DEI Isn’t Dying: The Performative Version is Dead

This article posits that as performative DEI fades, progressive leaders are embedding inclusion into how they lead and build culture — and seeing stronger business results.

DEI Isn’t Dying. It’s Finally Growing Up. Here’s What Progressive Leaders are Doing Differently

Here's your important read for January 2026. It's an article by Dr. Kiki Ramsey, a Ph.D. and Certified Coach LINK to article. LINK to Dr. Ramsey's work. 

Key Takeaways from the article: 
• DEI isn’t about optics anymore; it’s about how leaders use power every day.
• Inclusive leadership drives better thinking and long-term performance.
• When belonging is real, people stop playing safe and start doing their best work. 

When people say “DEI is over,” what they often mean is that the illusion of progress is collapsing. Dr. Ramsey’s article begins with this tension, and she’s right to call out that what’s ending isn’t equity work itself—it’s the performance of it.

That distinction matters because performative DEI was never liberation work. Here's my take: it was brand management dressed up as justice. It relied on optics, urgency, and guilt rather than redistributing power. It was diversity without decolonization—representation without repair.

The end of checkbox DEI is not a tragedy; it’s an opening.

The world Dr. Ramsey describes is one where younger, more diverse generations refuse to tolerate environments designed for their erasure. They don’t want to be “included” in systems still governed by white comfort, patriarchal leadership, and capitalist urgency. They want transformation: structures that work for everyone, not just the dominant few.

None of this is ideological—it’s structural. It’s the logical response to centuries of racial hierarchy, gender exclusion, ableist design, and colonial decision-making that still shape our workplaces.

As the Kirwan Institute notes, bias is not just personal—it’s systemic conditioning that influences policy, hiring, pay, and punishment. “DEI fatigue” is not exhaustion from inclusion—it’s resistance to accountability. Fatigue sets in when institutions would rather host a panel than fix a policy, when they study “bias” instead of dismantling the conditions that produce it.

As Dr. Ramsey points out, true inclusion goes beyond race and gender. It asks whether neurodivergent people, caregivers, disabled staff, and migrants can say, “I matter here,” without translation or fear. That question, when answered honestly, exposes how far symbolic DEI has strayed from justice.

The familiar corporate excuse—“We don’t have time for DEI because we’re focused on performance”—is an inheritance of colonial capitalism, which treats people as tools rather than co-creators. But performance and equity are not opposites; they are cause and effect. When people feel safe enough to dissent, question, and imagine freely, innovation emerges.

The shift Dr. Ramsey names—toward belonging, equity, and leadership—is only the beginning.

Belonging is not about comfort; it’s about safety from domination. Equity is not a fairness metric; it’s the redistribution of opportunity and voice. Leadership, when it is decolonial, does not just model empathy—it rewires systems of reward, trust, and protection.

In that sense, DEI is evolving toward what the Decolonial Intelligence Algorithmic Framework calls structural honesty—a culture where power is examined, not excused. Leaders who embody that honesty no longer ask which initiative to fund next; they ask whose pain the system normalizes and whose truth it silences.

So yes—DEI as performance should die. Let it. What must live is accountability: the daily practice of dismantling the norms that privilege whiteness, masculinity, neurotypicality, and capital above humanity.

The work ahead is not about managing diversity. It’s about ending domination. If that’s what it means for DEI to grow up, then may it grow with teeth.

A reflection
This moment invites courage. It asks institutions to trade slogans for self-examination and comfort for consequence. Growth without justice is still exploitation.

Suggestions
• Audit systems, not people—trace inequity to its structural source.
• Redistribute voice and decision-making, especially to those historically excluded.
• Build equity literacy as a leadership competency, not a side program.
Justice begins where performance ends.

And here's my two cents to add ~ take one of our award-winning online courses - as an individual or to license for your organization.