President Trump has made clear that he aims to trump Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) schemes. Democrats aim to trump him and keep them alive. And while the president will very likely win the current battle, in the federal political realm, what of the war? Is this just a matter of killing programs?
Or is it really, at bottom, a matter of killing a spirit— an idea?
I wrote a piece in 2008, which was republished in a college reference textbook, titled “Cultural Affirmative Action.” It began:
In a way, I prefer the old, overt affirmative action. While it was government-sanctioned discrimination, at least it was, in some measure, more honest than our cultural affirmative action. There is such a thing. It’s when people in the market and media privilege others — sometimes unconsciously — based upon the latter’s identification with a “victim group.”
I then continued, “Probably a majority of Americans in some degree or other practice cultural affirmative action.”
Now, this is relevant because while the label “DEI” is new, the product it identifies is more than half a century old. Oh, sure, it has been tweaked; it may implicitly be marketed with “New and Improved!” But it is merely a rebranding of, and intensification of, affirmative action. And make no mistake, its predicates are still embedded in our culture.
In other words, purging “DEI programs” from government may be relatively easy, at least while Trump wields power. Purging the DEI spirit from the culture, however, requires conversion of minds and hearts.
The Current Battle
Even insofar as the current battle goes, the cultural devolutionaries aren’t giving up their legalized-discrimination scheme without a fight. And legalized discrimination is at issue. Illustrating the point is a comment Los Angeles Fire Department Deputy Chief Kristine Larson has become notorious for having made.
“You want to see somebody that responds to your house, your emergency, whether it’s a medical call or a fire call, that looks like you,” she stated in a video that went viral. Now, imagine this had been said by a southern sheriff, comedian-cum-commentator Bill Maher recently said in response. It would be roundly condemned as “racist.”
But Larson’s comment was classic DEI. “Equity,” do note, is not synonymous with “equality” (problematic itself). Rather, it is, as Kamala Harris once explained in a campaign ad, giving certain people a head start in a race so that “everyone ends up in the same place.” (This not only is impossible, but isn’t what Harris actually wanted. She desired to be above everyone else: the world’s most powerful person.) DEI is communism — with racial/ethnic/sexual group-identity warfare replacing class warfare.
Again, though, this hasn’t deterred DEI’s defenders. As USA Today reported Monday:
Ahead of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion measures in the federal government, state lawmakers are raising their voices in defense of DEI.
More than 30 state elected Democratic officials from around the country signed a letter to Trump, pledging to protect DEI. State legislatures have been ground zero for anti-DEI attacks.
“Anti-DEI rhetoric and policy goals are dangerous, destructive, and discriminatory. Ultimately, they erect barriers to our American dreams,” the open letter obtained by USA TODAY said.
DIE, DIE, DEI
Yet this appeal won’t likely save “DEI.” As USA Today also informs:
The anti-DEI campaign is expected to gain more ground now that it is at the center of the president’s economic and cultural agenda.
“Florida, Texas and other states have already abolished DEI. Private companies, such as Meta, are following suit,” Christopher Rufo, a DEI critic and a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning think tank Manhattan Institute, told USA TODAY. “The time is now.”
Really, though, I should’ve written that the Democrats’ effort won’t save DEI in name. If we don’t want, however, what was “affirmative action/quotas” and became “DEI” to live on under a different guise, we must realize that it’s as much a symptom as a cause.
The Underlying Disease
Let’s try a thought exercise. Imagine we believe that all groups are the same in terms of worldly inclinations and capacities — equal, in other words. A corollary of this is that they should perform equally across endeavors. And if they don’t?
Well, our proposition holds that the disparities couldn’t be due to inherent differences (whether genetically or culturally determined). Therefore, the explanation must lie in external factors such as discrimination and “white supremacy baked into the culture.” It then follows, too, that to remedy this, you must address those external factors — such as discrimination and “white norms.” Ergo, DEI-like social engineering.
And we will seek “remedy” if our group-capacity-equality supposition is accompanied by a group-outcome-equality imperative. And in our case, it is.
Where’s the Equality?
In reality, though, “equality” is not a thing of this world. Just consider nature. Some species can dominate others or are more adaptable; thus is the rat a pest and the dodo extinct. (And, in fact, the rat helped drive the dodo to extinction.) Even within species, some members are hardier, smarter, faster, or stronger than others. There are alphas and betas, with a silverback gorilla running his troop and a dominant lion leading his pride. And different breeds of dogs have different characteristic traits, with some being more intelligent than others.
Ironically, though, while the Left insists that “man is just another animal,” it also implies that he is, somehow, the one exception to the natural-world inequality norm. But history and data say otherwise.
In fact, there’s never been a time or place in which different groups were equally, or even proportionally, represented across all endeavors. For example, as the late Professor Walter E. Williams wrote in 2019, despite being just two percent of the world’s population,
Jews have been awarded 40% of the Nobel Prizes in economics, 30% of those in medicine, 25% in physics, 20% in chemistry, 15% in literature and 10% of the Nobel Peace Prizes.
Moreover, the NFL is 100 percent male and the NBA more than 70 percent black. Virtually all nurses are female and most engineers male. And 92 percent of workplace deaths involve men. Are these disparities “unjust”?
Such group differences manifest themselves the world over, too (e.g., Chinese’s dominance in Malaysia). As to why, Williams also wrote that only “an idiot” would blame these disparities on unjust discrimination. They are better explained by way of differences in ability and inclination.
Shaking a Fist at the Heavens
Obviously, embracing unreality — such as insisting on viewing as equal a humanity characterized by innate inequality — will lead to problems. This said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality,” observed famed architect Buckminster Fuller. “To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” In equality dogma’s case, however, we don’t need a new model but the resurrection of a timeless one: virtue.
That is, you don’t avoid unjust discrimination because it violates some mythical “equality” notion. You reject it because it violates the virtues of Justice, Charity, Kindness, and Prudence.
Only getting back to moral reality can save us from unreality like equality dogma and having to play whack-a-mole with its demon children, such as what we now call “DEI.” Only treating the cause eliminates the symptoms — for good.
