There is no splashy ad campaign to announce its demise, but corporations that cater to the young and cutting edge are quietly putting an end to the woke version of DEI.

Microsoft has reportedly laid off a team devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion after pouring millions of dollars into the initiative — becoming the latest major company to ditch the “woke” policy.

The Big Tech giant disbanded the DEI team at the beginning of the month due to “changing business needs,” according to a July 1 email obtained by Business Insider.

The decision was a further sign that companies are pulling back on diversity-based initiatives that were put in place following the 2020 death of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protest campaigns.

Microsoft is following a host of other corporations.

Last year, Google and Meta reduced the scope of their DEI programs and cut staff as part of restructuring and layoffs at both companies, according to CNBC.

On Tuesday, tractor giant John Deere announced it will scuttle nearly all its DEI polices in favor of a quality-based workplace.

That followed a decision last month by farm chain retailer Tractor Supply to axe all DEI goals and positions.

Some will see this as an abandonment of diversity and inclusion, the rules put in place to appease the mostly peaceful protesters and create plausible deniability that corporations were racist and sexist because their numbers fell below that demanded by the Kendian definition of discrimination based solely on disparate impact. It ignored merit in favor of counting bodies with the correct skin color and genitalia. For corporations, it was a critical performance put on to assuage attack and accusations. What it was not, and never could be, was a means of actually doing something substantively worthwhile to correct past discriminatory practice and actually contribute to real diversity and inclusion.

I’ve long argued that diversity, in all its many forms, is a valuable asset. Many here raised doubts, as the value brought by education, experience and competence matters far more than skin color or genitalia. And my point was not to disagree with the superior worth of skills, but that overcoming historic discrimination is best served by a “skills plus” approach.

Assuming, ceteris paribus, the applicants for a job to fully possess the education, experience and competence to perform with excellence, then diversity adds an additional layer of value which not only contributes to the person’s value to the job, but serves to counter discriminatory practices.

The problem with DEI is that the simplistic rule-based approach that any black person will do to fill the quota was anathema to serious diversity and inclusion, the sort that would be more than put on a show for the numbers crunchers among the mostly peaceful protesters. Just because 13% of the population is black does not mean that 13% of students qualified to get into law school, graduate law school and pass the bar are black. It was never feasible, but it was easy for the unduly passionate to apply as they only needed to run the numbers.

The result of this untenable but performative application of the moment’s DEI fashion trend proved unsustainable. People were given jobs for which they were unqualified, not because people of a certain race or sex couldn’t be exceptionally well qualified, but because the universe of qualified candidates had yet to exist. You can’t create a competent cohort by clicking your heels three times, and yet the unduly passionate expected there to be some magic pool of marginalized talent from which to draw.

Hopefully, the end of these misguided and shallow programs that served only to foster divisiveness and discrimination-based hostility (based on the actual definition of discrimination rather than the woke revised definition based on power structures) will open the door to more substantive appreciation of diversity and inclusion.

It will take years, decades, before a culture of accomplishment creates a deep pool of qualified diverse candidates, whether for college or employment. But the focus can now shift to working toward the creation of that deep pool that will produce real diversity and inclusion. It was never going to happen until the untenable performative version was crushed under its own weight. Hopefully, that’s happening now and we can look forward to a future where merit-based decision making will prevail and include people of all races, ethnicities, religions, beliefs and sexes.