FWIW, I am a white, heterosexual male. I wrote a DEI statement that did not mention ethnicity, sexuality, or gender. I consistently got praise for my DEI statement in faculty interviews.
I am fairly confident I am one of the only straight white males in this comment section who has applied to faculty positions and received job offers, across a variety of institution types. I am almost certain I am the only one in this comment section who meets those criteria and isn't currently in academia (I truly have no horse in this race, except annoyance that the discussion is so low-quality).
Most people commenting here have never written or reviewed a DEI statement, have never applied to faculty positions, and likely don't even have the minimal requisite education to quality for these positions.
What's worse is that there's a concerted effort by the political class to terrify parents. On right this manifests as "the wokes want your white boys to starve to death". It's all bullshit peddled by useless people who need your attention in order to extract money from the economy without doing anything useful. You're the mark.
So, here's the actual truth about how university hiring DEI statements impact your white hetero sons:
At most colleges and universities, the concern about DEI has a lot more to do with finances than "woke ideology".
There's no interest in "replacing the white males". On the contrary, they'd love to have as many people of whatever background around as possible. But keeping their current enrollment numbers requires recruiting and retaining more diverse students because they are losing up to 20% of the total addressable market due to the post-2008 baby bust. They want to know faculty can serve a more diverse clientele, because they are pretty certain they cannot continue to exist if they are 80+% white. Especially from a retention perspective.
And, to be blunt: the colleges are correct to be concerned and prioritize DEI. The existing tenured faculty are terrible at working with students who aren't from a very traditional socio-economic demographic. That is why colleges lose more than half of their paying customers after the first year of enrollment. Retention numbers broken out by demo paint a very clear picture.
Consider this: you are a business. Your TAM is decreasing by 20% in the next decade and there's competition closing in from every side. Not just that, but you lose loses HALF your customer base in their first year as customers. And it's clear the reason you lose half your customers in year one is that your faculty either DGAF or don't know how to help that demographic succeed (aka retain customers). Wouldn't you want to hire staff who have proven experience working with the portion of the customer base you keep losing -- center that in job interviews, even?
And, again, straight white males are fine candidates. Faculty who do not give a fuck about retaining non-affluent students are not okay. Because the institution will go bankrupt if that's the attitude.
It's really that simple.
This doesn't describe every institution, but it does describe the vast majority of America's 4,000+ post-secondary institutions.