Merit, excellence and intelligence: an anti-DEI approach catches on

livemint.com:

From tech to tractors, companies are dialing back diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Instead, a DEI alternative endorsed by Elon Musk could alter the fate of your next job application. It’s known as MEI, short for merit, excellence and intelligence.

As described by Scale AI Chief Executive Alexandr Wang, who helped popularize the term, MEI means hiring the best candidates for open roles without considering demographics. “A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas," he wrote on his company’s website last month, adding that casting a wide recruiting net was important. “We will not pick winners and losers based on someone being the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ race, gender, and so on." Wang declined an interview request.

Whether diversity does, in fact, happen naturally in what Wang and others deem merit-based systems is hotly contested a year after the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action in college admissions. Businesses that say they are meritocracies are often disproportionately white and male. Apart from truly objective performance metrics, excellence is in the eyes of beholders.

And those beholders tend to view people like themselves as more promising and accomplished. “Saying you hire for merit, excellence and intelligence is really saying people who are historically underrepresented are not worthy," says Seena Hodges, a DEI consultant who calls herself the Woke Coach. Some job seekers—mostly white guys—tell me they hope MEI catches on.