“We just want to get back to merit and neutrality…” If you work in HR, DEI, or people leadership, you’ve likely heard this before. You may have even thought about it yourself. On the surface, statements like this sound reasonable. In practice, they often show up as pushback against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, particularly as executive orders, legal pressure, and shifting corporate disclosures change how organizations talk about DEI. This resistance is increasingly shaping how DEI is challenged and quietly walked back across organizations.
Some of the phrases you’ll hear in debates around DEI seem practical and innocuous until you unpack what they’re actually signaling. Pushback now tends to arrive wrapped in language that sounds sensible enough to pass without comment, even when it quietly shifts the conversation away from evidence and lived practice.
This guide breaks down some of the most common DEI pushback statements you might hear at work, including some that may act as “dogwhistles.” Once you identify these pushbacks, including some that rely on coded language or rhetorical shortcuts, we provide clear, evidence-grounded ways to respond that keep discussions on-topic without escalating the conversation or creating unnecessary tension.
Why This Matters in the Workplace
Language shapes decisions. When conversations drift toward vague ideas like “merit,” “neutrality,” or “common sense,” organizations risk:
- Making inconsistent or biased decisions
- Undermining fairness in hiring and advancement
- Increasing legal and reputational risk
- Eroding trust among employees
Responding thoughtfully to DEI pushback helps keep discussions anchored in evidence, policy, and operational reality, where they belong.
Understanding Coded DEI Pushback (Including Dogwhistles)
Resistance to DEI doesn’t always show up as direct disagreement. Instead, it appears in language that sounds neutral, practical, or even reasonable, but subtly redirects the conversation or reinforces unexamined assumptions.
In workplace settings, this often looks like phrases that:
- Emphasize terms without defining them
- Elevate “common sense” as the sole standard
- Imply hidden criteria for performance or belonging
These forms of language can slow decision-making, obscure bias, and make it harder to focus on evidence and consistent practice.
For example, a statement like “we need people who can handle the pace” or appeals to “common sense” often sound straightforward. However, they can carry unspoken assumptions about who is capable, whose norms are treated as default, and who is viewed as a “natural fit.”
In more analytical terms, some of these phrases function as dogwhistles: language that appears ordinary on the surface, but carries a second meaning for a specific audience. It allows someone to signal skepticism toward DEI without stating it directly.
Not every challenging question about DEI is a dogwhistle. Some concerns are valid and deserve thoughtful discussion. The examples below include a mix of both, along with practical ways to respond without escalating tension.
Common DEI Pushback and How to Respond
1. “We just want merit-based hiring”
What it sounds like: “We should hire the best person for the job.”
What it often suggests: DEI lowers standards and favors unqualified candidates.
What the evidence shows: Different interviewers, hiring managers, or HR professionals can have very different opinions on what “merit” actually means. Some prefer candidates with similar educational backgrounds or network connections rather than casting a wider net to include more diverse and equally (if not more) qualified candidates.
Research from MIT and Indiana University suggests that “simply holding meritocracy as a value seems to promote discriminatory behaviour.” In companies that explicitly held meritocracy as a core value, managers assigned greater rewards to male employees over female employees with identical performance evaluations.
In contrast, DEI-aligned hiring practices focus on:
- Clearly defined role requirements
- Structured interviews
- Consistent evaluation criteria
These approaches reduce bias, expand access to qualified candidates, and improve hiring quality. Research shows that structured interviews are more effective at predicting job performance than unstructured ones.
How to respond: “DEI doesn’t replace merit. It helps us define and measure it more clearly.”
2. “DEI is reverse discrimination”
What it sounds like: “Treating people differently is still discrimination.”
What it often suggests: DEI gives unfair hiring advantages to certain groups. That people are being hired solely based on identity markers like race, gender, or sexual orientation to check boxes or meet quotas.
