Justice ReDesigned Podcast

In this episode of Justice ReDesigned, retired Judge Steve Teske continues the DEI series with a deeply personal and morally direct examination of what he calls one of the most revealing demands of the current backlash against “wokeness”: the demand for grace—not for the oppressed, but for the oppressor.

Titled Grace for the Oppressor? Why the War on “Wokeness” Is a Moral Evasion, this episode confronts the argument that Confederate leaders, enslavers, and defenders of racial bondage should be judged gently because they were “products of their time.” Judge Teske challenges that claim at its core, arguing that slavery was not morally ambiguous in the 19th century. Abolitionists condemned it, enslaved people resisted it, religious leaders denounced it, and millions fought a war over it. The problem was not ignorance. The problem was indifference, self-interest, and power.

Through the lens of Confederate school names, public memory, and the misuse of the word “grace,” this episode asks a central question: grace for whom? For those who bought, sold, exploited, and dehumanized others? Or for those who endured the trauma of that oppression and whose descendants are still asked to carry its weight quietly?

Judge Teske argues that grace without accountability is not reconciliation. It is absolution without repentance. And when society extends mercy upward while demanding endurance downward, it is not healing history. It is protecting power.

This episode is a powerful meditation on memory, moral responsibility, and the danger of using “neutrality” and “grace” to avoid telling the truth.

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In this episode of Justice ReDesigned, retired Judge Steve Teske examines a growing and dangerous inversion in America’s civil rights debate: the claim that civil rights laws, diversity efforts, and inclusion strategies are now forms of discrimination.

Titled When Power Claims Victimhood, this episode challenges the narrative that equality has gone too far. Judge Teske argues that civil rights laws were not designed to protect historical dominance from discomfort, but to dismantle systemic exclusion and expand access to opportunity. When accountability is reframed as punishment, inclusion as favoritism, and structural reform as discrimination, the meaning of civil rights itself is turned upside down.

With sharp commentary and historical perspective, this episode explores the myth of “reverse discrimination,” the misuse of neutrality, and the difference between genuine harm and the discomfort that comes when unearned advantage is challenged. The episode makes clear that civil rights did not create victims; they named them. And when a society begins to call equality oppression, it reveals more about who it believes the country belongs to than about civil rights law itself.

This is not just a debate about DEI. It is a debate about memory, power, fairness, and whether America is willing to tell the truth about why civil rights protections were necessary in the first place.

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In this episode of Justice ReDesigned, Steve Teske examines what may be the most important development in the DEI debate so far: what happens when organizations stop talking about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—but continue doing the work.

Using Goldman Sachs as a case study, Teske explores the growing disconnect between public rhetoric and operational reality. As legal challenges, political pressure, and accusations of “reverse discrimination” reshape the landscape, many organizations are quietly retreating from the language of DEI while preserving the systems that made those initiatives effective in the first place.

This episode explores:

• Why Goldman Sachs eliminated explicit diversity criteria for board evaluations while maintaining its commitment to inclusion and broad talent recruitment• The rise of what Teske calls the Corporate Chill—when legal and political risk alters organizational behavior before the law requires it• Why critics often focus on the visible variable of diversity while overlooking the inclusion systems underneath• The distinction between demographic diversity and cognitive diversity, and why both matter for governance and decision-making• How structured hiring, transparent promotion systems, and bias-resistant evaluation processes function as organizational architecture rather than political ideology

Drawing on the insights of diversity strategist Ginny Clarke and finance scholar Alex Edmans, Teske argues that the real story is not whether companies are abandoning DEI, but whether they are abandoning the systems that reduce talent waste, challenge groupthink, and improve performance.

The acronym may be retreating.

But the architecture may still be doing the work.

Because institutions rarely survive by defending slogans.

They survive by solving problems.

And in the end, the spreadsheet usually tells the truth.

Justice ReDesigned is a podcast about rethinking justice, challenging assumptions, and rebuilding the systems that shape people’s lives.

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In this episode of Justice ReDesigned, Steve Teske moves the DEI conversation beyond its most familiar—and most flawed—argument: that diversity increases profits.

For years, proponents relied on studies showing correlations between diverse leadership and financial performance. Critics responded with a valid critique: correlation is not causation.

