The Liberty Daily 
(The Daily Signal)—A federal regulation intended to combat workplace racial discrimination has become a weapon for the race-obsessed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion movement—but President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to get rid of it.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency, has required specific employers to file an annual report summarizing data on their employees’ race and sex. The regulations currently apply to more than two million employers, at an estimated cost of $275 million each year and $4 million for the agency to administer the data collection.
While the government required this data collection to prevent racial discrimination, it has arguably undermined the key goal of securing a colorblind workplace.
EEOC Chair Andrea R. Lucas said in July that the reports require data collection “disconnected from any allegation of a Title VII violation or related commission enforcement proceeding,” and thus “stand in direct tension with Title VII’s requirement that employment practices be colorblind.”
Collecting data about employees’ race and sex actually “raises constitutional concerns,” she argued.
Greg Scott, executive vice president of 1792 Exchange, warned, “Every American business has been treated as a potential suspect, and every employee has been reduced to an overly simplified data point in a group identity spreadsheet.”
Yet the influence of EEOC reports extends beyond government enforcement. They also help the DEI movement pressure companies to focus on racial and demographic outcomes rather than individual merit.
Once demographic data become publicly available, DEI activists, ESG analysts, and shareholder groups can compare companies, rank them against their peers, and pressure management to hire and fire employees in order to meet racial benchmarks.
The Sustainability Directory, a resource hub for environmental, social, and governance practices aligning with the left-leaning ESG movement, noted that the EEOC data “is considered the ‘gold standard’ for racial diversity transparency in the U.S.”
The left-leaning shareholder activist group As You Sow has credited cultural and investor pressure with convincing companies to release the EEOC reports, which they said provided a concrete alternative to “corporate disclosures of workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs” that had been “primarily anecdotal and qualitative.”
In other words, these reports do more than help the government combat discrimination.
The DEI movement has arguably upended the original goal of the civil rights movement. Leftist activists claim that America is “systemically racist,” that our systems are rooted in “white supremacy,” and therefore require a fundamental overhaul. While America does have an ugly history of racial discrimination, the U.S. has taken great strides toward full equality and judging citizens by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin.
In the name of reversing historic injustices, the DEI movement encourages a new form of racial discrimination rather than a colorblind approach.
The EEOC reports have become a tool for this new racial discrimination movement, and removing this mechanism of DEI conformity would arguably help companies focus more on the qualifications of individual employees rather than their skin color.
The agency argues that it can still collect the relevant employee data—when the agency has reason to believe an employer is engaging in discrimination. The new proposal would eliminate routine reporting requirements, not the agency’s authority to investigate employers accused of violating civil-rights laws.
The EEOC has solicited feedback from the public, which means that Americans can file comments supporting the new rules.
Most Americans never think about these EEOC reports, yet these demographic disclosures have become one of the quiet mechanisms that sustain the DEI ecosystem. If you want a society that judges people as individuals rather than as demographic categories, eliminating this requirement is one practical step in that direction.
