In this 9-min clip with Mark Cuban, we discussed one of the most contentious issues in corporate America today: what diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) actually means in practice. Mark argued that DEI is simply about expanding the pool of applicants—recruiting from historically Black colleges or community colleges to reach underrepresented candidates—while still hiring based on merit. I pushed back, pointing out that this definition doesn’t align with how DEI has actually been implemented and promoted by major corporations over the past few years.

As I noted in the exchange, many companies after the 2020 BLM protests explicitly set racial and gender-based “representation goals” — in some cases, clear quotas. Starbucks pledged to achieve 30% BIPOC representation in corporate roles, Pfizer targeted 32% “minority” executives, and Nike promised 30% of its U.S. workforce would be Black. These weren’t just efforts to “cast a wider net”; they were numerical diversity targets that raised legitimate questions about meritocracy and fairness.

The heart of the disagreement was semantic but revealing: Mark equated DEI with outreach and opportunity expansion, whereas I argued that the term has come to represent an ideology of race-based hiring and goal-setting that goes well beyond outreach. Until we define our terms honestly—distinguishing between genuine inclusion and enforced equity quotas—public discourse on this issue will remain confused and polarized.

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