DEI need to DIE. It is a divisive, destructive and illiberal construct backing a power grab by collectivist radicals who also desire to profit from it within the hive of their useless consulting practices and NGOs. It not only does not solve any of the problems it professes to target, it creates a much bigger mess of resulting from the erasing of merit as the primary hiring, promotion and reward factor.
Here is were we should be at this point in our fantastic social justice and civil right progress... everything should have shifted from race and other victim group identity advocacy to 100% other-group-blind economic class advocacy.
Today there is no material Institutional racism nor gender bias. Females in fact dominate much of the economy today. However, outcomes for certain races, for example blacks, remain problematic. Forcing society to give preference based on race has three key problems while failing to actually solve the problem of improved group outcomes.
1. It is racist itself, immoral, illiberal and likely unconstitutional.
2. It reduces organizational performance as criteria other than demonstrated performance merit are used to select and promote people within a role.
3. It negatively impacts those given preference as bypassing the development learning process they need to be successful long-term.
The focus instead should be to completely reform the public education system to focus on preparing each and every student for his next step toward the goal of an economically self-sufficient life, while also implementing robust incentives to bring in more good paying manufacturing, industrial, trade and service jobs into labor surplus areas.
The problem is that the type of people attempting to benefit from victim advocacy don't support these things. They don't support the school reform need because the public education system is a unionized public adult jobs program and the unions donate money and personnel time almost exclusively to the same Democrat party that pushes DEI... the unions don't support the type of changes required and the Democrats benefit from the control of the education system that plants ideological ideas of government dependency into the heads of young voters instead of teaching them self-sufficiency. On the business side, these advocates don't play in the sandbox and cannot make enough power and money from it.
So these same advocates for blacks are the biggest roadblock for fixing the problems in the black community. DEI, as well as reparations, is their desperate deflection from this truth because as the black community figures it out... their race-baiting power and money making industry is done.
Shirky principle—on steroids. . .I think that sums up the ways of many people who engage organizations in what they call anti-racism or DEI. As Upton Sinclair said: “It’s hard to get a man to understand something that his paycheck depends on him not understanding. [Or, at least, pretending to be oblivious.]
Most DEI work doesn’t work, and many who claim to want a particular outcome might feel they are getting what they desire until they are not.
Others have been working with organizations to produce results that managers and individual contributors benefit from in tangible and intangible ways.
If more DEI practitioners follow a path similar to what Dr. @Rachel Kleinfeld lays out in her article, organizations and institutions will benefit in myriad ways if those skill sets and mindsets are mindfully developed.
Good job. I see it the same. But I'm frustrated that there seems to be a lot of us who understand but can only comment. I think Persuasion needs to think about how to help us collaborate on ways to get the word out more simply -- as you are explaining it. Persuasion could help us make our voices heard in ways that Persuasion's philosophical essays don't -- I'm not opposing those, I just think there are other possibilities and lots of talent hidden in the subscriber community.
This is an excellent and thoughtful essay. Yet, can DEI be reformed? More importantly, should it be? I don’t think so. Anyone who has suffered through a DEI program understands the totalitarian nature of the movement. Glossaries are provided that redefine common words. DEI statements are required, thus compelling speech. Solzhenitsyn and Havel convinced me that totalitarians hold power by forcing citizens to repeat what they know to be lies. It weakens the will and makes resistance difficult.
The DEI movement seeks not to unite, but to divide. There is no pluralism. It does not celebrate differences. We need look no further than the capitalization of White and Black, which others have commented on.
Ideologues have long robbed people of European descent of their ethnic and cultural uniqueness. Somehow, the Irish, Portuguese, Germans, and Sicilians are indistinguishable. Try filling out a death certificate or hospital admissions paperwork. There will be six or seven types of Asian, numerous islanders, and so forth. I have never seen Basque, which I would prefer if forced.
The same is now true for African Americans with Black. In Florida, where I live, the unique ethnic heritage of African Americans is central to the civil-rights movement. The first NAACP chapter in my community was started by a Bahamian immigrant who chafed under the degrading treatment of “black folks” that dominated the culture. Just as with White, Black seeks to erase the cultural differences of African Americans. Haitians are lumped in with Jamaicans, and Africans. The term people-of-color is worse, since it only means anyone who is not white, the biggest and most nonsensical erasure of differences ever imagined.
I love living in an ethnically diverse community. My next-door neighbor is Chileno, not Latinx as anglophone DEI adherents would force upon him. Across the street, Argentinian, three doors down Cuban. We need to reject the totalitarians and the cultural imperialists of DEI.
This is the same old same old. Anybody who piously capitalizes "White" gives the game away. As long as the set of assumptions underlying "diversity training" start from "dominance" or "power," as long as certain people are identified as in need of "diversity training" because they themselves are alleged to lack "diversity" or to be insufficiently aware of their "dominance," as long as earnest warnings about devious folk determined to "turn back the clock" block any skepticism about the project, we might as well be honest and acknowledge that what is proposed here is a more subtle version of the same rigged game of "oppressed vs. oppressor." It's impossible to be too cynical. The game may change, but the rules will stay the same. I don't mean to say, either optimistically or pessimistically, that the "dominant" will stay "dominant." I mean to say that I confidently expect that in any system of "diversity training," any formal attempt to inculcate "pluralism," some people will get to insult other people with impunity, some people will get to have an identity of their own and others will have one assigned to them. That is what this sort of stuff is supposed to prevent. Instead it sets it in stone, even if its practitioners think that turning the stone upside down makes a righteous difference. How about stopping this stuff? How about letting people get on with it and sort themselves out? The society has changed enormously and is going to continue to change. Fine. Let's just live with it and stop fussing about whether everybody changes in the same way at the same time. If the devious folk are out there--I think they're overrated--so what? No society is perfect, and no change is complete.
You state "While White men as a group remain at the top level of dominance in money and power in American society, many individual men are nowhere near that level." This is not true. Asians have higher median family incomes than any other ethnic group (whew I almost wrote "race.") As a white, straight, reasonably successful male, I get very weary of being called an oppressor and considered the enemy by PBS, the NYT and similar, well, Woke institutions. I think maybe the woke themselves need to be awakened to their own exorbitant privilege - that is: the profound good fortune to live their lives in the United States
I agree with pretty much everything you wrote, but I also have a lot of sympathy for Lucy T's position. Perhaps this is an intermediate position. First note that you point out
"But it sure looks as if DEI as it is currently being practiced is adding bricks to the very wall its proponents claim to want to knock down"
Agreed. But you need to take the next step. This is no accident. The higher the walls the more they can claim DEI is needed. Knock the walls down and they are out of a career with no real skill. To see this in spades, read Kendi and Peniel Joseph of respectability politics. Kendi goes so far as to call his parents ideas racist because they taught him to value hard work and education. Both of them sell the idea that no one in the ghetto should take the path they took (and escape).
Combine this backward motive with some knowledge of CRT's long-term program, which is to destroy capitalist culture so we can reach utopia, and you will end up very near Lucy T. Step 1 is to totally dismantle DEI and get those ideologues out of here. As you've shown we make progress quickly without them. Then some programs that simply encourage contact would seem fine. But don't try to reform DEI.
