PRESENTING: 'Diversity' and 'inclusion' are the emptiest words in corporate America. Here's what we really need to dismantle systemic racism in the office.

Companies have been relying on diversity and inclusion leaders to shoulder the responsibility of creating more inclusive cultures for years.

The mounting pressure on corporate America to address inequality has led to a surge in leadership roles with the express mission of pushing those efforts. Postings for diversity-and-inclusion roles saw a 36% spike from 2016 to 2018, according to the jobs site Indeed. In 2019, according to Strategy+Business, 234 of the S&P 500 companies had diversity professionals, nearly two-thirds of whom had started their jobs within the past three years.

But as events at prominent companies across the US indicate, corporate America's D&I strategy has failed to deliver on its name. As the news cycle has shown every single day this month, American business is neither diverse nor inclusive.

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To understand why, Business Insider spoke with prominent scholars, reviewed research, and analyzed recent conversations with diversity leads at major companies, who are themselves often given an impossible task.

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'Diversity' and 'inclusion' are the emptiest words in corporate America. Here's what we really need to dismantle systemic racism in the office.