What the evidence shows: Most DEI programs do not use quotas. Even federally regulated Canadian employers under the Employment Equity Act are not held to hiring quotas. The Act explicitly states that a “quota means a requirement to hire or promote a fixed and arbitrary number of persons during a given period” and clarifies that the framework does not impose quotas. Instead, employers aim to achieve representation through goals and measures.
In our work with organizations, we never recommend hiring quotas to clients. Instead, we recommend building high-performing teams through approaches like expanding recruiting channels, reducing barriers to entry, and improving fairness in evaluation.
These approaches increase access to opportunity without guaranteeing outcomes.
How to respond: “DEI is about fair access to opportunity, not guaranteed outcomes.”
3. “We don’t want politics or ideology at work”
What it sounds like: “This feels like ‘woke ideology,’ not business.” or “Let’s stop focusing on differences.”
What it often suggests: DEI is about personal beliefs or identity politics instead of workplace practices.
What the evidence shows: It is critically important to remember that we are all human beings, each with unique lived realities, which we bring to our workplaces every day. Identifying and acknowledging our intersectionalities is not an effort to focus on divisions, but rather to highlight that people can experience the workplace very differently, depending on who they are. DEI work in reality is not a game of “oppression olympics.” The goal is respecting and valuing one another so we can do our best work together.
When approached with intention, DEI is a management approach focused on:
- Retention and engagement
- Leadership effectiveness
- Risk management and compliance
- Team performance
Pew Research consistently shows that many workers view DEI as part of fairness and professionalism, not identity politics or arbitrary means of divisiveness. Over half of employed U.S. adults say that focusing on increasing DEI at work is a good thing.
How to respond: “DEI is a management approach, not a belief system.”
4. “DEI training forces people to think a certain way”
What it sounds like: “People are being forced to agree with things.”
What it often suggests: Training is about inducing groupthink and changing core values instead of changing behaviors that detract from good business.
What the evidence shows: A good portion of the work Diversio does includes facilitating learning sessions on HR, leadership, and DEI-related topics such as: Managing Bias in Hiring, Inclusive Leadership, and 2SLGBTQI+ Inclusion. In every session, we are explicit about the purpose: the goal is not to change minds or influence personal beliefs. Training is meant to provide tools, resources, and examples for working effectively and respectfully in increasingly demanding and diverse workplaces.
Research from Harvard Business School shows that when DEI training is behaviorally informed, timely, and tied to specific decisions (like hiring), it can lead to measurable improvements in outcomes. The key is connecting training to real workplace scenarios rather than abstract concepts.
Effective DEI training focuses on:
- Workplace expectations (codes of conduct, employee handbooks)
- Decision-making and relationship building
- Reducing risk and conflict (human rights and compliance)
When training is ongoing and tied to real scenarios, it improves knowledge and behavior without requiring personal belief alignment.
How to respond: “Training sets expectations for how we work together. It doesn’t require personal agreement.”
Keeping DEI Conversations Grounded
If there’s a common thread across all these pushback statements, here it is: they make DEI sound far more controversial than it is in practice.
In reality, DEI work looks less like ideology and more like:
- Structured interviews
- Clear role requirements
- Policy reviews
- Training plans
- Spreadsheets, reporting, and accountability
Disagreement is inevitable in any workplace dealing with complex issues. When approaching DEI in your workplace, the challenge is keeping conversations rooted in evidence and real-world experience, rather than letting them drift into abstractions that make the work harder to do.
Want to build a more evidence-based approach to DEI? Diversio provides the data, analytics, and training organizations need to move from reactive conversations to proactive strategy. Book a consultation to learn how we can help your organization respond to pushback with confidence.
Resources
- Harvard Kennedy School Gender Action Portal – The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations
- Google re:Work – Use Structured Interviewing
- Employment Equity Act – Full Text
- Canada.ca – Employment Equity Act Review Task Force
- Pew Research Center – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Workplace
- Harvard Business School – Rethinking DEI Training
- PMC – Best Practices for Reducing Bias in the Interview Process