Sure thing. “My parents followed Norton’s directive: They fed me the mantra that education and hard work would uplift me, just as it had uplifted them, and would, in the end, uplift all Black people. My parents, were susceptible to the racist idea that it was laziness that kept Black people down, so they paid more attention to chastising Black people than to Reagan’s policies.” page 27, Chapter 2, How 2 B an Antiracist. This view only comes to him after grad school, his PhD dissertation acknowledgments are over-the-top grateful (as they should be), but by the time he writes How to Be... they are insulting in their brevity.
Here’s how to fix DEI: kill it. Forever. Root and branch.
Stop perpetuating the myth. Stop keeping alive the zombie lie that America is a racist place.
Stop pretending the advantage doesn’t go THE OTHER WAY.
Stop pretending that 1/7 of our population doesn’t punch well above its weight in cultural awareness and triumphalism.
Stop the old, no longer true lie that America is stuck in some KKK hellish Jim Crow systemic racism trap that only Democrats can solve would we only keep voting them to power.
Stop the damaging binary identity awareness that creates equal response from whites (of course it does idiot) and makes all this worse every day.
Stop saying MLK Jr was delusional to think color blindness is the right way.
Stop excusing black men for abandoning their children and leaving their sons to be raised by gangs and fast drug money. And then blaming their resultant plight on phantom racism.
Stop making movies and hip hop records that glorify this under the illusion that you’re merely raising awareness.
In short - liberals have to forsake identity politics if any of this is to get better. You’re no longer capable or worthy leaders. You no longer have anything of value left to teach us or lead us with. Just go away until you figure this out and come back and apologize. Till then - your opinions no longer matter.
Thank you for writing this. I appreciate the thoughtful prescriptions for how to do better, the empathetic understanding of what DEI was meant to achieve (a more diverse, empathetic, inclusive society), and the importance evidence that current practices are undermining these goals. I think this article can be shared with existing DEI advocates and participants and persuade at least some of them that there is a much better way. I especially appreciate that you do provide some solutions and that this is about how to fix DEI - not destroy it. I will be thinking on Social Contact theory and looking for further reading. Thank you.
I’m surprised that this entire article failed to mention what under normal circumstances surely should be the greatest engine of diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of our history - a strong public school system, tax supported, with a cadre of well trained teachers.
One seldom hears these days about the ‘melting pot’ which, among other things, used to signify one of the major reasons for supporting a strong public school system - kids from all sorts of backgrounds spending time together learning the 3 R’s and whatever else was needed is exactly what the Democracy Doctor ordered.
Unfortunately our public school system, far from being the melting pot it ought to be has been turned into a social, political, and religious war zone in which everything BUT its capacity to bring kids from all sorts of backgrounds together in a controlled environment, learning with and about each other is being amplified. The history of this descent is long and ugly, going back at least as far as the Jim Crow era in the American south, the Supreme Court's utterly despicable decision in Plessy v Ferguson, and the hysterical conservative reaction to it’s overturning in Brown v Board.
The potential for reclaiming the power of such a system is now being further eroded by the whole ’school choice’ movement, which began following Brown v Board and its corollary, Engel v Vitale and has now become a vehicle for the further, state by state balkanization of our educational system.
I taught American history at the elementary level for over 40 years, and I can vouch for the fact that educating children is a far more complex and demanding process than most who have never stood in front of a classroom full of kids prefer to think it to be. Yet I cannot think of any issue more crucial to the maintenance of a pluralistic, democratic society than this.
There is no easy way to reclaim such a system, if indeed one ever actually existed. It is not just a matter of money spent or teacher training or subject matter or administrative skill or physical plant or any other single element of childhood education. It is a combination of all of the above and a good deal more besides. Yet to watch a really competent elementary school teacher run a diverse classroom for the benefit of all the kids in it, and make it look easy, something I’ve seen over and over again all throughout my career, is something every parent ought to see, even if they may not appreciate all the training, experience, sensitivity and subject excellent that went into it. For all the other issues upon which we seem to spend so much time and effort, this one should be at the forefront of our national goals.
The one thing this article got most right was the fact that talking about such things in meetings is fruitless and often counterproductive. I’ve sat through my share of them, and I know that to be true. The only way to understand what’s wrong with a lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion is to experience that lack in real time, to understand why such a lack ought to be anathema in this nation, the first in human history to be founded in large part on those three principles, that all people are created equal under the law, and damn well ought to have the chance to be educated along those lines.
> One seldom hears these days about the ‘melting pot’ which, among other things, used to signify one of the major reasons for supporting a strong public school system - kids from all sorts of backgrounds spending time together learning the 3 R’s and whatever else was needed is exactly what the Democracy Doctor ordered.
I'm always pleased so read something unwoke from you James. Heretical to advocate for the Melting Pot now -- is suggests a culture confident in itself and not actively working for its own dissolution. Yes, the public system -- promoting unity not Identity. Probably one of the essentials.
> ... is now being further eroded by the whole ’school choice’ movement
Two things: firstly the default assumption should be freedom, no? Secondly, people are only desperate to opt out because the public system is now devoted to woke indoctrination and the 2 R's have long since been declared part of Whiteness.
"Two things: firstly the default assumption should be freedom, no? Secondly, people are only desperate to opt out because the public system is now devoted to woke indoctrination and the 2 R's have long since been declared part of Whiteness.”
The issue of ‘woke' indoctrination in our public schools is always interesting to me. My response is generally, Okay in backing school choice, which form of indoctrination are you substituting for what you call ‘woke’? Christian? Making sure what the school turns out are clones of the parents sending their kids there? Making sure that those who are at school with my kid are like my kid in as many ways as possible? And how many public schools are you actually sufficiently familiar with to make the assumption that they are all dedicated to ‘woke’ indoctrination? Is ‘woke’ indoctrination actually more about exposing kids to the kinds of ideas they are going to hear about both inside and outside the school whether their parents want them to or not?
How much of the accusation that our public school system is dedicated to woke indoctrination is actually just because others say it is in the media we trust?
When it comes to education, I’m with Socrates. I want to take a close look at everyone who claims to be an expert in some area to see if they really are.
The funny thing about this whole DEI business is that this nation was founded at least partially as humanity’s first large scale experiment in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. If that isn’t a substantial part of “all men are created equal” I’m not sure what else it is.
The article makes it plain that formal DEI ‘excursions' are often overboard and counterproductive, and my own experience (which as a 40 year teacher has been extensive) has been that many of them are at best ineffective and at worst simply foolish. As I noted in my original post, sitting around talking the thing to death is mostly just incredibly boring.
My father had some notion of how to go about this. He demanded that I take summer jobs, often away from home during my teen years. I spent summers working construction and as a merchant seaman. And, not due to his urging, four years active duty in the US Army. All that taught me one hell of lot about human diversity, equity, and inclusion than all the meetings I could have attended.
