What Came Before DEI — And Why It Still Matters

Written by Jerry Elman, December 21, 2025

I worked inside large American corporations long before anyone used the term DEI.
From 1980 to 2006, I spent twenty-six years at Eastman Kodak, during a time when it was the most recognized brand in the world, one of the largest employers in the country, and one of the most insulated corporate cultures I have ever experienced.

This is not a political argument.
It is a record of how systems actually worked — and what happened because of it.

People today talk about eliminating DEI as if it distorted a fair system.
They imagine a past where opportunity was equal and advancement was based purely on merit.

That past never existed.

I know, because I lived in it.

A City Within a City

Kodak in 1980 employed about 66,000 people in Rochester NY, with 45,000 at the plant where I spent most of my career. It was not just a company. It was a city.

It had its own power plant, water system, buses, trains and tracks, fire department, security force, tens of thousands of engineers, and more than 2,000 construction workers. Almost everything was done internally.

When an organization becomes that large and that self-contained, its culture becomes self-reinforcing. The same assumptions circulate, the same people rise, and the same blind spots harden over time.

My First Week: Ignorance Before Hostility

In my first week at Kodak, the Jewish holidays were approaching. I asked my supervisor what the policy was for taking time off. Some companies allowed personal days; others required vacation.

He had never heard of the Jewish holidays.

I immediately backed out of the conversation and said I would use vacation days. Fortunately, he didn’t internalize what my question meant. It simply never occurred to him that he was talking to a Jewish employee.

That moment told me something important:
this was not a culturally aware environment.

The Warning

A few days later, I casually mentioned that I was Jewish. A Jewish coworker overheard me and pulled me aside.

“Don’t ever say that again,” he said.
“It will destroy your career.”

He wasn’t exaggerating.
He was explaining the system.

For nearly twenty years, except with people I absolutely trusted, I let others assume I was a white Christian male. Women couldn’t hide. People of color couldn’t hide. I could.

That difference shaped everything I saw.

Before DEI, Opportunity Was Controlled

Before DEI existed, training and development were not neutral resources. They were gatekeeping mechanisms.

Women, Black employees, Hispanics, Jews, and non-Christians could apply repeatedly for training and be denied year after year. Without training, you were never “qualified” for the next job.

This is the part of the merit story people forget.

When people say, “We should only promote the most qualified,” they ignore the fact that many people were never allowed to become qualified.

That was not accidental.
That was the system.

How Failure Was Manufactured

Minorities and women were watched more closely. They were written up for bending rules that white men bent every day without consequence. Those write-ups created a paper trail designed not to improve performance, but to justify removal.

At the same time, white Christian men were assumed to have potential. They were mentored, developed, forgiven, and protected.

Failure was not discovered.
It was manufactured.

What Changed When I Became a Manager

Everything became clear once I became a manager.

I reviewed personnel files. I met the people behind them. And I discovered that many of the so-called “problem employees” were smart, capable, and dedicated.

They were being disciplined for things I did routinely without consequence.

That is when I did what would later be called DEI — before it had a name.

I mentored them.
I got them into training programs.
I assigned them complex, visible projects.

When the barriers were removed, they succeeded.

Several became supervisors and managers. Some advanced further than I ever did.

That is not what happens when standards are lowered.
That is what happens when standards are finally applied fairly.

Skilled Trades: Bias Without Cover

Later, when I managed skilled trades groups, the discrimination was blunt.

Black workers applied for training every year. None were accepted. They were always used as helpers.

Racist slurs were written on lockers in magic marker. Managers laughed. Nothing was done to stop it.

Women in the trades endured sexual comments and jokes and were denied mentoring and training. They worked harder simply to overcome assumptions made before they even started.

Meanwhile, less capable white men advanced without resistance.

Again, not because of merit —
but because of access.

What DEI Was Actually Trying to Fix

DEI did not invent unfairness.
It responded to it.

It did not lower standards.
It challenged who had access to them.

It did not create incompetence.
It exposed how much talent had been ignored, blocked, or wasted.

What Actually Destroyed Kodak

There is a popular myth that Kodak failed because it missed the digital camera.

The people who worked there know that is not true.

Kodak did not fail because of digital technology.
Kodak failed because of its culture — and the lack of DEI.

The company had the knowledge. The engineers knew where the industry was going. The workers knew what needed to change.

What Kodak lacked was the ability to listen.

For decades, leadership was filled almost entirely from the same narrow group. People rose through the ranks not because they were the most capable, but because they fit the existing model. The Peter Principle became systemic.

When decisions failed, leadership never questioned itself. The solution was always another workforce reduction.

Certainty replaced curiosity.
Hierarchy replaced insight.
Difference was filtered out.

Kodak even entered the digital camera business — and still failed — because the same culture distorted execution. Decisions were made far from expertise. Reality was ignored.

DEI implemented years earlier would have changed that.
It would have diversified leadership, surfaced dissent, challenged assumptions, and forced the company to listen to people who actually understood the work.

Kodak did not lack innovation.
It lacked humility.

What Is Being Recreated Now

Today, the effort to destroy DEI is not restoring merit. It is restoring a hierarchy.

When mentoring, development, and inclusion are stripped away in the name of “fairness,” the result is not neutrality. It is advantage for the same group that always had access before — primarily white men — and exclusion for everyone else.

I lived in that system.

It did not produce excellence.
It produced confidence without competence.

Calling that “merit” does not make it so.

What Remains

Kodak once employed 66,000 people in Rochester.
Today, about 200 remain.

That collapse was not caused by one missed invention.
It was caused by a culture that filtered out difference, elevated certainty, and ignored the people who had the answers.

Why This Matters

This is not ideological.
It is historical.

DEI was not the beginning of unfairness.
It was a late, imperfect attempt to correct what had always been there.

Anyone who lived before it knows that.