Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are Good- But "DEI" is Mostly Poison

Two Things Can Be True

I apologize - there is too much to discuss here for one column, and I want to keep each to a manageable read. Part 2 (final) will be next week.

Two Things Can Be True, at least from my perspective:

• Improving our diversity, equity, and inclusion are excellent goals

• What is currently labeled “DEI” is mostly bad

When I served in the Georgia House there were certain bills that were almost impossible to vote against because of their subjects, even if there were deep flaws in the legal language. How can you vote against “children”, “victims of sex trafficking”, or “veterans”? Of course most of these bills were fine, but it was a powerful back door to get your way by shutting off most debate. Don’t look behind the curtain. Just push the green button and move on.

The same “let’s shutoff debate before we start” phenomenon is present with DEI. Who is fundamentally against Diversity? Equity? Inclusion? Thomas Jefferson famously wrote “All men are created equal” which hits a bit on all three. But DEI as practiced broadly in education, government, and corporate America is more often than not a Trojan Horse for radical views from the Left. However, debate is mostly suppressed about whether the current thing labeled “DEI” is good or not. Therefore, the Trojan Horse gets welcomed in the door and if you even try to look inside you may be canceled or labeled racist/etc. The CEO or college president who pushes back on the details is taking a massive risk.

From the movie “Troy”

It is easy to get into an unproductive rathole arguing about definitions in this area, which is also a way ivory tower academics rig the game. But for D, E, and I, let’s use the very simple man on the street basics:

• Diversity - having all of the same thing is not ideal, it helps to have different perspectives, approaches, backgrounds

• Equity - things should be fair

• Inclusion - people should not be left out for arbitrary or bad reasons

I embrace all of these, as I imagine the vast majority of Americans do.

Speaking of definitions - spoiler alert - I admit that I am also guilty of some “slight of hand” in definitions which I will admit to at the end of Part 2. So stay tuned after the commercial break! (Maybe I should be a local TV anchor with that tease).

Before we get rolling with the unhelpful side of DEI, it is critically important to acknowledge that this subject can’t help but get intermingled with racism / homophobia and its legacy in the USA. This legacy is brutal and embarrassing to our country today. As a child growing up in Alabama in the 70s and 80s, racism was all around me. I went to court ordered integrated schools, where I was in the white minority for junior high and high school. In that era if you were gay you told no one, in fact the first “out of the closet” gay person I met was in college.

With that background, many argue that DEI is just the latest and best method to address these historical wrongs. They also tout it as the way to help on the D, E, and I defintions above. As practiced, it is not. Let me highlight the first two of the big five ways where it instead brings poison to our culture.

Where DEI Gets It Wrong

Poison #1 - Divisive Ideology

DEI departments often generate “training” that is mandatory. I have many friends in the corporate world who were told in DEI training that they should feel guilty for being white. They also were told they were the beneficiaries of white privilege and should orient their lives to make up for that.

This is even worse in higher education, where many schools large DEI departments hitch their wagons onto belief in “white supremacy culture” which is used carte blanche as a no reasoning required excuse for whatever “remedy” is wanted. K12 is not immune either. Web searches will give you plenty of easy examples, but let’s pick on math. You would think math would be the most objective subject around and not have to hassle too much with DEI. Here is an example at an education conference where they say “When are we going to admit that many ‘best practices’ in mathematics education create toxic spaces for historically marginalized students and are violent towards them?”

Let me as an aside push back hard against the simplistic white privilege / supremacy narrative that has been baked into many DEI programs. I of course recognize on one hand that on the whole white people have clearly had it much easier over the course of our American history. However, it is far from universal over both individuals and time, and is a flawed way to view the world. I am a long time foster parent and we have kept all races of kids. In that capacity I have cared for many poor white kids from physically abusive parents, sleeping on the rug in a no-AC trailer, not having food, parents on meth, etc. Exactly what is the white privilege growing up like that? Are they better off than kids of LeBron James or Barack Obama?

None of the ideology above is needed to accomplish the goals. Society can pursue the righteous goals of adding to our diversity, and being more equitable, fair and inclusive, all without centering the approach on these very divisive and frankly radical Leftist viewpoints being baked into the cake.

Poison #2 - Forced Speech

The DEI movement has brought in something that should be terrifying in a freedom based country like the US - forced speech. Again there are innumerable examples on the web.

• University of Minnesota medical students have to swear to DEI talking points in their oath.

• Campuses everywhere are forcing faculty or aspiring faculty to publish diversity statements. Here is the rubric to score the one at UC-Santa Clara. Texas Tech biological hard science roles were also tanked by DEI statement scrutiny

• In the business world, if you don’t show the world your diversity statement or goals, there is massive pushback from Twitter / employee loud “mobs”. These recently have also included “land acknowledgement statements” about apologies for having the land that used to belong to tribe X. As another aside… It was undeniably wrong what the US did to the natives during its expansion However, there is some naivete in these statements. Tribe X may have fought with tribe Y and Z back and forth over key land for the centuries before the Europeans arrived. The “original” inhabitants may be lost to history. Lewis and Clark spent significant time their seminal journey talking to tribes who wanted to buy weapons to push back their rivals.

• Some of the corporate DEI training mentioned above require the participants to answer questions like “how can you do better at recognizing your white privilege, etc.”

• Many DEI programs say that silence is not acceptable. You must be vocal and active in pursuit of the goals. “Silence is violence” is associated with this area.

• Some DEI departments will sanction people for misusing pronouns. The English language and rules for plural words and pronouns taught for generations now may be a firing offense. You must speak how we tell you to.

Some people don’t even agree even with the vanilla D, E, and I goals. There are other people like me that don’t agree with the DEI industry and the full white guilt narrative. But you might be forced to agree, sign a pledge, make a statement, use particular pronouns, etc. Is that a good thing? To be forced to believe and even publicly agree? This sounds much more like a dystopian state.

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Next week, we will discuss the devaluation of quality, the loss of public confidence, and the legacy of the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Then we will wrap it up with my thoughts on better ways to pursue Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion without drinking the DEI poison.