> Okay in backing school choice, which form of indoctrination are you substituting for what you call ‘woke’? Christian?
Fair question. Yes, vaguely Christian in the sense that Western civ. is founded on Christian values. Many attempt to deny this but it is as transparently true as the fact that Muslim civilization is built around Islamic values and Chinese around Confucian. But non-denominational. In my school years we recited the Lord's Prayer and there was a baby Jesus in the Christmas decorations. But other than that, I don't recall any indoctrination in much besides the times tables. Needless to say, layered over this Christian foundation are the more explicitly 'taught' values of the Enlightenment and the scientific world view and yes, they occasionally conflict.
> Making sure what the school turns out are clones of the parents sending their kids there?
Hopefully not. The enlightenment and liberal/democratic values of freedom and open inquiry must prevail.
> Is ‘woke’ indoctrination actually more about exposing kids to the kinds of ideas ...
No. The kids are not 'exposed' they are indoctrinated into a religion that preaches eternal hatred between races and those who dissent are cancelled.
> just because others say it is in the media we trust?
This is a huge problem. But when the entire Right and the Center -- what's left of it -- and the moderate Left all agree that woke indoctrination is a bad thing -- and when samples of teaching materials are provided in evidence, then I'm pretty convinced.
> When it comes to education, I’m with Socrates.
Me too.
> this nation was founded at least partially as humanity’s first large scale experiment in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. If that isn’t a substantial part of “all men are created equal” I’m not sure what else it is
And that's the paradox of the thing. The more the citizenry agree on their fundamentals, the more freedom they can have because the centrifugal forces will not exceed the centripetal. Indeed all must be treated equally, but if, say, a Muslim fundamentalist demands Sharia law, we have a problem, don't we?
> All that taught me one hell of lot about human diversity, equity, and inclusion than all the meetings I could have attended.
Sure. Within broad limits DEI -- taken literally, not as a political slogan, is obviously a good thing. But the ship of state must pick a direction to sail in, and if half the crew want the ship to sail in the opposite direction there's going to be trouble. There is no such thing as a value neutral society. We will or we won't permit abortion. We will or we won't have the death penalty. Drugs will or won't be illegal. FGM will or won't be permitted. And so on. In Somalia they will make different choices than we will, and that's fine -- Somali's are Supreme in Somalia as they should be.
"No. The kids are not 'exposed' they are indoctrinated into a religion that preaches eternal hatred between races and those who dissent are cancelled.”
I remain curious as to how you know this to be true. What experience do you personally have that this is what is happening?
"There is no such thing as a value neutral society. We will or we won't permit abortion. We will or we won't have the death penalty. Drugs will or won't be illegal.”
Yet these things vary within states. You are certainly correct that there is no such thing as value neutral society. And if we were not a Republic with what amounts to 50 little partially independent entities, each demanding its own set of rights within the larger political entity which is the United States I’d say your statement is justified.
But we are in fact a collection of 50 semi-independent political entities. The entire Constitutional Convention was called because the Articles of Confederation were clearly not working as well as they were originally intended to work. How do you make a nation out of 13 political entities who jealously guard their prerogatives but realize that within the larger world they will be more able to exist independently if they make some attempt at some form of consolidation? The answer was the compromise that both made us a nation and at the same time ‘doomed’ us to perennial internal squabbling and, at times, what might seem utter contradiction.
The fact is that we both do and do not permit abortion. We both do and do not permit the death penalty. We both do and do not legalize one drug or another. So what will hold us together, if indeed we are to remain The United States of America? The answer; what seems an internal contradiction. That we can both do and do not have a collection of enumerated rights so long as we agree to do so. No other nation on earth was founded in such a way. Most before us were the result of years and sometimes centuries of agglutination, finally coalescing into a nation at some moment of conquest or agreement. We are the exception that may, in time prove the rule that human beings can in fact rule themselves from the bottom up even while heartily disagreeing on many issues. This was Madison’s concept. This was the nature of our great experiment.
I often find myself wishing that we had not begun as thirteen separate colonies huddled along the Atlantic seaboard in a world already populated by nation-states eternally at odds with each other over some damn thing or another. But we are what we are. And if we are to survive, there does have to be some organizing principle holding us together - your concept of fundamental principles. The central question is what they ought to be. The answer is that we learn to agree to disagree as long as we can do so without flying apart. We damn near did so once, and it could happen again. It may well be happening now. There are no guarantees.
If we fly apart, though, it will not be because we disagree on abortion or the death penalty or the legality of certain drugs, or any of the other things about which we disagree. It will be because we grow so determined to disagree with each other, regardless of the validity of the reasons we disagree that we choose not to maintain the nation. It will be because we amplify the concept of individual rights too far above the needs of the society as a whole. It will be because of our most ancient human weakness - that stubborn determination to separate ourselves into all sorts of groups based on every damn reason we can think of, real or imaginary, and then to demand that everyone else see things our way instead of amplifying what we share as human beings.
> I remain curious as to how you know this to be true. What experience do you personally have that this is what is happening?
I do have some direct experience but it would be tiresome to explain each incident in detail. As with most of what we believe to be true it's a compilation of countless little anecdotes, none of which constitute hard proof.
Stronger is my claim that since everyone not on the woke left -- including more moderate lefties -- agree it is happening and provide actual samples of lessons, then I take it as likely true. I also consider it true that on a certain January 6th a mob of Trumpists sacked the Capitol -- but I wasn't there and I can't prove that the whole thing wasn't made up by the evil Dems.
> The answer was the compromise that both made us a nation and at the same time ‘doomed’ us to perennial internal squabbling and, at times, what might seem utter contradiction.
Very well said. The contradiction is built-in. It can't be cured, it must be lived with. And IMHO the variability permits what one might call 'experimentation' -- the States can try different ideas and see what works. If this was done in a spirit of honest inquiry, rather than partisan stone-throwing, it could be very positive. "Hey Oregon, Idaho here, how's it goin' over there with pot legalization? We're thinking of doing the same, your advice?"
> The fact is that we both do and do not permit abortion.
Yeah, I put that badly. Of course there's variation between the States, and even within the body politic it's always a bell curve of responses to any moral or political question. But at the end of the day laws are written and they say what they say. In Afghanistan women are obliged to wear burkas. In France they are forbidden. I think you get me.
>The central question is what they ought to be. The answer is that we learn to agree to disagree as long as we can do so without flying apart.
Sure, and my central thesis is that the greater the agreement the less likely you are to fly apart. At least at the level of a maxim it's simple: the centripetal must exceed the centrifugal. I'd say that for most of modern Western history almost everyone agreed what an ideal society would look like, the disagreement between left and right was one of method -- the left favored bigger government, the right smaller, but a good life was basically Leave It To Beaver.
> We damn near did so once, and it could happen again.
And not a nice, civilized, uniformed war between gentlemen who went to West Point together fought on (excepting Sherman and a few sieges) empty fields. Nope, it would be a war with no front lines, between neighbors, and must inevitably dissolve into anarchy almost immediately. No Appomattox possible even in theory.