But as Teske explains, that debate misses the point entirely.

The real question isn’t whether diversity magically produces profit.

It’s whether poorly designed systems are quietly wasting talent.

This episode reframes DEI not as a moral slogan or political talking point, but as institutional architecture—the systems organizations use to identify, retain, and elevate talent. When those systems fail, companies don’t just lose diversity.

They lose performance.

This episode explores:

* Why the correlation vs. causation debate is the wrong fight

* The critical difference between diversity as an outcome and inclusion as a system

* How bias, narrow pipelines, and opaque promotion processes create costly “talent leakage”

* Why inclusion is best understood as engineering, not ideology

* And how organizations that reduce waste outperform those that ignore it

Teske also tackles a common misconception: that DEI is simply a modern version of quotas or affirmative action. Instead, he explains how properly designed inclusion systems operate like any other performance system—measured, refined, and accountable.

At its core, this episode delivers a simple but powerful insight:

Inclusion doesn’t work because it is politically correct.

It works because inefficiency is expensive.

And when organizations stop wasting talent, something predictable happens:

Performance improves.

Because the real issue was never whether diversity causes profit.

The real issue is whether your system is designed to waste less human potential.

Steve Teske is a retired judge who served in the juvenile and superior courts, presiding over delinquency, child abuse and neglect, termination of parental rights, and adult civil and criminal matters. He has testified before Congress and numerous state legislatures on policy development related to racial disparities. He has published several articles in scholarly and professional journals.

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We’re taking a short pause from the DEI series for a conversation that reflects the larger purpose of Justice ReDesigned: exploring how systems can be rebuilt to serve people better.

In this episode, I interview Judge Geronda Carter of Georgia’s Clayton Judicial Circuit, a jurist whose work demonstrates what meaningful reform looks like when it moves from theory into practice.

Too often, justice reform is discussed only in terms of what is broken. But real progress also requires us to study what is working—and why.

Judge Carter shares how she has used judicial leadership and innovation to remove barriers that too often prevent people from fully participating in the legal process. From virtual court appearances that reduce transportation problems, lost wages, and scheduling conflicts, to a Parental Accountability Court that helps families through support, structure, and responsibility, her work offers a blueprint for smarter and more humane justice systems.

In this episode, we discuss:

* How technology can expand access to justice without sacrificing fairness

* Why many failures to appear are rooted in barriers, not irresponsibility

* How child support enforcement can focus on solutions instead of automatic punishment

* The importance of helping parents become fully engaged in their children’s lives

* What judicial leadership looks like when it is grounded in service, common sense, and outcomes

This is not innovation for innovation’s sake. It is redesign with purpose.

It is justice that meets people where they are.It is justice that asks what works.And it is justice worth building.

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In this episode of Justice ReDesigned, Steve Teske steps back from the legal and economic debates over DEI to examine the word driving much of the conflict: woke.

Once a term meaning awareness of injustice, “woke” has evolved into a political weapon—used to dismiss conversations about race, history, and inequality. But Teske argues that the real story is not wokeness itself, but the selective outrage surrounding it.

This episode explores:

* How the meaning of “woke” has shifted from awareness to accusation

* Where progressive activism has sometimes overreached—and why that matters

* The growing irony of “anti-woke” efforts that engage in their own forms of cultural intervention

* The difference between remembering history and honoring it

* And why neutrality is never the absence of values, but a decision about what to preserve and what to ignore

At its core, this conversation challenges a simple assumption: that awareness is the problem.

Because when cultural intervention is condemned on one side and embraced on the other, the issue is no longer wokeness.

It is inconsistency.

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Host’s Note

This podcast is part of an ongoing Justice ReDesigned series examining the legal, economic, and institutional dimensions of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Each installment addresses a different layer of the debate — from merit and neutrality to profitability and governance — with the aim of separating rhetoric from reality.

In this episode of Justice ReDesigned, Steve Teske takes on one of the most powerful—and misunderstood—ideas in American public life: meritocracy.

For decades, the phrase “hiring based on merit” has been used as a rhetorical counterweight to diversity, equity, and inclusion. But what if the real question isn’t whether merit matters, but whether our systems actually recognize merit in the first place?

