DEI 101: Ornamental Multiculturalism

On why so many organizations' holiday practices are cringe.

It’s Christmas Eve in the United States, and I hope you’re not working today! I plan to be, but it’s because I’ll just have taken a few days off with my sweetie for a pre-Christmas getaway before we enjoy a full week with the kiddos between Christmas and New Years. Work is slow right now, so it’s a good time to get in some heads-down work and development without chewing through more PTO. I plan to work a few days between Christmas and New Year’s for the same reason.

It is also a good time to do another DEI 101 post, this time focused on holiday practices and frameworks for DEI, as most of us will just have marched through some set of events and communications focused on the holidays, usually with an eye toward inclusion. Maybe you learned about different holiday traditions across your workforce. Maybe you were reminded how many winter holidays take place this time of year, and thus why it’s best to say “Happy Holidays” if you want to capture more of them in your communications, or when you don’t know how or whether the individual you’re talking to observes. Maybe you’re vividly reminded of how your own cultural or religious traditions are de-centered as the rest of the country, including me in this post, focuses on Christmas Eve today rather than holidays that are culturally or spiritually important to you.

Get it? Like ornaments!! Photo by Fumiaki Hayashi on Unsplash

None of these are bad things! Growing awareness is good. But there’s a flavor to some organizations’ holiday practices that can be window dressing on real issues at best, and harmful at worst, and those practices have been described as “ornamental multiculturalism.” (Note: there are other terms for this phenomenon, but I like the visual aspect of this one, especially at this time of year!)

Ornamental multiculturalism refers to a common practice of learning about other cultures in a power vacuum: different cultural traditions are just that -different; learning about these differences shows up in celebratory form, which then suffices as meaningful DEI work. Feminist scholar Maria Lugones described it as follows, with my emphases added:

“I call the multiculturalism that I present here ‘radical’ to contrast it with the versions of multiculturalism that have served as masks for Eurocentric monoculturalism. That disguise completes the erasure and colonization of memory of oppressed peoples by equating multicultural education with the study of cultures, ignoring any relations of power between them and dismissing as biased and "political" any study of cultures of resistance. Monoculturalism also disguises itself as "ornamental multiculturalism."

Ornamental multiculturalism is a “disguise” for monoculturalism because, while rarely made explicit, it’s pretty clear that the goal of such initiatives is for the majority, who often create shared and dominant cultural norms, to learn about (and in that process to Other) non-dominant cultural practices. Those non-normative traditions are positioned as exotic and ripe for consumption, and while the interest may be sincere, and while folks often approach them respectfully, this also tends to be essentializing.

After all, what are we meant to do with this awareness? If our workplaces already do the more serious and rigorous work of supporting fairness and belonging, we don’t need to lean on knowing about some new-to-us food or tradition to connect. We instead learn about those things organically, and only to the degree that folks want and feel safe to bring those experiences into the workplace. We also do that on a level playing field; remember, non-dominant groups are often well-versed in the majority culture, and as such have little need for a cultural “exchange.” Including awareness of Christmas (or varying Christian traditions), as sometimes happens in these ornamental forms of multiculturalism, feels awkward precisely because it ignores the reality that we already organize our cultural and organizational practices around this dominant holiday tradition.

And ignoring those realities is, of course, the rub. Rather than acknowledging an imbalance of power and focusing on how we can fix inequitable systems and isolating cultures, ornamental multiculturalism papers over those realities in an effort to produce a spectacle of diversity. And that’s not only unhelpful to those experiencing harm, it’s also deeply alienating: “Sorry you’re so often a second thought to us, but here’s a party popper. Thanks for making us feel good today!”

Good DEI work, as I’ve argued many times before, carefully examines the gaps between our ideals (fairness, respect, inclusion, etc.) and reality, and designs and measures thoughtful and targeted interventions to improve in areas where we inevitably fall short, messy and flawed, complex humans that we are. Ornamental multiculturalism, by contrast, is the All Lives Matter approach to DEI work, and there’s a reason most organizations figured out long ago that it does not suffice to address these very real challenges. Clumsy efforts at inclusive organizational practices were the crux of comedies like The Office 20 years ago, but they can be hard to shake off, especially absent more rigorous DEI work. Or, when it comes to the holidays, maybe they’re just another (bad) tradition….

I have some thoughts about what could be done instead, and I’d love to talk about that with you in the comments. Meet me there and let’s discuss!

In the meantime, enjoy what remains of this winter holiday season, and I’ll see you again in the new year.