Ep. 301: DEI Is Gone. Now What? With HR Insider Kevin Calhoun
James Crow: Jim Crow 2.0 Is in Your Boardroom: A Juneteenth Conversation About DEI's Collapse
James Crow is not who you think he is.
He didn't grow up in the rural South with a shotgun and a set of laws designed to strip Black Americans of their rights. He grew up integrated. He went to school with us. He sat in the gifted classes. And now he's in your boardroom.
That's the framework Kevin Calhoun introduces in his essay "James Crow and Visa, Everywhere You Want to Be" and it's the concept at the center of this Juneteenth episode of Culture Changers.
Kevin is Black, gay, a doctorate holder with two master's degrees and years of HR and DEI experience inside some of the largest corporations in the world. He watched diversity programs get built from the inside. Then he watched them get quietly dismantled. And he found himself overqualified, displaced, grieving and asking the question that opens his essay: What have I done wrong?
Jim Crow vs. James Crow
Jim Crow was visible. Brutal. Legally codified. Kevin's great-grandparents picked cotton under it. His father had rocks thrown at him walking home from school.
James Crow is different. James is the recruiter who tells you you're just not a fit. James is the hiring algorithm that filters your name before a human ever sees your resume. James is in the post-meeting meeting, wondering aloud with great civility, whether this particular role is really the right move for you at this point in your career.
Same thing. Different century. Harder to name, harder to prove, harder to fight.
The numbers tell part of the story
The term DEI fell 98% across Fortune 100 communications between January 2023 and May 2025. The Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index saw a 65% drop in Fortune 500 participation — from 377 companies to 131 in a single year. Black unemployment is currently at 8.2%, more than twice white unemployment.
And yet, McKinsey research shows companies with higher diversity are 35% more likely to outperform their competitors on financial returns.
The rollback isn't happening because DEI doesn't work. It's happening because for a lot of organizations, it was never real.
Performative vs. embedded
Kevin's framework for telling the difference is simple: look who's still standing.
Companies like Costco held their DEI programs against pressure from 19 attorney generals. Levi Strauss has been showing up for LGBTQ communities since before it was a talking point. These companies didn't build DEI programs to trend. They built them into how they hire, evaluate, and promote.
The companies that slinked out the backdoor? Kevin says it plainly: when it's performative, it's easy to say it's no longer in mode.
What to do when the system fails you
Kevin's advice is practical and hard-won. Know what you want to get out of a job before you take it. No company loves you... they love what you can do for them, and that's probably for a time. HR is not there for you; it's there to protect the company from legal recourse. Go in with clear eyes, not looking for a savior.
And when a door closes: pivot. Volunteer. Get politically active. Learn AI before it passes you by. Keep moving, because organisms that don't move die.
Kevin is now doing fractional HR work and running political campaigns. He's finding another way in. And he believes the pendulum will swing back — not because things will fix themselves, but because enough people are starting to feel that something is wrong, on both sides of the aisle.
Why this matters to you
If you lead people, hire people, build companies, influence even in your own circles - this conversation is not someone else's problem. You make decisions every day that either reinforce James Crow or push back against him. Most of the time, you won't even realize you're doing it.
That's what makes this conversation so important..
Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Kevin's essay "James Crow and Visa, Everywhere You Want to Be" is available on Substack and Medium. He can be reached at [email protected].
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