Teske explores the hidden assumptions behind the meritocracy debate and explains why the conversation often collapses into a false choice between competence and inclusion. Drawing on historical examples, legal frameworks, and economic research, he argues that true meritocracy requires something many institutions still resist: structured systems designed to identify talent across all backgrounds.

This episode examines:

• Why “meritocracy” in practice has often operated through informal networks rather than objective standards• How structured hiring and evaluation systems strengthen merit rather than undermine it• The historical lesson of the Tuskegee Airmen and what it reveals about hidden talent• Why the real threat to merit is not inclusion—but unexamined assumptions about who qualifies as “meritorious”

The conversation ultimately reframes the debate: the goal is not to abandon merit, but to build systems capable of recognizing it wherever it exists.

Because the real myth isn’t merit itself.

It’s the belief that our institutions have always measured it fairly.

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In this episode of Justice ReDesigned, Steve Teske moves beyond rhetoric and into architecture.

As political debates swirl around “DEI,” this episode reframes the conversation: inclusion is not about preference or quotas — it is about institutional design. When properly implemented, inclusion is a structured system built on transparent criteria, standardized evaluation, and measurable pathways to advancement.

Teske examines:

* What Title VII actually prohibits — and what it allows

* The difference between identity-based favoritism and bias-resistant systems

* Why inclusion is what organizations do, while diversity is what they get

* How structured hiring and evaluation protect merit rather than distort it

* And why corporations focused on long-term performance quietly maintain inclusion strategies despite political pressure

If merit truly matters, then the systems used to identify talent must be built to see it broadly, not narrowly. Inclusion is not a political slogan — it is governance architecture.

Steven Teske is a retired judge with 22 years’ experience on the juvenile and superior court bench. He served ten years as the chief judge. Before his service as a jurist, he was a trial attorney and partner in the Atlanta law firm of Boswell & Teske LLP. Teske also served as special assistant attorney general representing state employees and prosecuting child abuse and neglect cases.

During his tenure on the bench, Teske testified before Congress on four (4) occasions and numerous state legislatures. He has published several articles on juvenile justice and child welfare issues. He was appointed by three governors to several state boards and commissions including the Commission on Criminal Justice Reform, Council on Child Welfare Reform, Family Violence Commission, Governor’s Office of Children and Families, Children & Youth Coordinating Council, Juvenile Justice State Advisory Council, and the Judicial Advisory Council. Teske served two terms on the Federal Advisory Committee for Juvenile Justice.

He is a past president of the Georgia Council of Juvenile Court Judges, Clayton County Bar Association, and National Chair of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice. He is a Henry Toll Fellow with the Council of State Governments. He has a Masters in political science and a Juris Doctor.

In this episode of Justice ReDesigned, Steve Teske pulls back the curtain on the modern neutrality movement — and what it looks like when anti-DEI rhetoric runs out of legal arguments and starts policing fonts, museums, and gift shops.

From Confederate school names to scrubbing historical exhibits, Teske explores a simple but uncomfortable truth:

Neutrality is never passive. It is always a choice about what to honor, what to silence, and whose discomfort matters.

If removing monuments to slavery is called “woke,” what do we call censoring exhibits about slavery?

This episode examines:

* The difference between history and honor

* Why neutrality is not the absence of values

* How “colorblindness” can become context blindness

* And why cultural editing disguised as restraint is still activism

When the masks slip, neutrality looks less like principle — and more like performance.

In this episode of Justice ReDesigned, Judge Steven C. Teske dismantles one of the most seductive ideas in modern political discourse: neutrality.

Colorblind policies are often marketed as fair and balanced. Teske argues they are neither.

Drawing on Supreme Court precedent and institutional history, he explains why neutrality is not the absence of values — it is a choice about what to see, what to ignore, and who bears the cost of that blindness.

This episode examines:

* Why “neutral in form” policies can perpetuate inequality in practice

* How civil rights law has never required blindness to systemic harm

* The economic research showing that effective DEI strategies increase innovation and profitability

* Why abandoning inclusion in the name of neutrality may impose a long-term “Homogeneity Tax” on institutions

Neutrality may feel safe.

But safety is not the same as justice — and it is not the same as competitiveness.

Sometimes what we call neutrality is simply regression dressed up as restraint.

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