Commenting on the near-tie between two very different ideologies in last fall’s BC elections, political strategist Kareem Allam told CTV News, “We have a deeply divided British Columbia, we have a deeply divided society and the results are reflective of that…these trends that we’re seeing in American politics are now firmly entrenched here,” and those trends aren’t healthy.
Here are the feelings:
A CNN poll last September asked Americans: “Overall, do you think having an increasing number of people of many different races, ethnic groups, and nationalities in the U.S. is mostly (threatening) or mostly (enriching) American culture?" A full third of respondents considered increased immigration threatening, compared with only 11% in 2019. Before the pandemic, 82% of respondents to a similar poll said diversity was “enriching” to America but now that percentage has slid to 66% and it’s clear that relentless anti-immigration rhetoric has had an effect. In Canada, a recent Environics poll found that nearly 60% of respondents believe the country accepts too many immigrants. Public opinion on immigration, the firm says, “has effectively flipped from being acceptable, if not valuable, to problematic.”
This flip is bizarre when you look at the actual numbers. A full 77% of the American labour force is white and of the 36.3 million people counted in Canada’s 2021 Census, approximately 25.4 million are white, representing a full 69.8 percent of the population. Though immigration boomed during the Trudeau era, the loud insistence that white people are now being marginalized by newcomers is obviously ridiculous. Pundits insist the growing anti-immigrant sentiment is not crude racism but rather “economic anxiety.” It’s true that both Canada and the US are deep in an ongoing housing crisis, a system utterly broken for a couple decades now by a sluggish rate of housing builds and in large part by using homes as speculative investments. Fixing this crisis is a lot harder than just blaming immigrants for it but a growing chorus insists we simply have “no more room” for people from other countries and that racism—sorry, anxiety—infects our whole culture. We’re now seeing America’s economy-shattering plan to forcibly deport 20 million immigrants, attempts to roll back inclusion efforts based on 19th century law, some companies abandoning the proven-effective DEI programs they championed during the “racial reckoning” of 2020, and even lawsuits from people now claiming employment discrimination for being white or heterosexual. Feelings have trumped facts (pun intended).
Here is the reality:
Immigrants have always been a critical part of the labour force and in recent decades, both the Trudeau Liberals and Harper Conservatives championed policies allowing companies to bring in a massive influx of temporary foreign workers to maintain growth. Universities leaned heavily on foreign students paying even higher tuition but sudden new restrictions on that practice have these institutions now facing $600 million in losses. There’s a growing tension between those who want to limit immigration and those who understand our need for skilled workers. An online fight broke out over Christmas between Elon Musk and MAGA Republicans when the X owner argued against restricting work visas for foreign engineers. The talent pool among white Americans, he said, simply isn’t there. White nationalists were furious but Musk maintained that with domestic birth rates falling for decades now, they can either have their racist dream of an all-white workforce or they can have economic growth but they can’t have both. Smart companies like Apple and Costco understand this, recently pushing back against the anti-DEI backlash that seeks to undermine that growth. They know that diversity, equity and inclusion are baked into the success they’ve had.
Here are the measuring tools:
Canada and the United States both have benefited financially from immigrants coming to “our” countries with their courage, ambition and new ideas, in exchange for shared opportunities to create a better life. Integrating these different cultures and managing change has never been easy for companies, especially in this sharply divided era that now feels so fraught, but as the old saying goes, “Fortune favours the bold.” Jefferson Darrell started Breakfast Culture in 2017 as a pioneer in using hard data and a profit-and-productivity-minded approach to diversity, equity and inclusion, using frameworks like the Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Benchmarks, while the white-supremacist backlash against DEI has been loud and forceful and full of misinformation. As Jefferson wrote back in 2023, “It’s not about replacing one group with too much power with another, it’s about sharing power equitably.”
DEI is a set of practical tools towards that goal and not just for cosmetic diversity (Black and white, men and women, etc.) but also for cognitive diversity (introverts and extroverts, creative thinkers and logic thinkers). We have facts on our side and our work at Breakfast Culture has and will remain rooted in data, like our Human Capital and Culture Assessments powered by Prompta.AI to analyze in-depth reporting on an organization’s culture, leading to holistic improvements in performance, productivity and profits for all peoples. There’s a path forward and it’s time for us all to stop letting our feelings of fear take hold and to work together for an inclusive future.
To learn more, please join our free webinar tomorrow, January 23rd, and tell your colleagues. You’ll see what DEI really is and how it benefits organizations like yours. And if you want to chat directly, please schedule a talk with me today: https://calendly.com/jefferson7/30min
Let's Break Some Eggs!
– scott dagostino, JEDI Consultant, Breakfast Culture™ Inc.
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