> ... it will not be because we disagree on abortion or the death penalty or the legality of certain drugs
Agreed. It will be because deeper world views are incompatible. The woke world view is to me as fundamentally wrong as saying that men can get pregnant or that 2+2=5.
> It will be because of our most ancient human weakness - that stubborn determination to separate ourselves into all sorts of groups
Right again. And that's why wokeness, with its central theme being the eternal division between the white Oppressor and the colored Victim, is utterly toxic to democracy. You couldn't craft a more perfectly bad idea if it was your overt intention to destroy democracy. It's so perfect that I suspect a conspiracy. Someone wants the West to die. Others want the left distracted from its natural focus on economics. They are working together.
"At least at the level of a maxim it's simple: the centripetal must exceed the centrifugal”
You do know that centrifugal force is a fiction, right? The real difference is between objects drawn inward through such forces as gravity and objects simply continuing along the original path of travel, not flying off into space.
"with its central theme being the eternal division between the white Oppressor and the colored Victim”
After 40 years of teaching history, I’ve never actually run into this theory in any kind of educational practice. Whether that is because I’ve spent it all in independent education or that none of my nephews or nieces, of whom there are now many in public school in several different parts of the east coast from Massachusetts to Georgia have never mentioned it I cannot say. However, the fact of our stubborn tendency to separate ourselves into all sorts of groups, regardless of the validity of those differences is a substantial reality. And racism is still at the core of much of it. Who is the oppressor and who the victim varies, but to deny that it exists in one form while accepting its existence in other forms seems an exercise in fantasy.
I am well old enough to remember the grainy faces of pure hatred etched on the mobs opposed to school integration in Montgomery, Little Rock, and other places or on the faces of those opposed to, say, the demand for equal rights represented by the march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge to assume that such ancient hatreds could be eradicated in one or two generations when it has persisted for millennia.
The current White Supremacist movement right here in the US would also seem to counter any argument that white oppression of colored races is somehow a figment of someone's fevered imagination. You may recall that a number of Republicans caught in moments of candor opposed Barack Obama’s presidency simply because of their feeling that a Black Man did not in any way belong in the White House.
The 1619 Project did rather overstate the facts, but not by as much as some on the right would have it. And Trump’s decision to downplay the evils of slavery in the Smithsonian’s collections is no individual fluke of character.
The vast majority of rich, powerful people are white men. The vast majority of white men are neither rich nor powerful. Know both facts, and don’t confuse them.
As others have said here, DEI cannot be reformed, it is racist to the core- and illegal in that it violates the Civil Rights Act and various Constitutional provisions as well - and needs to be ended. Period. No one should even think about "identifying" as anything, everyone is human. Period. Individuals can certainly have a cultural heritage they celebrate privately, that adds richness to the overall American culture when shared freely with all who are interested. Merit is the only criteria that should be considered for jobs, university admissions, etc. That said, many people of lower socioeconomic status - including individuals of all "identity" groups - need better educations and social support so that they can rise to the level that their abilities and inclinations allow. That means breaking the stranglehold of the teacher's unions and the crazy hard Left on the school systems so that we can get back to actually teaching children how to learn and how to think critically about whatever they will encounter in life. The public is very supportive of a merit-based system and hates the biased, rigged DEI based system for advancement.
I don't know how we are going to accomplish these things, if we can at all, but we need to head in this direction or we won't have a country in a few decades. Liberals may not like it, but the Trump administration is ripping open the DEI-industrial complex in universities and companies for all to see, and what is being exposed is very ugly. DEI isn't dead but it's running for cover and some kind of reform will probably happen if he keeps up the pressure, and the public continues to reject DEI politically.
Another observation, the DEI consultant industry is largely a grifter jobs program for otherwise unemployable "studies" majors who either should have majored in something else or not gone to college at all. We already have a large cohort of overeducated and unemployed self-styled elites composed of people who went to college and got degrees with few to no available jobs outside of government and DEI-infused NGOs. With the end of DEI programs and sharp cutbacks in government funding for NGOs, the problem will get worse and the affected young people will get very angry that they are not getting what they believe they deserve. Combine that with the fact that too many of these graduates are functionally illiterate and never learned critical thinking skills, they have pretty dismal employment prospects though they have been led to believe they should be elite leaders. Again, I don't know what society is going to do about a small but very vocal cohort of extremely disappointed and angry people. They might put Mamdani in the mayor's office in New York and if so we could find out....
The author assumes that all Good people must of course support Inclusion and Pluralism, the question then becomes how to make DEI more effective. And indeed, if that was one's goal, her suggestions are excellent. But I myself reject Pluralism because it is the road to anarchy and horror.
What holds a democracy together is that the centripetal forces holding it together are greater than the centrifugal forces that would tear it apart, this means that anything which increases 'Diversity' is automatically suspect, because however much the word has a nice flavor to it, Diversity is the opposite of unity and is thus a centripetal vector.
Mind, a society can become more centripetal than it needs to be -- it can become stagnant, xenophobic and authoritarian. But, as we see throughout the West, it can become so Plural, that nobody knows who's making the rules, and everybody ends up tribalizing -- as we observe.
The author suggests ways of Diversifying -- a code word for white replacement and the gradual erasure of Western civ. -- more successfully -- but I myself would rather retain the Supremacy of my own race and my own culture in my own country. Funny thing -- in all countries not white/western, this preference is understood as normal, natural and positive, but among westerners, it is considered criminal -- you have to go to the 'extreme right' before folks will admit to it. We are called Nazis. But whereas Hitler wanted to conquer the world and enslave or exterminate all non-Germans, 'Nazis' such as myself simply want not to be made strangers in our own homes.
In my view, every democracy needs to have a strong central identity -- a sense of who we are, what our values should be and where we want to go. A shared race, religion, language and history contribute to that but are not essential. BTW, this applies everywhere. In Zambia the Zambians should be Supreme and in Azerbaijan the Azeris should be Supreme.
Now, this doesn't advocate for Hate. On the contrary, Whitey has always been the most welcoming guy on the planet, but is simply says that we should not be so welcoming that we welcome those who would replace us, and those who would overturn the values that built our civilization. In short, assimilation is necessary and those who won't should be asked to go home.
Excellent post. My only critique is that you are much too gentle in your assessment of DEI programs — they are destructive, highly counterproductive to their own goals, and toxic in their effect on interpersonal relationships and national unity. The time when the US is again going to be seriously tested on the international stage is fast approaching, and when it does we are going to need all the national unity we can get. DEI has been tearing it down — and creating a huge, equally destructive backlash on the right — just when it’s going to be needed the most.
So the way to achieve a productive and diverse society would seem to be getting diverse groups working to achieve tangible and important goals. DEI programs as they are currently practiced would seem to do just the opposite. Perhaps we can learn from our military, which is certainly and currently one of the more diverse organizations on the planet, where survival is an important and tangible goal. To me this is, of course, an oversimplification while at the same time a blinding glimpse of the obvious.
