Bye, Bye DEI.

Have you noticed it? The growing chorus saying goodbye to DEI? And what I hear, it’s whiteness up to its same old game—protecting itself.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I hear it in a lot of different places—on the lips of politicians, at school board meetings, in corporate boardrooms, on college campuses. People with power—mostly white, and not quiet about it—are working hard to scrub words like diversity, equity, and inclusion from programs, policies, research, and job titles. As if deleting the language could somehow delete the reality. As if erasing the words could erase the wounds, or quiet the voices naming them.

But this isn’t really new. Whiteness has always resisted freedom, dignity, healing, and wholeness. It’s always tried to choke out the language that names harm and inequity. Because the fight isn’t really over just words. It’s about what those words point toward—honesty, justice, accountability, and the possibility to imagine and build something better.

And truthfully? I’m not all that panicked about saying goodbye to DEI. Not because I think it’s harmless—I don’t. But because I get the sense that the words themselves were never going to be enough to fix what got us here.

Why? Because they don’t really name the problem.

For me, the problem hasn’t just been the absence of diversity, equity, or inclusion. I think it’s been the presence—and the overabundance—of whiteness. Systems mostly built by and for white, Christian men, shaping how power, belonging, opportunity and everyday life work in the U.S.

And yes, people of color often carry the most visible weight of that harm. But, white folks—we’re caught up in it too, even if it doesn’t always feel obvious. For us, it can show up in quieter ways that almost feel “normal”—like a smaller imagination for what’s possible, relationships that don’t go as deep, fear of what equity might actually ask of us, or a version of freedom that isn’t as wide as it could be. When we don’t name and face whiteness, it keeps shaping us and our world, sometimes in ways we don’t even notice.

That’s why naming matters. Naming gives us language. It helps us put into words what’s really happening, better understand the problem’s reach, be more honest about what needs to change, recognize skills and knowledge we already have, and get a clearer sense of what we can do next. It helps us face the root instead of just trimming back symptoms. Without naming, I think that DEI sometimes turns into just that—symptom management.

Take diversity. I’ve watched white folks (myself included at times) treat it like a finish line. I’ve heard white people use it as a way to say, “Look, we’ve arrived”—and truly believe it. But diversity already exists. It was here before we decided to notice it. Maybe the invitation isn’t to manufacture diversity, but to value it, protect it, and care for it with as much intention as we’ve cared for whiteness.

Or take equity. The longing there is real. But when I look around, I don’t think the ache many of us feel comes only from equity being absent. I think it also comes from inequity being everywhere—and too often ignored, dismissed, or outright denied. Maybe the work isn’t dreaming up some shiny version of equity. Maybe it’s being honest about the inequities we’ve built into our systems, and doing the necessary work of dismantling what created them in the first place.

And then there’s inclusion. On the surface, it sounds hopeful. But in my own experience, inclusion has felt like a sleight of hand. It’s as if we’re saying, “If we just open the door a little wider, everything will be fair.” But if whiteness is still the standard—still deciding who belongs and on what terms—then inclusion can just be a way to keep whiteness at the center. And really, what good is being included in a structure that was never built for you? What good is pulling up more chairs to a table designed to keep most people out?

What I keep learning is this—the system we inherited wasn’t designed for all of us to thrive. And no matter how we shuffle the words around, I don’t believe it can suddenly become something it was never meant to be.

So, maybe the answer isn’t trying to make the old story a little more diverse or equitable. Maybe it’s not adding a few more voices or characters. Maybe it’s time to write a new story. Build a new system. One that starts with the truth that freedom isn’t freedom unless it’s shared by all of us.

Because even those of us who seem to benefit from the current setup aren’t truly free inside it. A system that doles out scraps of dignity to some while hoarding power for others keeps all of us smaller, more fearful, less whole.

That’s why, for me, naming whiteness is important. Because I think DEI isn’t disappearing just because it doesn’t work—it’s being pushed out because whiteness won’t share space with anything that threatens its grip. And whiteness is the thing I believe is suffocating us all.

So if DEI keeps getting shoved aside, I won’t spend my energy trying to save it. Sometimes it feels as though it became a way to fool ourselves into believing the fight was about an acronym. For me, as a white person trying to step out of the pull of whiteness, the work has always been deeper. Braver. Messier. More human.

And just to be clear—this isn’t about pointing fingers at white men or letting white women of the hook because we’re oppressed in other ways. Whiteness loves to consume our energy and divert our attention with blame games. But blame won’t set us free.

The point isn’t blame. The point is freedom. Freedom wide enough for all of us.

That’s the heart of Hello Whiteness. Moving toward freedom means facing what blocks it. Naming whiteness—not to shame, but to take it apart, piece by piece. So together, we can build something better. Something that makes space for everyone to breathe, to belong, and to flourish.

So maybe the real goodbye isn’t to DEI at all. Maybe it’s finally time to say bye-bye to a world built for the white guy. A farewell to all the ways we’ve protected whiteness at everyone’s expense.

And maybe the real hello—the one I want to live into—is to the messy, necessary, liberating work of dismantling what we’ve inherited and building what we’ve never had—freedom, shared by all of us.