinks the information itself is valuable, and in part to test “how many folks actually respond.” (For those unfamiliar with the term “white allies”: It became popularised in the mid-to-late 2010s as a progressive self-identifier that, according to one popular anti-racism book, “signal[s] to White friends and colleagues that you will take action to speak out and act when it comes to racism, and you signal to BIPOC that you are an advocate.”)

Meherally’s announcement, originally made in 2023, attracted strong support from fellow DEI professionals, many of whom read back Meherally’s jargon and ideological commitments in their social-media replies. A woman from Baltimore complained that her field has too many “neurotypical cishetero [i.e. not gay or transgender] white people.” Another demanded that more white women upload their data so that “we, as BIPOC women, can sue or do something that we can recover damages from this issue and hold companies and white women businesses accountable for their ‘white feminism’ work that is destroying us.” Almost everyone agreed that it was an important project. And some indicated that they would scrutinise the identities of discussion participants, as a (presumed) means to gauge who among their peers is a true “white ally” and who is not.

(As a side-note, it should be said that such casual threats of peer-to-peer surveillance seem to be common within this professional subculture, indicating low overall levels of trust. A recurring theme of the complaints and accusations featured on Meherally’s social media feeds is that many DEI professionals secretly possess heretical beliefs, or are otherwise disingenuous in their support of oppressed communities, and so need to be unmasked for the good of the larger DEI movement.)

As of this writing, Meherally’s spreadsheet remains public. It comprises seventy entries, corresponding to 47 self-identified Americans, a dozen Canadians, and eleven others who hail variously from Australia, the Netherlands, UK, South Africa, Spain, and Sweden. Some have been working in the field for only a few years, having jumped in during the boom years of the early 2020s; while others have several decades of experience. (At the very high end, a “they/them” American who specialises in “Trans 101 training” claims to have been working in the field for 35 years.)

Needless to say, this self-reported data cannot be taken to constitute any kind of reliably fact-checked (much less scientific) survey. (In fact, at least one of the respondents seems to have been confused about the target audience, listing herself as a “black female.”) On the other hand, none of the participants had any obvious reason to lie, and the overall tone of the content appears candid and unguarded.

While it’s hard to prove (or disprove) Meherally’s presumption that non-white DEI consultants are being paid less than their white colleagues, a review of the earnings data reported in the White Allies spreadsheet helps explain why practitioners in this field (of any skin colour) may feel cheated: While the median hourly rate for ordinary coaching appears to be about US$300, the statistical variance is enormous. Indeed, the profession appears to operate on a celebrity star system, with some respondents boasting of bestselling books and lucrative keynote speaking gigs, while others earn barely more than minimum wage—notwithstanding the fact that they all seem to be preaching more or less the same anti-racist dogma.

One thing that White Allies makes clear is that the real DEI money isn’t in individual one-on-one coaching; but rather in group workshops, which can pay out at a daily rate that extends into five figures. One trainer reports that her $400 hourly rate goes up to $1,800 for groups. An American says he charges between $4,000 and $8,000 for a two-hour group session. One expert in “Health equity and DEI” reports a daily group billing rate as high as $25,000.

In several cases, it’s reported that these rates go up massively if the “white ally” in question appears alongside a black person (who is usually described as a “co-facilitator). The American trainer cited in the previous paragraph, for instance, reports a rate as high as $15,000 for multiple cohorts—but adds that, for this price, he brings along a “BIPOC facilitator.” Another American—this one a they/them—describes charging $1,000 for a solo ninety-minute-plus session, but $3,000–4,000 when appearing as part of an “interracial duo” with a black-led firm. (As Silveira has noted, it’s become increasingly common for DEI consultancy clients to order their preferred consultants by skin colour on an à la carte basis—a practice that, somewhat ironically, has been treated as retrograde in other professional cultures for many decades.)

Of those survey participants who list their gender in the “pronouns” column, about 65 percent (comprising 49 responses) describe themselves as “she/her.” The remaining 24 responses are split down the middle—twelve apiece—between “he/him” and some variation on the “non-binary” formulation “they/them.”

In other words, not only are (self-identified) male “white allies” a clear minority overall, they don’t even outnumber their (again, self-identified) “non-binary” colleagues. The data suggest that, within this subculture, the rate of non-binary self-identification is roughly seventeen times the baseline rate in the United States as a whole.

(A separate question asked participants whether they “identify as belonging to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.” Almost half—43.5 percent of respondents—answered in the affirmative. Not surprisingly, these responses tended to track those who report “they/them” pronouns, but it was otherwise impossible to disaggregate this response data along the lines of sexual orientation or transgender self-identification.)

The contents of the “religion” column similarly indicated an enormous mismatch with general population data. Only six respondents—less than 10 percent—list themselves as “Christian” without caveats. (This excludes, for instance, the $3,000–5,000-per-hour American trainer, who lists herself as “raised Christian so I can ‘speak their language.’”) A roughly equal number list themselves, collectively, as either Jewish, Buddhist, or “Jewish and Buddhist.” The far more common response was agnostic, atheist, “N/A,” “none,” “no affiliation,” “not religious,” and so forth. Many used the term “spiritual” without further elaboration. One reply read, “no thanks.” Others read, “neopagan,” “humanist,” “queer,” “reparations now,” and (somewhat intriguingly) “the forest is my temple.”

The remaining columns offered respondents an opportunity to opt into other intersectional categories. On the question of whether respondents “identify as having a disability and/or being neurodivergent,” a third responded in the affirmative—with the most common listed affliction (by far) being ADHD, and others reporting anxiety, depression, chronic illness, and, in one case, autism.

A final column, titled, “notes or clarification,” was used by respondents to either reiterate their intersectional bona fides (“queer, disabled, neurodivergent”; “I’m biracial, but have proximity to whiteness through my phenotype”; “Biracial white Latinx,” etc.); or, more commonly, explain how they express their “allyship” with black DEI consultants.

These latter entries include: “I have accountability partners who are from the Global Majority [i.e., people who are not white]”; “co-facilitation fees split 51/49 in favor of my black co-facilitator”; and “uplifting and amplifying folks of the global majority and frameworks for racial justice.” One American who describes her work as training other DEI trainers reports that her clients must agree to hire a non-white co-facilitator, “unless they specifically want to work on whiteness, then a few sessions can just be with me.”

In sum, then, based on this information, the typically doctrinaire “white ally” DEI professional is a generously remunerated, highly progressive, low-trust, atheistic, ideologically puritanical female (possibly non-binary and “neurodivergent”), given to anxious self-scrutiny in regard to her relationship with non-white individuals, and beset by the dark belief that racial bigotry and other forms of animus infect every corner of our societies.

It hardly makes for an attractive package—which, I suspect, helps explain why the profession is now in crisis. While Sabrina Meherally and I no doubt disagree on many things, she’s likely correct that members of this austere white sisterhood are overpaid for their sermons.