DEI need to DIE. It is a divisive, destructive and illiberal construct backing a power grab by collectivist radicals who also desire to profit from it within the hive of their useless consulting practices and NGOs. It not only does not solve any of the problems it professes to target, it creates a much bigger mess of resulting from the erasing of merit as the primary hiring, promotion and reward factor.
DEI is the Shirky Principle on steroids.
Here is were we should be at this point in our fantastic social justice and civil right progress... everything should have shifted from race and other victim group identity advocacy to 100% other-group-blind economic class advocacy.
Today there is no material Institutional racism nor gender bias. Females in fact dominate much of the economy today. However, outcomes for certain races, for example blacks, remain problematic. Forcing society to give preference based on race has three key problems while failing to actually solve the problem of improved group outcomes.
1. It is racist itself, immoral, illiberal and likely unconstitutional.
2. It reduces organizational performance as criteria other than demonstrated performance merit are used to select and promote people within a role.
3. It negatively impacts those given preference as bypassing the development learning process they need to be successful long-term.
The focus instead should be to completely reform the public education system to focus on preparing each and every student for his next step toward the goal of an economically self-sufficient life, while also implementing robust incentives to bring in more good paying manufacturing, industrial, trade and service jobs into labor surplus areas.
The problem is that the type of people attempting to benefit from victim advocacy don't support these things. They don't support the school reform need because the public education system is a unionized public adult jobs program and the unions donate money and personnel time almost exclusively to the same Democrat party that pushes DEI... the unions don't support the type of changes required and the Democrats benefit from the control of the education system that plants ideological ideas of government dependency into the heads of young voters instead of teaching them self-sufficiency. On the business side, these advocates don't play in the sandbox and cannot make enough power and money from it.
So these same advocates for blacks are the biggest roadblock for fixing the problems in the black community. DEI, as well as reparations, is their desperate deflection from this truth because as the black community figures it out... their race-baiting power and money making industry is done.
Shirky principle—on steroids. . .I think that sums up the ways of many people who engage organizations in what they call anti-racism or DEI. As Upton Sinclair said: “It’s hard to get a man to understand something that his paycheck depends on him not understanding. [Or, at least, pretending to be oblivious.]
Most DEI work doesn’t work, and many who claim to want a particular outcome might feel they are getting what they desire until they are not.
Others have been working with organizations to produce results that managers and individual contributors benefit from in tangible and intangible ways.
If more DEI practitioners follow a path similar to what Dr. @Rachel Kleinfeld lays out in her article, organizations and institutions will benefit in myriad ways if those skill sets and mindsets are mindfully developed.
Good job. I see it the same. But I'm frustrated that there seems to be a lot of us who understand but can only comment. I think Persuasion needs to think about how to help us collaborate on ways to get the word out more simply -- as you are explaining it. Persuasion could help us make our voices heard in ways that Persuasion's philosophical essays don't -- I'm not opposing those, I just think there are other possibilities and lots of talent hidden in the subscriber community.
This is an excellent and thoughtful essay. Yet, can DEI be reformed? More importantly, should it be? I don’t think so. Anyone who has suffered through a DEI program understands the totalitarian nature of the movement. Glossaries are provided that redefine common words. DEI statements are required, thus compelling speech. Solzhenitsyn and Havel convinced me that totalitarians hold power by forcing citizens to repeat what they know to be lies. It weakens the will and makes resistance difficult.
The DEI movement seeks not to unite, but to divide. There is no pluralism. It does not celebrate differences. We need look no further than the capitalization of White and Black, which others have commented on.
Ideologues have long robbed people of European descent of their ethnic and cultural uniqueness. Somehow, the Irish, Portuguese, Germans, and Sicilians are indistinguishable. Try filling out a death certificate or hospital admissions paperwork. There will be six or seven types of Asian, numerous islanders, and so forth. I have never seen Basque, which I would prefer if forced.
The same is now true for African Americans with Black. In Florida, where I live, the unique ethnic heritage of African Americans is central to the civil-rights movement. The first NAACP chapter in my community was started by a Bahamian immigrant who chafed under the degrading treatment of “black folks” that dominated the culture. Just as with White, Black seeks to erase the cultural differences of African Americans. Haitians are lumped in with Jamaicans, and Africans. The term people-of-color is worse, since it only means anyone who is not white, the biggest and most nonsensical erasure of differences ever imagined.
I love living in an ethnically diverse community. My next-door neighbor is Chileno, not Latinx as anglophone DEI adherents would force upon him. Across the street, Argentinian, three doors down Cuban. We need to reject the totalitarians and the cultural imperialists of DEI.
This is the same old same old. Anybody who piously capitalizes "White" gives the game away. As long as the set of assumptions underlying "diversity training" start from "dominance" or "power," as long as certain people are identified as in need of "diversity training" because they themselves are alleged to lack "diversity" or to be insufficiently aware of their "dominance," as long as earnest warnings about devious folk determined to "turn back the clock" block any skepticism about the project, we might as well be honest and acknowledge that what is proposed here is a more subtle version of the same rigged game of "oppressed vs. oppressor." It's impossible to be too cynical. The game may change, but the rules will stay the same. I don't mean to say, either optimistically or pessimistically, that the "dominant" will stay "dominant." I mean to say that I confidently expect that in any system of "diversity training," any formal attempt to inculcate "pluralism," some people will get to insult other people with impunity, some people will get to have an identity of their own and others will have one assigned to them. That is what this sort of stuff is supposed to prevent. Instead it sets it in stone, even if its practitioners think that turning the stone upside down makes a righteous difference. How about stopping this stuff? How about letting people get on with it and sort themselves out? The society has changed enormously and is going to continue to change. Fine. Let's just live with it and stop fussing about whether everybody changes in the same way at the same time. If the devious folk are out there--I think they're overrated--so what? No society is perfect, and no change is complete.
Brilliantly written and spot on! I appreciate the depth and rigor that you put into this piece, thank you.
You state "While White men as a group remain at the top level of dominance in money and power in American society, many individual men are nowhere near that level." This is not true. Asians have higher median family incomes than any other ethnic group (whew I almost wrote "race.") As a white, straight, reasonably successful male, I get very weary of being called an oppressor and considered the enemy by PBS, the NYT and similar, well, Woke institutions. I think maybe the woke themselves need to be awakened to their own exorbitant privilege - that is: the profound good fortune to live their lives in the United States
I agree with pretty much everything you wrote, but I also have a lot of sympathy for Lucy T's position. Perhaps this is an intermediate position. First note that you point out
"But it sure looks as if DEI as it is currently being practiced is adding bricks to the very wall its proponents claim to want to knock down"
Agreed. But you need to take the next step. This is no accident. The higher the walls the more they can claim DEI is needed. Knock the walls down and they are out of a career with no real skill. To see this in spades, read Kendi and Peniel Joseph of respectability politics. Kendi goes so far as to call his parents ideas racist because they taught him to value hard work and education. Both of them sell the idea that no one in the ghetto should take the path they took (and escape).
