Capitalism and justice are not friends.

They don’t go together. They don’t play well together. They don’t make sense. So, when I see titles like “Does DEI need a rebrand?” I say, “Texas!” In other words, that is not a question that is relevant to reality. The question does not make sense nor does it address the cognitive dissonance I am experiencing.

The attack on DEI does make sense. The dismantling of race-based or equity-focused investments is aligned with American history and an appropriate backlash reaction within the context of this empire.

And this narrative tool works for the people who want to keep telling American lies, fight for book bans and erase the parts of history that don’t sit well with the lies.

But, I digress. DEI is not just an acronym under semantic attack, but a part of a strategy for the repair for centuries of inhumanity. I do think “DEI” is an incomplete set of strategies to effectively address the structural impact of racialized capitalism and settler colonialism. But these strategies were all we had in a limited collective imaginary.

Maybe we could say it more directly and call DEI, the investments of dollars generated from the revenues from the labor of stolen bodies on stolen land (TIDGFTRFTLSBSL).

Words do matter. Stories matter. Narrative matters. 

Today, I decided to open Fortune’s RaceAhead newsletter entitled,  DEI Rebrand: The Case for a DEI Rebrand in Impact Investing by Ruth Umoh. The title is unserious. However, It’s not just a catchy clickbaitish title. It’s irresponsible and incomplete. The marketing of DEI is not the issue at hand for people seeking justice and repair. 

I almost didn’t open it. The fact that I even still receive this newsletter is a shocking reminder of the way I used to track every single news story related to race, equity, and DEI. I needed to do this to survive in a deeply anxious relationship with the white supremacist cultural worldview of race work. The focus on proving the value of DEI was 98% of my job and took up 200% of my psychic energy. I was depleted from this exhausting f*ckery called survival in racial capitalism. 

I tracked the thought-leaders who could make the most compelling argument to the institutions I worked with who mostly purported to have a commitment to social justice or equity. To survive, I needed to over-consume empirical evidence and data and the latest ideas. These organizations included philanthropy, public education, and government agencies.

I’ve even worked with many businesses that claimed to have a “double bottom line,” and say they care about social impact and profit. These same institutions would claim a commitment to “all lives” while mammying and demonizing Black women and using them as institutional caretaker-fixers. After George Floyd was brutally lynched in 2020, the performative, market-driven corporate commitment to DEI was written on all of the websites, even if they would not let employees say the words, “racial justice, white supremacy or equity” to describe their work.

Now, you can’t say DEI, racial justice, or equity for fear of being sued.

This is the F*CKERY—The root cause of the cognitive dissonance and confusion.

Be clear, the allegiance in racial capitalism is always to labor, productivity in service of the reproduction of capital. There is only one bottom line. The other stuff is just words. Yet. The words matter. The narrative matters and it helps us locate ourselves in context.

The shame of American History is so deeply intwined with the protection of racial capitalist empire. This particular shame is a trauma response to what Resmaa Menakem calls, white body supremacy. This shame is what is holding the American empire together by a thread.  Shame is not conscious. Shame reacts and fights and rips bodies apart. Shame elicits terror. Shame is feral. And as Child Gambino says, “This is America.”

The use of failed democratic structures such as the Supreme Court to end Affirmative Action and the real divestment from all race-based program, economic development, and DEI programs is completely aligned with the vision of book bans, and attacks on Critical Race theory and as well as student protests to Palestine.

Similar to the New York Times making editorial decisions to ban words that might humanize Palestinians in Gaza or words that depict the Isreali goverment and military as genocidal (you can’t say this) the structures that uphold empire include word choice and narrative. This is real. This is really happening. No matter what you call it. See The Intercept reporting on NYT leaked memo LEAKED NYT GAZA MEMO TELLS JOURNALISTS TO AVOID WORDS “GENOCIDE,” “ETHNIC CLEANSING,” AND “OCCUPIED TERRITORY”

In the Fortune RaceAhead blog, I read the most confusing quote that makes perfect sense for the context.

WTF!!!! is my immediate response. Then I remember…

Protection of the corporation over the people is aligned with Patriotic Capitalism, a phrase that elicits a side eye, tilted head wondering about incestual word play. Are these words inappropriately close cousins? In my body, I feel the same impact as the words America and Capitol Insurrection. In my body, these words have the same impact on my nervous system. Together, my body reads them as related, dangerous and redundant.

This is called neuroceptive text reading. I just made that up.

Semantics may be trivial to “Impact investors” when their bottom line is the true focus, but words and history always matter. Facts matter. The way we talk about facts has power. The narrative that shapes how we tell the stories that trigger our emotions matter. The stories that break open our hearts because we feel connected to the humans in the story matters. 

The narrative also shapes who gets to be seen and felt as human. Look at the stories in the New York Times and see how the narrative shaping of the facts tells the story of Palestinian humanity. 

Today, our bodies need to experience more coherence and less confusion.

For our collective commitment to living, health, and humanity, we need more regulation and connection to a truth that resonates with our inner source of power and wisdom. The narratives shaped to protect racial capitalism and settler colonialism will not serve this move toward coherence. These narratives require a collective boycott and divestment. 

Our choice to connect with the source of power from within and find resonance we find freedom. This is the freedom that allows us more room to discern the truth within the narrative. This is where we find our power trust ourselves in the face of inundation and overwhelm from the news in our inboxes. 

Today, I want less f*ckery and confusion in my inbox. 

DEI and social impact investing don’t need new brands.

Capitalism needs to die.