Applying for government contracts, academia, NGOs - but also a lot of "big company" procurement processes - required DEI statements etc.
The absolutely worst statements are the people who believe that the statement is an ideological litmus test. It never was, and it isn't.
These statements, to a one, are basic HR stuff: discuss your strategies and experiences to not be an asshole and ensure that the diverse people you manage (and they almost certainly are diverse) will be able to get along and work effectively under your management. Boring stuff.
People think its some sort of ideological purity test, write it as such, and get surprised when the statement is evaluated poorly.
If the people writing the calls wanted the same things as the people reviewing the submissions, they would say, "tell us about your experiences with normal HR tasks."
I have not really encountered instructions that I would misconstrue to be an ideological litmus test, and the majority of submissions that I have reviewed do not in fact talk about the candidate's ideological priors.
I get that the way people think about these statements is different than the way they actually are; I just think people are wrong and that their impression is informed by social media. If it helps, I would be happy to rebrand "DEI Statement" to "Don't be an asshole and also try to keep the peace with everyone Statement".
The rubric I use to judge diversity statements, and which is often formalized in rubrics, is: "has the applicant thought about this at all to the point that they have specific experiences and strategies that lead us to trust that they could effectively manage a diverse population of students and staff".
There is nothing arcane about this. To the extent that diversity statements even factor in review, this is the same criteria that everyone I know follows.
In my own applications, I, as a white guy, have been very successful in getting jobs and funding. This is despite never making ideological commitments and barely talking about gender or race, and instead focusing on first-generation students. Just showing that I have put in a minimal amount of thought into working with diverse students and colleagues seems to be enough.
I have had mandatory trainings about this ad nauseam before I have been allowed to sit on hiring committees. One of the biases “DEI initiatives” warn against is being impressed by people who spew jargon without having done the work, and supporting people who have done the work (and give examples) without spewing jargon.
If the interpretation is “arcane”, that’s an institutional problem that goes far beyond interpreting an interview question that forms a fraction of the interview process. But claiming that’s inherent to organizations that mention diversity in an interview question is setting up a strawman, and HR will have it ground into your head that it is “inequitable”.
I don't doubt your lived experience, but in 3 out of 4 companies DEI initiatives took the form of explicitly discriminating on the basis of candidates' protected class. Practices like giving "diverse" candidates multiple chances go pass interviews where white and Asian men got one. Another straight up created a reservation system for diverse candidates.
I acknowledge that some people have had better experience DEI, but I'd encourage you to consider the possibility that many have witnessed explicit discrimination under the banner of DEI.
We can haggle over how many is enough to make a sweeping generalization, if you'd like. But I don't think that's productive for any of us if we want to debate whether loyalty tests actually existed, or whether "DEI" reduces to religion, as the parents have claimed.