Combine this backward motive with some knowledge of CRT's long-term program, which is to destroy capitalist culture so we can reach utopia, and you will end up very near Lucy T. Step 1 is to totally dismantle DEI and get those ideologues out of here. As you've shown we make progress quickly without them. Then some programs that simply encourage contact would seem fine. But don't try to reform DEI.
A favor. I don't doubt that Kendl said that, but if possible could you please tell me where and in which book. I would like to quote it.
Sure thing. “My parents followed Norton’s directive: They fed me the mantra that education and hard work would uplift me, just as it had uplifted them, and would, in the end, uplift all Black people. My parents, were susceptible to the racist idea that it was laziness that kept Black people down, so they paid more attention to chastising Black people than to Reagan’s policies.” page 27, Chapter 2, How 2 B an Antiracist. This view only comes to him after grad school, his PhD dissertation acknowledgments are over-the-top grateful (as they should be), but by the time he writes How to Be... they are insulting in their brevity.
Here’s how to fix DEI: kill it. Forever. Root and branch.
Stop perpetuating the myth. Stop keeping alive the zombie lie that America is a racist place.
Stop pretending the advantage doesn’t go THE OTHER WAY.
Stop pretending that 1/7 of our population doesn’t punch well above its weight in cultural awareness and triumphalism.
Stop the old, no longer true lie that America is stuck in some KKK hellish Jim Crow systemic racism trap that only Democrats can solve would we only keep voting them to power.
Stop the damaging binary identity awareness that creates equal response from whites (of course it does idiot) and makes all this worse every day.
Stop saying MLK Jr was delusional to think color blindness is the right way.
Stop excusing black men for abandoning their children and leaving their sons to be raised by gangs and fast drug money. And then blaming their resultant plight on phantom racism.
Stop making movies and hip hop records that glorify this under the illusion that you’re merely raising awareness.
In short - liberals have to forsake identity politics if any of this is to get better. You’re no longer capable or worthy leaders. You no longer have anything of value left to teach us or lead us with. Just go away until you figure this out and come back and apologize. Till then - your opinions no longer matter.
Thank you for writing this. I appreciate the thoughtful prescriptions for how to do better, the empathetic understanding of what DEI was meant to achieve (a more diverse, empathetic, inclusive society), and the importance evidence that current practices are undermining these goals. I think this article can be shared with existing DEI advocates and participants and persuade at least some of them that there is a much better way. I especially appreciate that you do provide some solutions and that this is about how to fix DEI - not destroy it. I will be thinking on Social Contact theory and looking for further reading. Thank you.
I’m surprised that this entire article failed to mention what under normal circumstances surely should be the greatest engine of diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of our history - a strong public school system, tax supported, with a cadre of well trained teachers.
One seldom hears these days about the ‘melting pot’ which, among other things, used to signify one of the major reasons for supporting a strong public school system - kids from all sorts of backgrounds spending time together learning the 3 R’s and whatever else was needed is exactly what the Democracy Doctor ordered.
Unfortunately our public school system, far from being the melting pot it ought to be has been turned into a social, political, and religious war zone in which everything BUT its capacity to bring kids from all sorts of backgrounds together in a controlled environment, learning with and about each other is being amplified. The history of this descent is long and ugly, going back at least as far as the Jim Crow era in the American south, the Supreme Court's utterly despicable decision in Plessy v Ferguson, and the hysterical conservative reaction to it’s overturning in Brown v Board.
The potential for reclaiming the power of such a system is now being further eroded by the whole ’school choice’ movement, which began following Brown v Board and its corollary, Engel v Vitale and has now become a vehicle for the further, state by state balkanization of our educational system.
I taught American history at the elementary level for over 40 years, and I can vouch for the fact that educating children is a far more complex and demanding process than most who have never stood in front of a classroom full of kids prefer to think it to be. Yet I cannot think of any issue more crucial to the maintenance of a pluralistic, democratic society than this.
There is no easy way to reclaim such a system, if indeed one ever actually existed. It is not just a matter of money spent or teacher training or subject matter or administrative skill or physical plant or any other single element of childhood education. It is a combination of all of the above and a good deal more besides. Yet to watch a really competent elementary school teacher run a diverse classroom for the benefit of all the kids in it, and make it look easy, something I’ve seen over and over again all throughout my career, is something every parent ought to see, even if they may not appreciate all the training, experience, sensitivity and subject excellent that went into it. For all the other issues upon which we seem to spend so much time and effort, this one should be at the forefront of our national goals.
The one thing this article got most right was the fact that talking about such things in meetings is fruitless and often counterproductive. I’ve sat through my share of them, and I know that to be true. The only way to understand what’s wrong with a lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion is to experience that lack in real time, to understand why such a lack ought to be anathema in this nation, the first in human history to be founded in large part on those three principles, that all people are created equal under the law, and damn well ought to have the chance to be educated along those lines.
> One seldom hears these days about the ‘melting pot’ which, among other things, used to signify one of the major reasons for supporting a strong public school system - kids from all sorts of backgrounds spending time together learning the 3 R’s and whatever else was needed is exactly what the Democracy Doctor ordered.
I'm always pleased so read something unwoke from you James. Heretical to advocate for the Melting Pot now -- is suggests a culture confident in itself and not actively working for its own dissolution. Yes, the public system -- promoting unity not Identity. Probably one of the essentials.
> ... is now being further eroded by the whole ’school choice’ movement
Two things: firstly the default assumption should be freedom, no? Secondly, people are only desperate to opt out because the public system is now devoted to woke indoctrination and the 2 R's have long since been declared part of Whiteness.
"Two things: firstly the default assumption should be freedom, no? Secondly, people are only desperate to opt out because the public system is now devoted to woke indoctrination and the 2 R's have long since been declared part of Whiteness.”
The issue of ‘woke' indoctrination in our public schools is always interesting to me. My response is generally, Okay in backing school choice, which form of indoctrination are you substituting for what you call ‘woke’? Christian? Making sure what the school turns out are clones of the parents sending their kids there? Making sure that those who are at school with my kid are like my kid in as many ways as possible? And how many public schools are you actually sufficiently familiar with to make the assumption that they are all dedicated to ‘woke’ indoctrination? Is ‘woke’ indoctrination actually more about exposing kids to the kinds of ideas they are going to hear about both inside and outside the school whether their parents want them to or not?
How much of the accusation that our public school system is dedicated to woke indoctrination is actually just because others say it is in the media we trust?
When it comes to education, I’m with Socrates. I want to take a close look at everyone who claims to be an expert in some area to see if they really are.
The funny thing about this whole DEI business is that this nation was founded at least partially as humanity’s first large scale experiment in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. If that isn’t a substantial part of “all men are created equal” I’m not sure what else it is.
The article makes it plain that formal DEI ‘excursions' are often overboard and counterproductive, and my own experience (which as a 40 year teacher has been extensive) has been that many of them are at best ineffective and at worst simply foolish. As I noted in my original post, sitting around talking the thing to death is mostly just incredibly boring.
My father had some notion of how to go about this. He demanded that I take summer jobs, often away from home during my teen years. I spent summers working construction and as a merchant seaman. And, not due to his urging, four years active duty in the US Army. All that taught me one hell of lot about human diversity, equity, and inclusion than all the meetings I could have attended.
