Just two weeks ago I warned, to echo Mark Twain, that rumors of DEI’s death are greatly exaggerated. While “the label ‘DEI’ is new, the product it identifies is more than half a century old,” I stated. … And make no mistake, its predicates are still embedded in our culture.”
For this reason, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) will “live on under a different guise,” I later added. For “it’s as much a symptom as a cause.” This brings us to a headline the New York Post ran just this weekend.
“No ‘death’ for diversity,” it reads: “How DEI is being rebranded — not disbanded.”
Well, that didn’t take long.
In fact, perhaps the social-engineering leviathan deserves credit. It turns out that by the time I’d written my piece, January 21, DEI had already been busy shape-shifting.
The Thing
As the Post reports:
McDonald’s, for instance, has not abandoned its DEI agenda — despite declarations to the contrary. On Jan. 6, the fast-food giant announced it was “evolving” its diversity team into the “Global Inclusion Team,” claiming the name change was “more fitting for McDonald’s in light of our inclusion value and better aligns with this team’s work.”
The Post then points out that Mickey D’s release of its message on J6 was by design. It knew most news-cycle oxygen would be sucked up by stories about the anniversary of the Capitol insurrection that wasn’t. So it was a good time to announce the company’s continued insurrection against sanity.
The paper then mentions a few more corporate offenders, writing:
[Educational technology company] Duolingo continues to publish pieces on its blog aimed at promoting diversity in education, while Starbucks’ website now proudly dedicates itself to “Inclusion, Diversity & Belonging.”
JetBlue, despite those filings [in which it confessed that DEI was a business risk], is also still prominently promoting DEI initiatives on its website.
The Post points out the obvious: This is all about sleight of hand. It’s as with that deadly, shape-shifting alien in the film The Thing. You think you’ve killed it after discovering, the hard way, it was masquerading as one of your loyal husky dogs. Then you find out, an even harder way, that it actually had just taken the form of your once trustworthy buddy sitting next to you.
From a Planet Not Far Enough Away
Of course, also ahead of the rebranding curve is that bizarre universe in which the alien was spawned: academia. As the Post also informs:
Louisiana State University’s “Division of Inclusion, Civil Rights and Title IX” recently morphed into the “Division of Engagement, Civil Rights and Title IX.”
… At the University of Oklahoma, meanwhile, the diversity office now operates as the “Division of Access and Opportunity.” The diversity czar at Kennesaw State University in Georgia now flaunts the inflated title “vice president of organizational effectiveness, leadership development and inclusive excellence.”
Utah Valley University’s “Office of Inclusion and Diversity” has morphed into the “Office of Institutional Engagement and Effectiveness.” Even MIT still plays the DEI game. Admissions essays now ask students to describe efforts to make spaces “inclusive and diverse,” despite banning similar statements for incoming faculty last spring.
One issue is that “DEI,” or whatever it goes by, is entrenched big business. There’s a whole academia DEI infrastructure, in fact, funded to the tune of literally billions a year. As an example, “The University of Michigan employs 163 people on their DEI ‘work’ (a full report here),” Accuracy in Media told us in 2023. “That’s why the head of that work gets $431,000 a year — more staff means more importance to a manager.”
And, unfortunately, such initiatives are an exception to the age-old law, “It’s easier to destroy than create.” So this infrastructure isn’t dismantled; the administrators aren’t fired. It’s far simpler “to hand out new job titles and shuffle them into offices with new names,” the Post writes.
Government Is Part of the Problem — of Course!
Not surprisingly, government encourages — and sometimes enforces — the DEI obsession. For instance, just consider that among the states with laws relating to corporate-board “diversity” are Illinois, New York, and Washington. This affects companies headquartered in those states. Now consider the companies the Post cited for not disbanding DEI, but rebranding it. McDonald’s is headquartered in Illinois, JetBlue in New York, and Starbucks in Washington. Uncanny?
Oh, Duolingo is in Pennsylvania, which merely “encourages” such diversity.
(Note: The California “Women on Boards” law was struck down by a judge in 2022 and is currently on hold.)
As for remedies, the Post has recommendations. President Trump could request anti-DEI legislation from Congress (likely unconstitutional, though), as opposed to just using executive orders. For the latter can be easily overturned by a future president. Laws prohibiting federal agencies and contractors from embracing DEI training, under any guise, could also be drafted. Then, too, academia can be federally defunded if it insists that it will die with its DEI boots on.
The Post also suggests a possible DOGE-like DEI entity that could monitor compliance nationwide. Yet, again, some of these recommendations may be unconstitutional. Under our system, states have broad powers — including the power to act stupidly if their people will enable it via their votes.
This brings us to the deeper issue — the DEI “mentality” embedded in our culture. As I explained two weeks back, not much may change until we shed destructive norms such as equality dogma and the lie of diversity. For we can’t be one kind of people but have another kind of culture and government. That is to say, we can’t drain the governmental swamp in D.C. without draining the philosophical swamp in our minds.
