Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has become the mainstream approach for how companies attempt to create more inclusive workplaces. Well-meaning employers and employees alike have flocked to the approach as a solution to inequality and other forms of discrimination, through implicit bias trainings, diversity audits, and metrics of representation.

However, DEI has been woefully insufficient in addressing the individual and institutional challenges in workplaces—particularly assaults to personal dignity. Efforts done in the name of DEI can reinforce patterns of tokenism, assimilation, and disrespect that oppress Black and Indigenous employees and leave all employees without the proper tools to dismantle discriminatory organizational and practices.

Global consulting firm Decolonize Design has been outspoken about the many limitations and harms of the DEI industrial complex. Our alternative framework of belonging, dignity, and justice (BDJ) offers a vision for a workplace where we all are welcome, valued, and safe. Dignity, rather than diversity, is the foundation for building work environments that acknowledge and value the humanity of each person. It is the cornerstone upon which organizations can create environments based in belonging and justice.

Dignity is the concept that espouses the inherent value of every human person regardless of positional power and privilege. Across time and across cultures, it has been one of the most well-understood and respected values. For Black and Indigenous people, dignity is the actionable affirmation of a person’s inviolable and sacred personhood—a quintessential value for oppressed people who have experienced centuries of dehumanization and discrimination. The particular nuance of this definition—that dignity is the actionable affirmation of personhood—is grounded in the systemic, intergenerational oppression experienced by Black and Indigenous people, as a way to emphasize the intentional effort to recognize the dignity of people who have been denied it historically in Western cultures.

Read the full article about belonging, dignity, and justice by Aida Mariam Davis at Stanford Social Innovation Review.