> Okay in backing school choice, which form of indoctrination are you substituting for what you call ‘woke’? Christian?
Fair question. Yes, vaguely Christian in the sense that Western civ. is founded on Christian values. Many attempt to deny this but it is as transparently true as the fact that Muslim civilization is built around Islamic values and Chinese around Confucian. But non-denominational. In my school years we recited the Lord's Prayer and there was a baby Jesus in the Christmas decorations. But other than that, I don't recall any indoctrination in much besides the times tables. Needless to say, layered over this Christian foundation are the more explicitly 'taught' values of the Enlightenment and the scientific world view and yes, they occasionally conflict.
> Making sure what the school turns out are clones of the parents sending their kids there?
Hopefully not. The enlightenment and liberal/democratic values of freedom and open inquiry must prevail.
> Is ‘woke’ indoctrination actually more about exposing kids to the kinds of ideas ...
No. The kids are not 'exposed' they are indoctrinated into a religion that preaches eternal hatred between races and those who dissent are cancelled.
> just because others say it is in the media we trust?
This is a huge problem. But when the entire Right and the Center -- what's left of it -- and the moderate Left all agree that woke indoctrination is a bad thing -- and when samples of teaching materials are provided in evidence, then I'm pretty convinced.
> When it comes to education, I’m with Socrates.
Me too.
> this nation was founded at least partially as humanity’s first large scale experiment in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. If that isn’t a substantial part of “all men are created equal” I’m not sure what else it is
And that's the paradox of the thing. The more the citizenry agree on their fundamentals, the more freedom they can have because the centrifugal forces will not exceed the centripetal. Indeed all must be treated equally, but if, say, a Muslim fundamentalist demands Sharia law, we have a problem, don't we?
> All that taught me one hell of lot about human diversity, equity, and inclusion than all the meetings I could have attended.
Sure. Within broad limits DEI -- taken literally, not as a political slogan, is obviously a good thing. But the ship of state must pick a direction to sail in, and if half the crew want the ship to sail in the opposite direction there's going to be trouble. There is no such thing as a value neutral society. We will or we won't permit abortion. We will or we won't have the death penalty. Drugs will or won't be illegal. FGM will or won't be permitted. And so on. In Somalia they will make different choices than we will, and that's fine -- Somali's are Supreme in Somalia as they should be.
"No. The kids are not 'exposed' they are indoctrinated into a religion that preaches eternal hatred between races and those who dissent are cancelled.”
I remain curious as to how you know this to be true. What experience do you personally have that this is what is happening?
"There is no such thing as a value neutral society. We will or we won't permit abortion. We will or we won't have the death penalty. Drugs will or won't be illegal.”
Yet these things vary within states. You are certainly correct that there is no such thing as value neutral society. And if we were not a Republic with what amounts to 50 little partially independent entities, each demanding its own set of rights within the larger political entity which is the United States I’d say your statement is justified.
But we are in fact a collection of 50 semi-independent political entities. The entire Constitutional Convention was called because the Articles of Confederation were clearly not working as well as they were originally intended to work. How do you make a nation out of 13 political entities who jealously guard their prerogatives but realize that within the larger world they will be more able to exist independently if they make some attempt at some form of consolidation? The answer was the compromise that both made us a nation and at the same time ‘doomed’ us to perennial internal squabbling and, at times, what might seem utter contradiction.
The fact is that we both do and do not permit abortion. We both do and do not permit the death penalty. We both do and do not legalize one drug or another. So what will hold us together, if indeed we are to remain The United States of America? The answer; what seems an internal contradiction. That we can both do and do not have a collection of enumerated rights so long as we agree to do so. No other nation on earth was founded in such a way. Most before us were the result of years and sometimes centuries of agglutination, finally coalescing into a nation at some moment of conquest or agreement. We are the exception that may, in time prove the rule that human beings can in fact rule themselves from the bottom up even while heartily disagreeing on many issues. This was Madison’s concept. This was the nature of our great experiment.
I often find myself wishing that we had not begun as thirteen separate colonies huddled along the Atlantic seaboard in a world already populated by nation-states eternally at odds with each other over some damn thing or another. But we are what we are. And if we are to survive, there does have to be some organizing principle holding us together - your concept of fundamental principles. The central question is what they ought to be. The answer is that we learn to agree to disagree as long as we can do so without flying apart. We damn near did so once, and it could happen again. It may well be happening now. There are no guarantees.
If we fly apart, though, it will not be because we disagree on abortion or the death penalty or the legality of certain drugs, or any of the other things about which we disagree. It will be because we grow so determined to disagree with each other, regardless of the validity of the reasons we disagree that we choose not to maintain the nation. It will be because we amplify the concept of individual rights too far above the needs of the society as a whole. It will be because of our most ancient human weakness - that stubborn determination to separate ourselves into all sorts of groups based on every damn reason we can think of, real or imaginary, and then to demand that everyone else see things our way instead of amplifying what we share as human beings.
> I remain curious as to how you know this to be true. What experience do you personally have that this is what is happening?
I do have some direct experience but it would be tiresome to explain each incident in detail. As with most of what we believe to be true it's a compilation of countless little anecdotes, none of which constitute hard proof.
Stronger is my claim that since everyone not on the woke left -- including more moderate lefties -- agree it is happening and provide actual samples of lessons, then I take it as likely true. I also consider it true that on a certain January 6th a mob of Trumpists sacked the Capitol -- but I wasn't there and I can't prove that the whole thing wasn't made up by the evil Dems.
> The answer was the compromise that both made us a nation and at the same time ‘doomed’ us to perennial internal squabbling and, at times, what might seem utter contradiction.
Very well said. The contradiction is built-in. It can't be cured, it must be lived with. And IMHO the variability permits what one might call 'experimentation' -- the States can try different ideas and see what works. If this was done in a spirit of honest inquiry, rather than partisan stone-throwing, it could be very positive. "Hey Oregon, Idaho here, how's it goin' over there with pot legalization? We're thinking of doing the same, your advice?"
> The fact is that we both do and do not permit abortion.
Yeah, I put that badly. Of course there's variation between the States, and even within the body politic it's always a bell curve of responses to any moral or political question. But at the end of the day laws are written and they say what they say. In Afghanistan women are obliged to wear burkas. In France they are forbidden. I think you get me.
>The central question is what they ought to be. The answer is that we learn to agree to disagree as long as we can do so without flying apart.
Sure, and my central thesis is that the greater the agreement the less likely you are to fly apart. At least at the level of a maxim it's simple: the centripetal must exceed the centrifugal. I'd say that for most of modern Western history almost everyone agreed what an ideal society would look like, the disagreement between left and right was one of method -- the left favored bigger government, the right smaller, but a good life was basically Leave It To Beaver.
> We damn near did so once, and it could happen again.
And not a nice, civilized, uniformed war between gentlemen who went to West Point together fought on (excepting Sherman and a few sieges) empty fields. Nope, it would be a war with no front lines, between neighbors, and must inevitably dissolve into anarchy almost immediately. No Appomattox possible even in theory.
