Between December 2023 and 2025, Elon Musk conducted a sustained public campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion programmes — arguing not that they are ineffective or wasteful, but that they are themselves racism.
Opposing DEI is a mainstream political position held in good faith by a great many people. This page documents what he actually said, states his argument at its strongest, sets out the response, and identifies the narrow places where the campaign made claims that can be checked rather than merely disagreed with.
The posts
The campaign began in earnest on 15 December 2023:
“DEI must DIE. The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different discrimination.”
He replied to himself shortly afterwards, expanding the claim:
“‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ are propaganda words for racism, sexism and other -isms. This is just as morally wrong as any other racism and sexism. Changing the target class doesn’t make it right!”
In January 2024, following the resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay, the investor Bill Ackman published a long essay on X arguing that DEI ideology was racist and anti-capitalist and that a misguided focus on it had caused Gay’s appointment. Musk reposted it:
“DEI is just another word for racism. Shame on anyone who uses it.”
And on 4 January 2024, the definitional version of the argument:
“Discrimination on the basis of race, which DEI does, is literally the definition of racism.”
The argument at its strongest
This is not a fringe view, it does not require believing anything about the competence of any racial group, and it is held by people who have themselves experienced discrimination. Anyone documenting the campaign against DEI who cannot state that case fairly is not documenting it.
Where it is contested
The counter-argument, made at the time by people in the same industry, ran on both principle and commercial grounds. Mark Cuban published a thread defending diversity programmes as good for business and for workers, writing that having a workforce representative of your stakeholders is good for business, and that the loss of what he called DEI-phobic companies was his gain.
The empirical picture at the time was also less one-sided than the posts suggested. A survey by the employment law firm Littler found that hundreds of US C-suite executives said their organisations had remained committed to, or increased, diversity efforts since 2022 — even as the term itself became politically toxic and disappeared from corporate language.
What kind of claim is being made
Definition, not fact
“DEI is racism” is a definitional and moral claim, not a factual one. It asserts that any race-conscious remedy meets the definition of the wrong it seeks to remedy. People disagree about that in good faith, it turns on contested moral premises rather than on evidence, and it cannot be settled by checking a dataset. This site takes no position on it.
Three narrower claims made during the campaign are checkable, and are treated as such: that a specific company’s practice was “obviously illegal”; that diversity hiring has compromised aviation safety; and that particular individuals were appointed for reasons other than merit. The aviation claim is examined on its own page. On the IBM claim, no enforcement action or judicial finding establishing illegality has been produced.
The corporate outcome
In March 2024 Tesla removed references to diversity, equity and inclusion from its annual 10-K filing, having included such language previously. It was among the earliest and most visible corporate retreats from the terminology, and it followed its chief executive’s posts by weeks.
Tesla was at that time the defendant in race discrimination proceedings brought by California’s civil rights agency and by the EEOC, both concerning its Fremont plant. Those cases are set out on our page: Is Tesla being sued for racism?
Outstanding on this page
None of the posts quoted here have been archived by us. The Tesla 10-K filings are public documents and the change should be cited directly to the filings rather than to reporting of them. The Don Lemon interview should be cited to the recording. The Littler survey should be cited to the primary publication.
Sources
- ‘DEI must DIE’: Elon Musk slams diversity schemes as discriminationMoneywise via AOL · the 15 December 2023 post, the IBM video response
- Tech’s DEI backlash is hereTechCrunch · the self-reply in full
- Companies avoid the term DEI following backlashFortune · 11 January 2024 · the Ackman essay and Musk’s repost
- Tesla erases references to DEI from its new 10-KCNN via AOL · the 10-K change, Cuban response, Littler survey
- The death of DEI in techComputerworld · January 2025 · quotations and context
- Elon Musk says society must move on from the ‘constant subject’ of racismFortune · 20 March 2024 · the Don Lemon interview
- Ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencingThe White House · 20 January 2025 · primary
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