In recent decades, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) have been celebrated as indispensable values in modern institutions. Businesses, governments and international organisations have invested resources and constructed policies with the aim of making these ideals tangible. However, today we are faced with a paradox: despite its universally recognised importance, DEI has failed to take root as a socially negotiated reality.
Its failure is not related to its ethical or moral validity, but to its inability to cross the critical threshold of collective perception. It has never become the choice of least cognitive effort, that intuitive truth that guides everyday actions without the need for explanation. DEI has remained a noble but abstract ideal: a concept that is right in theory, but has failed to win negotiation with reality.
A necessary but unfulfilled illusion
The sociologist Erving Goffman teaches us that every social reality is constructed by cognitive frames that define what is relevant and how it should be interpreted. DEI tried to construct a new universal frame, but failed to become that lens through which the majority interprets the world. Its adoption has remained confined to institutional contexts, lacking the emotional and cognitive strength to enter the everyday fabric of social relations.
Despite good intentions and significant efforts, the DEI has not achieved the critical mass necessary to become a collectively negotiated reality. Its main weakness has been its inability to transform itself into a low-cognitive cost choice: following its principles has often required conscious effort, going against the cognitive shortcuts that normally guide our decisions, as demonstrated by Daniel Kahneman in his two-systems theory of thought.
The return of reality
The end of the DEI is not a return to the past, but a sign of change: the reassertion of a reality that is guided not by ideals, but by the dynamics of social negotiation. This real reality represents the recognition that every social construction must earn the right to exist through a process of collective legitimisation, not simply through its presumed moral rightness.
The concept of real reality, inspired by realpolitik, reminds us that society does not move according to what is right, but according to what it manages to consolidate through the interaction between power, perception and collective interest. DEI, despite its revolutionary potential, has failed to meet this challenge.
A lesson to be learnt
The apparent failure of the DEI does not represent the end of its core values. On the contrary, it is a powerful warning: ideas, even the most just, must become negotiated realities to have a lasting impact. The opportunity now is not to abandon the principles of DEI, but to understand how to turn them into effective reality. A more subtle strategy is needed, one that knows how to negotiate with the real, overcoming cognitive barriers and building new frames that can take root in common perception.
The fall of the DEI is not Trump’s fault, it is not the fault of the right, it is not the end of an ideal: it is the beginning of a deeper reflection on how building shared realities is not an effort of cultural respectability from an ivory tower of political correctness. It is an invitation to rewrite the rules of social negotiation, accepting that the power to transform the world belongs to those who know how to interpret and guide collective perceptions. To the architects of reality.
(Originally published – in italian – on Prismag)
