Did DEI actually cause the recent crash of a plane and helicopter over the Potomac? No. Then why can President Trump score political points by claiming that DEI is at the root of such events? Do people believe him?
My friends and I do not believe him, but Trump gets away with such rhetoric because it’s true that DEI programs were out of control at all levels of government and in many corporations and non-profit organizations. How do I know this? I’ve had the privilege of meeting people whose careers were side-tracked because of DEI assumptions. I’ve had direct experience participating in DEI training with a non-profit that shocked me and brought me to my senses.
The notion of cultural appropriation somehow got tangled up with DEI jargon and one result was a decision that a white woman could not use a hip-hop video she produced to instruct college freshmen on how to use the campus library services. Bonkers. An entrepreneur was shut down for serving Asian noodles while white. Bonkers.
During the training I participated in, I learned that as a white person, I must let a person of color speak until she has said all that she wants to say. Why is that bad, you should ask. Of course it’s rude to interrupt people in a meeting. Let the person finish, for heaven’s sake. But what if the person who chairs the meeting is white? Can she interrupt the person of color in order to keep the meeting on track or enable others to speak? No, she cannot. I’m not sure what should happen if more than one person of color is present as we only ever had one in my training.
I also learned that Robin D’Angelo and Ibram X Kendi are gods. Thou shalt not challenge D’Angelos’s assertion that white people are fragile if they express discomfort with any of the new rules of the road such as let the POC talk until she has exhausted herself. Kendi asserts that any and all gaps in participation, income, achievement, etc. are evidence of racism, end of discussion. If Asians achieve higher scores than whites, it’s because they are white-adjacent, not because their families promote reading, writing, and arithmetic at home.
The fallout from this way of thinking are policies that work to the detriment of all. If schools find that fewer black and brown kids are taking advanced math classes, the solution is not to provide extra support to those are want to learn math yet struggle with it. The solution is to eliminate advanced math classes so that there is no visible disparity. If black students have lower scores on the tests that guide college entrance policies, just eliminate the tests. Base college acceptance on essays in which applicants can attest to their struggles with systemic racism and their efforts to achieve despite these barriers.
Policing, of course, has been the focus of DEI thinking for many years. We all know that police kill black men in disproportionate numbers and that this is a result of racism. Except that this bit of common knowledge is not true. If you are a black professor with actual evidence that this is not true, and if you publish this information, your funding will be cut, your programs suspended, and your ability to teach will be restricted. The good news is that you will survive this punishment and that the administrator who inflicted these punishments will herself be demoted.
People who are policing the police focus on statistics such as the number of calls to certain neighborhoods and the number of interactions with police tallied by race. A “good government” organization will accuse police of racism if data show that police are called to neighborhoods with more people of color more often than to predominately white neighborhoods. That organization will adopt a policy calling for elimination of disproportional policing in which POC neighborhoods are surveilled more than others. A citizen who asserts that police might be called to some neighborhoods more than others because more crime occurs in those neighborhoods will be shut down.
People my age remember when affirmative action was necessary. It began during an era when discrimination on the basis of race was common and visible. The good old boys controlled hiring in companies, departments, and organizations large and small. I got my first job because my dad knew a guy who was able to pull my application out of a stack of applications and tell someone to hire me. The original plan of affirmative action was to eliminate actions such as that and to solicit applications from many more sources on the assumption that qualified applicants of all colors were out there, We just needed to find them, encourage them to apply for jobs they were qualified for, and hire more of them.
In recent years, however, as disparities have persisted in many fields, HR departments began to tighten the scews and insist on hiring fewer white men and more people of color even if that meant lowering standards. I totally get that “standards” are not equally relevant to the task at hand. It’s not necessarily true that a person with a straight A record is the best person for a certain job. Yes, people skills, motivation, and willingness to try a new approach might be more valuable to a company than an academic record. I get that. I get that I should not have had the privilege of getting my application pulled from a stack of equally qualified applicants just because my dad knew a guy. I really do want employment to be based on fair standards and unbiased screening.
But. But young white males cannot be put at the bottom of the pile because they are white and male. Where will that get us? And: white women should be able to participate in a group that is mostly white women. Yes. DEI has gone too far. It absolutely needs to change. Perhaps it needs to be trashed completely. Can agencies and companies and organizations hire and promote people responsibly without the DEI police? I like to think so. I wish DEI programs had not bought into Kendi’s assertion that all disparities are due to racism. (Does anyone really believe that professional sports teams should be racially balanced? Good grief.)
The backlash against DEI is due, in my humble opinion, to the irrational zealotry of recent years. Does that mean that blind air traffic controllers are responsible for the recent crash? No. But people who are legally blind often have some sight and can do normal things with the right technology. We should not assume they can’t do a certain job. If they apply, interview them. Find out what supports they need. Do the same with anyone with a disability. Find out what they can do. Talk to them! Give them a chance.
I wish Trump were not blaming DEI for everything. He’s just a jerk when behaves this way. I hate that crowds of his supporters cheer him on. And yet: DEI programs absolutely need to change.
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