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Disruptive Bias: The Assault on DEI, Values, Culture, Leadership, and Care
In the foundational work of Edgar Schein, culture is understood as both visible and invisible — what exists above the surface and what lies beneath. It is the set of shared beliefs, values, and practices that bind individuals together, shaping how they engage with society, institutions, and one another. Today, this foundation is under siege. What we are witnessing in America is an all-out assault on culture itself — not just in the superficial sense of traditions and celebrations, but in the deeper, more insidious attempt to dismantle the core principles that have long held American democracy together.
At the heart of this assault is what I call disruptive bias — a calculated effort to destabilize inclusion, erase historical and cultural truths, and weaponize ideology to create a more authoritarian, oligarchic state. This is not mere political disagreement; it is a strategic and systemic effort to bulldoze democratic ideals, re-engineer power structures, and recast society in the image of an exclusionary, hierarchical order.
To understand how disruptive bias operates, we must examine its historical origins, its theoretical foundation, and its four primary levels of attack: the individual, the cultural, the organizational, and the national.
