DEI Supporters Endorse Racial Discrimination

‘When does he bring back segregated water fountains?” So asked John Harwood, formerly of the New York Times, NBC, CNN, and elsewhere, when informed that President Trump had decided to shut down the federal government’s sprawling archipelago of DEI initiatives. Through the screen, one could almost feel the self-satisfaction. Tweet sent. Box ticked. Virtuous credentials reacquired for the week.

That sort of reaction to criticisms of DEI or affirmative action is typical within a certain corner of elite culture. Nevertheless, it is extremely silly — akin in its triteness and naïvety to that of those who believe the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea must be a democratic people’s republic because those words are included in its name. Certainly, in a vacuum, “diversity” is a nice enough word. So, too, “equality” and “inclusion.” But, as in Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Peace deals with war and the Ministry of Truth with lies, what matters more than the labels is what those who wield them ultimately wish to do with the power they seek. And what those people have done, lo these many years, is establish a network of vicious, illiberal, harshly ideological institutions, whose sole purpose has been to bastardize the quotidian language of the American republic and to impress the warped results into the service of a narrow, intolerant, and censorious form of political progressivism. In practice, diversity, equity, and inclusion has not been diverse, equitable, or inclusive, but uniform, prejudiced, and clannish. Worse still, thanks to its unquenchable obsession with immutable characteristics, it has taken America further away from — not closer to — the core ideas adumbrated in the Declaration of Independence. It is, I will grant, unlikely that any of the architects of DEI desire to restore “segregated water fountains.” And yet, as a matter of unlovely habit, they have proved far more likely to defend segregating people by race than have their classically liberal critics. For their apologists to accuse those who wish to dismantle DEI and affirmative action of being obsessed with dividing people into groups is like accusing Carrie Nation of being a lush: It is about as wrong as one can possibly get before one falls off the edge of the map. Segregation? Sorry, buddy, but that’s the other guys’ jam.

About the Author

Charles C. W. Cooke

Charles C. W. Cooke is a senior editor at National Review and the host of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast.

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‘When does he bring back segregated water fountains?” So asked John Harwood, formerly of the New York Times, NBC, CNN, and elsewhere, when informed that President Trump had decided to shut down the federal government’s sprawling archipelago of DEI initiatives. Through the screen, one could almost feel the self-satisfaction. Tweet sent. Box ticked. Virtuous credentials reacquired for the week.

That sort of reaction to criticisms of DEI or affirmative action is typical within a certain corner of elite culture. Nevertheless, it is extremely silly — akin in its triteness and naïvety to that of those who believe the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea must be a democratic people’s republic because those words are included in its name. Certainly, in a vacuum, “diversity” is a nice enough word. So, too, “equality” and “inclusion.” But, as in Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Peace deals with war and the Ministry of Truth with lies, what matters more than the labels is what those who wield them ultimately wish to do with the power they seek. And what those people have done, lo these many years, is establish a network of vicious, illiberal, harshly ideological institutions, whose sole purpose has been to bastardize the quotidian language of the American republic and to impress the warped results into the service of a narrow, intolerant, and censorious form of political progressivism. In practice, diversity, equity, and inclusion has not been diverse, equitable, or inclusive, but uniform, prejudiced, and clannish. Worse still, thanks to its unquenchable obsession with immutable characteristics, it has taken America further away from — not closer to — the core ideas adumbrated in the Declaration of Independence. It is, I will grant, unlikely that any of the architects of DEI desire to restore “segregated water fountains.” And yet, as a matter of unlovely habit, they have proved far more likely to defend segregating people by race than have their classically liberal critics. For their apologists to accuse those who wish to dismantle DEI and affirmative action of being obsessed with dividing people into groups is like accusing Carrie Nation of being a lush: It is about as wrong as one can possibly get before one falls off the edge of the map. Segregation? Sorry, buddy, but that’s the other guys’ jam.