WEF Urges Businesses, Governments to Do More to Track Racial Data

World Economic Forum (WEF) founder Klaus Schwab delivers a speech on during a session of the WEF annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 17, 2023. FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images

In a white paper published on Jan. 17, the World Economic Forum (WEF) stressed the need for standardized and revamped diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and called on corporations and governments to do more to track racial data. The white paper, “Prioritizing Racial and Ethnic Equity in Business,” was released as part of last week’s summit in Davos, Switzerland.

Created by the WEF’s Center for the New Economy and Society (CNES), the paper posits that minorities bear the brunt of today’s “polycrisis,” which it defines as the culmination of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and political unrest. The CNES is a branch within the international organization that “aims to shape prosperous, resilient, and equitable economies and societies that create opportunity for all.”

The paper begins by building a case for why corporations should treat equity—the elimination of racial disparities—as a primary business goal, arguing that “equitable work opportunities are the right and fair thing to do regardless of the benefits to a company’s financial performance.” It goes on to state that many countries and large corporations aren’t doing enough to solve the problem.

“Corporate action on racial and ethnic equity must evolve beyond traditional DEI strategies,” the report reads, calling for a more “holistic” approach. “At the company level, data on race and ethnicity are a crucial and foundational component to taking stock of progress on closing racial and ethnic equity gaps.”

The report acknowledges the “well-justified” concerns associated with race-based data collection, invoking the Spanish Inquisition and Nazi Germany as two examples in which the practice was used for evil purposes.

“However, the need for disaggregated race data to help guide policy was highlighted recently during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the lack of data prevented several countries in Europe from getting a precise understanding of the impact the pandemic had on racially and ethnically marginalized communities,” the report reads.

According to the report, 20 of the 38 countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)—a body comprised of predominantly modernized Western nations—don’t collect data on ethnicity, 14 of which are European Union member states.

France’s “color-blind” policy—by which financial aid is disbursed solely on geographic and economic bases—received criticism from the WEF, which suggested that the policy may allow racial struggles to go unnoticed.

“There is no place in the Republic for race,” then-President François Hollande said in 2013, also advocating for the removal of the word “race” from the French constitution.

In terms of hate speech, however, French law is stricter than many of its peers, including the United States.

Equality of outcome was a major theme of the report.

“Racial and ethnic equity strategy should ideally focus on the systemic nature of outcome gaps within an organization,” it reads.

In this vein, the WEF celebrated the uptick in “racial equity audits,” in which third-party firms analyze a company’s business practices to determine if they have an unforeseen discriminatory effect.

Author and journalist Douglas Murray is a long-time critic of the concept of equity and thinks that the pathology of race obsession is hindering humanity’s collective potential.

“Get off this farce,” Murray said in a 2020 interview. “Don’t waste a minute more of your life on this, on working out where you are in a hierarchy, on working out when you have a right to speak or think or how privileged you are.

“We live in an era in history where we could do so much. If you’re a smart person anywhere in the world—in the developing world or the developed world—and you have access to YouTube and to Google, you can do miracles that your ancestors collectively could never have done. So why spend our time doing the retribution-privilege game?”

Racial Guidelines for Businesses

The WEF white paper was accompanied by a set of guidelines intended to instruct business owners on how to adopt equitable practices. Called the “Global Racial & Ethnic Equity Framework,” the paper was published as part of the organization’s Racial Justice in Business Initiative, which, according to the WEF, is “a global, cross-industry group committed to advancing racial and ethnic equity bringing together 50-plus companies.”

“The framework supports businesses with a suite of options to help identify, measure, and analyze gaps and progress in their journey toward racial and ethnic equity,” the WEF wrote in its statement.

A police officer stands on the roof of a hotel and monitors the area in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 16, 2023. AP Photo/Markus Schreiber

Some serious corporate power is backing the initiative, from Big Tech to Big Pharma to notable financial behemoths. Partners include Google, Deutsche Bank, Coca-Cola, BlackRock, Bloomberg, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, PayPal, and Mastercard.

“Technological fairness” and “external stakeholder and social impact” are two of the 10 “guiding principles” highlighted in the WEF framework.

A list of 74 questions makes up the bulk of the document. The questions are posed to “internal stakeholders” (i.e., owners, shareholders, and employees) to self-assess a company’s commitment to equity and racial justice.

The questions include, “Do you design products and create services with a racial and ethnic equity lens?” or “Do you screen your company’s algorithms for the possibility of racial or ethnic bias?”

The WEF framework then invites companies to score themselves 0–5 on the list of questions to arrive at their “racial and ethnic equity” score.

While some progress has been made, according to the WEF, new and improved means of advancing equity are warranted. Summarizing the problem in the Jan. 17 white paper, the organization wrote that traditional DEI methods have “not always been successful at addressing the lingering effects of systemic racism, a particularly pernicious form of discrimination entrenched in laws, practices, and systems.”

In a June 2022 video, Jordan Peterson, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Toronto, expressed doubt about the feasibility of achieving equity.

“The equity claim is essentially predicated on the notion of equality of outcome, which is, first of all, impossible to define across all possible variables of outcome and would require something approximating a totalitarian state to ever impose,” Peterson said, calling the people perpetuating the DEI movement “fundamentally racist.”