> ... it will not be because we disagree on abortion or the death penalty or the legality of certain drugs
Agreed. It will be because deeper world views are incompatible. The woke world view is to me as fundamentally wrong as saying that men can get pregnant or that 2+2=5.
> It will be because of our most ancient human weakness - that stubborn determination to separate ourselves into all sorts of groups
Right again. And that's why wokeness, with its central theme being the eternal division between the white Oppressor and the colored Victim, is utterly toxic to democracy. You couldn't craft a more perfectly bad idea if it was your overt intention to destroy democracy. It's so perfect that I suspect a conspiracy. Someone wants the West to die. Others want the left distracted from its natural focus on economics. They are working together.
"At least at the level of a maxim it's simple: the centripetal must exceed the centrifugal”
You do know that centrifugal force is a fiction, right? The real difference is between objects drawn inward through such forces as gravity and objects simply continuing along the original path of travel, not flying off into space.
"with its central theme being the eternal division between the white Oppressor and the colored Victim”
After 40 years of teaching history, I’ve never actually run into this theory in any kind of educational practice. Whether that is because I’ve spent it all in independent education or that none of my nephews or nieces, of whom there are now many in public school in several different parts of the east coast from Massachusetts to Georgia have never mentioned it I cannot say. However, the fact of our stubborn tendency to separate ourselves into all sorts of groups, regardless of the validity of those differences is a substantial reality. And racism is still at the core of much of it. Who is the oppressor and who the victim varies, but to deny that it exists in one form while accepting its existence in other forms seems an exercise in fantasy.
I am well old enough to remember the grainy faces of pure hatred etched on the mobs opposed to school integration in Montgomery, Little Rock, and other places or on the faces of those opposed to, say, the demand for equal rights represented by the march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge to assume that such ancient hatreds could be eradicated in one or two generations when it has persisted for millennia.
The current White Supremacist movement right here in the US would also seem to counter any argument that white oppression of colored races is somehow a figment of someone's fevered imagination. You may recall that a number of Republicans caught in moments of candor opposed Barack Obama’s presidency simply because of their feeling that a Black Man did not in any way belong in the White House.
The 1619 Project did rather overstate the facts, but not by as much as some on the right would have it. And Trump’s decision to downplay the evils of slavery in the Smithsonian’s collections is no individual fluke of character.
The vast majority of rich, powerful people are white men. The vast majority of white men are neither rich nor powerful. Know both facts, and don’t confuse them.
As others have said here, DEI cannot be reformed, it is racist to the core- and illegal in that it violates the Civil Rights Act and various Constitutional provisions as well - and needs to be ended. Period. No one should even think about "identifying" as anything, everyone is human. Period. Individuals can certainly have a cultural heritage they celebrate privately, that adds richness to the overall American culture when shared freely with all who are interested. Merit is the only criteria that should be considered for jobs, university admissions, etc. That said, many people of lower socioeconomic status - including individuals of all "identity" groups - need better educations and social support so that they can rise to the level that their abilities and inclinations allow. That means breaking the stranglehold of the teacher's unions and the crazy hard Left on the school systems so that we can get back to actually teaching children how to learn and how to think critically about whatever they will encounter in life. The public is very supportive of a merit-based system and hates the biased, rigged DEI based system for advancement.
I don't know how we are going to accomplish these things, if we can at all, but we need to head in this direction or we won't have a country in a few decades. Liberals may not like it, but the Trump administration is ripping open the DEI-industrial complex in universities and companies for all to see, and what is being exposed is very ugly. DEI isn't dead but it's running for cover and some kind of reform will probably happen if he keeps up the pressure, and the public continues to reject DEI politically.
Another observation, the DEI consultant industry is largely a grifter jobs program for otherwise unemployable "studies" majors who either should have majored in something else or not gone to college at all. We already have a large cohort of overeducated and unemployed self-styled elites composed of people who went to college and got degrees with few to no available jobs outside of government and DEI-infused NGOs. With the end of DEI programs and sharp cutbacks in government funding for NGOs, the problem will get worse and the affected young people will get very angry that they are not getting what they believe they deserve. Combine that with the fact that too many of these graduates are functionally illiterate and never learned critical thinking skills, they have pretty dismal employment prospects though they have been led to believe they should be elite leaders. Again, I don't know what society is going to do about a small but very vocal cohort of extremely disappointed and angry people. They might put Mamdani in the mayor's office in New York and if so we could find out....
The author assumes that all Good people must of course support Inclusion and Pluralism, the question then becomes how to make DEI more effective. And indeed, if that was one's goal, her suggestions are excellent. But I myself reject Pluralism because it is the road to anarchy and horror.
What holds a democracy together is that the centripetal forces holding it together are greater than the centrifugal forces that would tear it apart, this means that anything which increases 'Diversity' is automatically suspect, because however much the word has a nice flavor to it, Diversity is the opposite of unity and is thus a centripetal vector.
Mind, a society can become more centripetal than it needs to be -- it can become stagnant, xenophobic and authoritarian. But, as we see throughout the West, it can become so Plural, that nobody knows who's making the rules, and everybody ends up tribalizing -- as we observe.
The author suggests ways of Diversifying -- a code word for white replacement and the gradual erasure of Western civ. -- more successfully -- but I myself would rather retain the Supremacy of my own race and my own culture in my own country. Funny thing -- in all countries not white/western, this preference is understood as normal, natural and positive, but among westerners, it is considered criminal -- you have to go to the 'extreme right' before folks will admit to it. We are called Nazis. But whereas Hitler wanted to conquer the world and enslave or exterminate all non-Germans, 'Nazis' such as myself simply want not to be made strangers in our own homes.
In my view, every democracy needs to have a strong central identity -- a sense of who we are, what our values should be and where we want to go. A shared race, religion, language and history contribute to that but are not essential. BTW, this applies everywhere. In Zambia the Zambians should be Supreme and in Azerbaijan the Azeris should be Supreme.
Now, this doesn't advocate for Hate. On the contrary, Whitey has always been the most welcoming guy on the planet, but is simply says that we should not be so welcoming that we welcome those who would replace us, and those who would overturn the values that built our civilization. In short, assimilation is necessary and those who won't should be asked to go home.
Excellent post. My only critique is that you are much too gentle in your assessment of DEI programs — they are destructive, highly counterproductive to their own goals, and toxic in their effect on interpersonal relationships and national unity. The time when the US is again going to be seriously tested on the international stage is fast approaching, and when it does we are going to need all the national unity we can get. DEI has been tearing it down — and creating a huge, equally destructive backlash on the right — just when it’s going to be needed the most.
So the way to achieve a productive and diverse society would seem to be getting diverse groups working to achieve tangible and important goals. DEI programs as they are currently practiced would seem to do just the opposite. Perhaps we can learn from our military, which is certainly and currently one of the more diverse organizations on the planet, where survival is an important and tangible goal. To me this is, of course, an oversimplification while at the same time a blinding glimpse of the obvious.