An Urban Lens on the Issue of DEI Initiatives - The Urban Lens Newsletter

American politics is suddenly awash with state-level efforts to prohibit and/or restrict educational activities and administrative reforms that are inspired by the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).  A recent review by the Associated Press dated April 18, 2023, identified more than 30 active anti-DEI bills in more than a dozen states.^[i]  Several have become law.  More are on their way.

The most common targets of anti-DEI legislators to date are private businesses, state governmental agencies, and schools (both public and private) ranging from kindergartens through universities.  Anti-DEI laws generally ban these organizations from requiring educational programs to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion concepts.  These new laws also prohibit them from asking prospective employees or students to submit statements about these concepts as part of admissions and/or hiring processes.

Some observers expect that cities are next on the list of other targets for state-sponsored anti-DEI bills.  In the U.S. federal system of government, cities are creatures of state governments.  Consequently, state legislators have the legal ability, and a long history, of using their authority to preempt and/or impose local government priorities.^[ii] Proponents of this first batch of Anti-DEI bills clearly state their ambitions to reach far beyond this first wave of restrictions.

So, how could new waves of anti-DEI restrictions affect cities?  And how could they affect the quality of American life?  Let's consider separately each of the concepts that are generally bundled together within the term D (diversity) E (equity) and I (inclusion).

Diversity is a defining characteristic of any city, ancient or modern.  Cities are complex layers of interacting material systems (buildings, roads, pipes, wires, and many other types of infrastructure), life-supporting systems (clean water, heat, sewerage, food, medical), and, most importantly, social systems.  Social systems include families, friendship networks, neighborhoods, cultural components, governmental agencies, human service organizations, businesses, and many other types of social associational systems. 

Accordingly, the concept of diversity has at least three distinct meanings.  First, diversity means variation in given attributes or dimensions of similar components in a system.  Second, diversity means differences among types of components in a system.  Third, diversity refers to differences in arrangement among the different types of components in a system.  All components within a system interact with each other, yet they can be arranged in different formats. 

Cities evolve over time through a process that has some aspects of natural selection.  Yet unlike pure forms of natural selection, cities don't evolve in an exclusively random fashion.  They are created deliberately by people, and they evolve through human agency.  People exert human agency to steer (or at least try to steer) the city's evolution. 

The Fundamental Theory of Natural Selection states that the rate of increase in the fitness, or performance, of any system that evolves through natural selection is equal to the amount of diversity that is found within that system's components.  Diversity in attributes, types, and arrangements are essential assets that allow any system to maintain its stability and improve upon its performance as it exists within a world where internal and external shocks occur over time.

This principle holds true for cities, even though they don't evolve in an exclusively random fashion.  A city without much diversity in its material systems, its life-supporting systems, and most importantly, its people and its social systems is a city that cannot change when change is necessary.  It will not be resilient in the face of unexpected changes, both internal and external.  Indeed, diversity is so essential for a city that one cannot identify a city that is not built fundamentally on all three of these forms of diversity. 

Equity and inclusion, in contrast, are not essential attributes for a city.  Cities have been around for somewhere between five to six thousand years.  Historically, the more diverse they were, the longer they persisted. 

But few cities have ever achieved a meaningful level of equity among their diverse residents.  Most urban social systems over the long reach of human history have been built on inequity.  So too, most urban residents over thousands of years have been excluded from exerting direct power within the governance structures that characterize each city's social system. 

Diversity, therefore, is essential for any city to grow, develop, thrive, and persist over time.  But equity and inclusion are, at best, aspirational components of the human urban lifeway.  The ability to realize any meaningful levels of equity or inclusion have only emerged in several parts of the world within the last few generations of urban evolution.

In regard to the U.S., the aspirations for equity and inclusion in our cities is tied directly to our Constitutional form of governance.  Last week's post focused on this topic.  The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution begins with the powerful phrase "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union ..." 

The aspiration to achieve "a more perfect Union," by establishing a constitutionally defined social system of governance has, in part, motivated one generation after the next in American history to pursue greater equity and broader inclusion throughout American life.  More often than not, American cities have been the places in American life where each generation has been able to set a new standard for better equity and broader inclusion over time. 

Much work remains before these aspirational components of the urban lifeway can be fully realized.  There is no doubt about that. 

But today's efforts on the part of state government officials to enact the first wave of Anti-DEI legislation on businesses and educational institutions, and then to extend those restrictions more broadly on cities, stands in sharp contrast with the general historical flow of America's aspirations to use its Constitutional system of governance to achieve greater levels of equity and broader levels of inclusion. 

Cities die without diversity.  And in American life, the aspirations of the Founders die without greater equity and inclusion.

Bill Bowen and Bob Gleeson

^[i] David A. Lieb, "GOP states targeting diversity, equity efforts in higher ed."  AP News (apnews.com), April 17, 2023.

^[ii] For a recent review of state-level preemption see Goodman, Hatch, and McDonald, "State Preemption of Local Laws:  Origins and Modern Trends," Perspectives on Public Management & Governance.