By Dr. Leo Croft | Stix Intel
Let’s stop pretending.
Corporate America didn’t “get more inclusive.” It got more strategic. And if you’ve been paying attention—not to the PR slides, but to the boardroom seating charts—you know what I mean.
Affirmative action and DEI were supposed to open the doors to opportunity for marginalized people. They were supposed to challenge the chokehold white men had on corporate power. Instead?
Corporate America flipped the script.
They gave white women the keys to the lobby.
And quietly kept the vault locked behind them.
For decades now, white women have been the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action and DEI efforts—and that’s not opinion. That’s data. Receipts. History.
Let’s follow the trail, because once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Affirmative Action Was Always a Battlefield—They Just Moved the Lines
Affirmative action came out of the Civil Rights Movement—not to make corporations “feel better,” but to force power structures to open up to Black Americans shut out of education and opportunity by generations of legal and economic warfare.
But just as the ink dried on those early policies, white women surged to the front of the line.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor and a landmark 1995 review, white women became the largest group to benefit from affirmative action, particularly in employment. While Black and Brown Americans were still fighting redlining and school segregation, white women—most of them married to the very white men who built the barricades—walked through the side door marked “diversity.”
IBM’s own records showed that after implementing affirmative action, the number of women in management tripled by the early ‘80s. Sounds good, right? Until you realize the vast majority of those promotions went to white women, not women of color. Meanwhile, Black executives were still largely absent from leadership.
Let that sink in.
The system gave white women the appearance of progress while keeping the structural power white.
It allowed companies to check the DEI box while continuing to protect the boys’ club.
And this wasn’t just in the ‘80s. It’s still happening—right now.
The DEI Industrial Complex: A Shield, Not a Sword
Fast forward to today. DEI is a billion-dollar industry. Every company has a Chief Diversity Officer, a social justice mission statement, and a few splashy LinkedIn posts during Black History Month.
But look deeper.
According to a 2022 McKinsey & Company study:
- 63% of all DEI leadership roles are held by white women.
- In the C-suite? White women hold nearly 1 in 5 positions, while women of color remain at just 4%.
Let me translate that: the face of DEI is white.
The hires made in the name of diversity are often white.
The metrics used to prove inclusion are padded by white women.
And the real power? Still locked up at the top—white, male, untouched.
DEI didn’t fail—it got hijacked.
The same system that refused to let Black people in through the front door found a workaround: put white women in the window.
From the outside, it looks like change.
From the inside, nothing’s really different.
How the Game Works: Inclusion Theater 101
Let’s call this what it is: optics management.
Here’s how the game works in most Fortune 500 companies:
- Announce DEI goals. Say all the right words. Equity. Access. Representation.
- Hire or promote a few white women. Count it as “diversity” on paper.
- Fill out your EEO-1 reports with just enough data to get by.
- Put white women in public-facing DEI roles—especially if they’re “liberal, progressive, and empathetic.”
- Keep executive roles majority white, majority male—but call it a meritocracy.
You get the praise.
You get the press.
And you don’t have to change a damn thing.
This isn’t inclusion. It’s illusion.
The Buffer Class: How White Women Became the Face of Progress
Here’s the part that stings: white women were never outside the power structure.
They were the wives, daughters, and sisters of the very men who ran it.
They benefitted from their husbands’ salaries, their fathers’ networks, their family inheritances.
They may have lacked formal workplace access, but they never lacked access to power.
Affirmative action gave them formal entry—without asking them to surrender allegiance to the structure that raised them.
And many played it brilliantly:
- “I broke the glass ceiling” (while stepping over Black and Brown women entirely)
- “I’m the first female executive” (in a department where everyone else still looks like you)
- “I believe in DEI” (but vote for policies that gut it the moment it threatens legacy power)
Not all white women, sure. But enough to weaponize representation.
They became the perfect buffer class—close enough to claim progress, safe enough to not rock the boat.
Meanwhile, Black Women Were Doing the Real Work
You want to know who’s been pushing the hardest, showing up, building culture, and holding the line in every major institution?
Black women.
They organize.
They lead.
They show up in boardrooms and classrooms, often with more education, more credentials, and more impact than their white counterparts.
And yet?
- They’re still underpaid.
- Still underrepresented.
- Still under-promoted.
Because DEI was never designed to center them—only to use their labor to make white leadership look inclusive.
This Isn’t a Callout—It’s a Call to Wake Up
Let’s be clear: this isn’t about demonizing white women.
It’s about naming the system that used them to rig the scoreboard.
If you’re a white woman in power reading this—you’ve got a choice:
- Keep playing the game, padding the numbers, and protecting the illusion.
- Or step into real solidarity, blow the whistle, and open the actual doors.
Because diversity isn’t a headcount.
Inclusion isn’t a photo-op.
And equity isn’t achieved when you’re the only one who gets promoted while the rest still clean the building.
Final Word: They Made You Look at the Face—So You’d Never Question the Hand
Here’s what corporate America did:
They made white women the face of inclusion—so you’d stop looking at the hand still on the lever.
They said, “Look how far we’ve come,”
while making sure real power never actually changed hands.
And unless we rip that curtain down—publicly, loudly, and repeatedly—
the cycle will continue.
The illusion will deepen.
And real equity will never materialize.
– Dr. Leo Croft | Stix Intel
“Don’t just track the optics. Track the ownership.”
