You walk into the diversity training and scan the room. There are breakout groups for Black employees, Latinx employees, Asian and Pacific Islander employees, LGBTQIA+ employees. There’s even a session on intersectionality. But when you look for something that speaks to your experience as the grandchild of Greek immigrants, or as someone whose family still speaks Polish at home, or as an Arab American who gets classified as “white” on every form—there’s nothing.
You’re left wondering: where do I fit in this conversation?
This isn’t about wanting to center whiteness or claim oppression that isn’t yours. It’s about the reality that American diversity initiatives often flatten ethnic complexity into a simple binary: white versus everyone else. And when that happens, people with layered identities—especially those from white ethnic minorities—fall through the cracks.
The Problem With the Monolith
Modern DEI frameworks are built on racial categories that made sense in certain contexts but fail to capture the full spectrum of identity and experience. When we talk about “some people” as a single group with uniform access to power and privilege, we erase the lived realities of millions of Americans whose ethnicity, religion, class, or regional identity has marked them as outsiders.
Consider the Arab American professional who gets pulled aside for “random” TSA screenings but is told they don’t qualify for minority-focused programs because they’re classified as white. Or the Appalachian woman in a corporate setting who’s told her accent sounds “unprofessional.” Or the Jewish employee who experiences anti-Semitic comments but isn’t sure if reporting them counts as a diversity issue.
These experiences don’t negate structural racism or the privileges that come with being perceived as white in America. But they do complicate the narrative that all some people move through the world the same way.
Why This Matters
Exclusion from DEI initiatives isn’t just about hurt feelings or missing out on employee resource groups. It’s about whether organizations truly understand the complexity of their workforce and can create environments where everyone can bring their full selves to work.
When diversity programs ignore white ethnic minorities, several things happen. First, they reinforce the myth that ethnicity only matters when it’s visibly non-white. Second, they miss opportunities to address real forms of discrimination and bias that show up in workplaces every day. Third, they can inadvertently create resentment among people who feel their identities don’t count, which undermines the broader goals of inclusion.
The irony is that many DEI initiatives aim to move beyond checkbox diversity and toward authentic inclusion—but then use rigid categories that prevent exactly that kind of nuance.
The MENA Category Problem
Nowhere is this more obvious than with Middle Eastern and North African communities. Despite decades of advocacy, the U.S. Census still classifies MENA individuals as white. This means that someone whose family fled persecution in Iraq, who grew up speaking Arabic at home, who faces Islamophobia or anti-Arab discrimination regularly, is counted in the same category as someone of Norwegian descent.
In the workplace, this creates impossible situations. MENA employees may experience bias, microaggressions, or outright harassment but find that their experiences aren’t recognized within diversity frameworks. They’re “too white” to access minority support systems but too brown, too foreign, too Muslim to escape discrimination.
This isn’t theoretical. Studies have documented employment discrimination against people with Arab-sounding names. Research has shown bias in how Middle Eastern Americans are treated in healthcare, education, and housing. Yet in most DEI frameworks, this community remains invisible.
Religious Minorities and the White Label
Jewish Americans face a similar paradox. Many have white skin privilege and move through spaces without immediate visual markers of difference. But they also experience targeted discrimination, from workplace bias to violent hate crimes. When diversity initiatives focus exclusively on race as skin color, they miss the ways that religious and ethnic identity intersect.
The same applies to other religious minorities who appear white—Sikh Americans, Hindu Americans, and others who may not fit neatly into American racial categories but who absolutely face marginalization based on their identities.
Class, Region, and Culture
Then there’s the matter of class and regional identity. Appalachian communities, rural working-class whites, and others whose whiteness doesn’t protect them from economic marginalization or cultural stereotyping often find themselves excluded from conversations about diversity and inclusion.
These communities face real barriers—educational inequities, healthcare deserts, economic displacement, cultural stigma. When DEI efforts ignore class and region, they miss how privilege and marginalization operate across different axes.
Someone from a fourth-generation coal mining family in West Virginia doesn’t have the same access to opportunity as someone from an upper-middle-class family in Connecticut, even if they’re both classified as white. Acknowledging this doesn’t diminish the reality of racial inequality. It just recognizes that inequality is multifaceted.
What Actually Inclusive DEI Looks Like
So what’s the solution? Not abandoning racial equity work or pretending that structural racism doesn’t exist. Instead, it’s expanding our frameworks to hold complexity.
Truly inclusive DEI initiatives would recognize ethnicity as distinct from race. They would create space for conversations about religious discrimination, regional bias, and class barriers. They would understand that someone can hold privilege in some contexts and experience marginalization in others.
This might look like adding MENA as a distinct category in diversity data collection. It might mean including ethnic heritage in employee resource groups, not just race. It might involve training on anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of bias that don’t fit neatly into conventional racism frameworks.
It definitely means asking better questions: not just “Are you a minority?” but “What aspects of your identity have shaped your experience in this workplace? What barriers have you faced? What strengths do you bring from your cultural background?”
Moving Forward Without Centering Whiteness
The fear, of course, is that expanding DEI to include white ethnic minorities will dilute focus on racial justice or center white grievance. This is a valid concern. The goal isn’t to create false equivalencies or distract from anti-Black racism and other forms of systemic oppression.
But inclusion isn’t a zero-sum game. Making room for ethnic complexity doesn’t mean taking resources away from racial equity work. If anything, it strengthens it by building broader coalitions and deeper understanding of how power, privilege, and marginalization actually operate.
The key is being honest about context and power. Yes, acknowledge the discrimination that Italian Americans faced a century ago—but also acknowledge how that community eventually gained access to whiteness and its privileges. Yes, recognize the cultural erasure that happened to Norwegian immigrants—but don’t pretend that’s the same as the ongoing impact of slavery and Jim Crow on Black Americans.
Nuance isn’t weakness. It’s accuracy.
Your Identity Counts
If you’ve ever sat in a diversity training and felt invisible, if you’ve ever wondered whether your ethnic background matters in conversations about inclusion, if you’ve ever been told you’re “just white” when you know your identity is more complicated than that—your experience is valid.
You don’t have to choose between acknowledging your privilege and honoring your heritage. You don’t have to pretend your identity is simple when it’s not. And you deserve to work in environments that see you fully, not as a flattened category but as a complex human being.
The future of DEI isn’t about abandoning racial equity. It’s about building frameworks sophisticated enough to hold all of our stories, strategic enough to address real barriers wherever they exist, and honest enough to name privilege and marginalization where they actually show up.
That’s the work. And there’s room for you in it.
