Post by nu5ncbigred on Aug 8, 2025 11:58:58 GMT -5
Why DEI was already dying
Victor Davis Hanson
AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall
President Donald Trump's executive orders banning Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI)-related racial and gender preferencing have ostensibly doomed the DEI industry.
But DEI was already on its last legs. Half of all Americans no longer approve of racial, ethnic, or gender preferences. DEI had enjoyed a surge following the death of George Floyd and the subsequent 120 days of nonstop rioting, arson, assaults, killings, and attacks on law enforcement during the summer of 2020.
In those chaotic years, DEI was seen as the answer to racial tensions. DEI had insidiously replaced the old notion of affirmative action -- a 1960s-era government remedy for historical prejudices against black Americans, from the legacy of slavery to Jim Crow segregation.
But during the Obama era, "diversity" superseded affirmative action by offering preferences to many groups well beyond black Americans. Quite abruptly, Americans began talking in Marxist binaries. On one side were the supposed 65-70 percent white majority "oppressors" and "victimizers" -- often stereotyped as exuding "white privilege," "white supremacy," or even "white rage."
They were juxtaposed to the 25-30% of "diverse" Americans, the so-called "oppressed" and "victimized." Yet almost immediately, contradictions and hypocrisies undermined DEI.
First, how does one define "diverse" in an increasingly multiracial, intermarried, assimilated, and integrated society?
DNA badges?
The old one-drop rule of the antebellum South?
Superficial appearance? To establish racial or ethnic proof of being one-sixteenth, one-fourth, or one-half "non-white," employers, corporations, and universities would have to become racially obsessed genealogists.
Yet refusing to become racial auditors also would allow racial and ethnic fraudsters -- like Senator Elizabeth Warren and would-be new mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani -- to go unchecked. Warren falsely claimed Native American heritage to leverage a Harvard professorship. Mamdani, an immigrant son of wealthy Indian immigrants from Uganda, tried to game his way into college by claiming he was an African-American.
Second, in 21st-century America, class became increasingly divergent from race. Mamdani, who promised to tax "affluent" and "whiter" neighborhoods at higher rates, is himself the child of Indian immigrants, the most affluent ethnic group in America.
Why would the children of Barack Obama, Joy Reid, or LeBron James need any special preferences, given the multimillionaire status of their parents?
In other words, one's superficial appearance no longer necessarily determines one's income or wealth, nor defines their "privilege" or lack thereof.
Third, DEI is often tied to questions of "reparations." The current white majority supposedly owes other particular groups financial or entitlement compensation for the sins of the past.
Yet in today's multiracial and multiethnic society, in which over 50 million residents were not born in the U.S. and many have only recently arrived, what are the particular historical or past grievances that would earn anyone special treatment? What injustices can recent arrivals from southern Mexico, South Korea, or Chad claim, as they would know little about, and have experienced firsthand nothing prior from Americans, the United States, or its history?
Is the DEI logic that when a Guatemalan steps one foot across the southern border, she is suddenly classified as a victim of white oppression and therefore entitled to preferences in hiring or employment as someone diverse or victimized?
Fourth, does the word "minority" still carry any currency?….
Read more:
townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2025/08/08/why-dei-was-already-dying-n2661555
Victor Davis Hanson
AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall
President Donald Trump's executive orders banning Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI)-related racial and gender preferencing have ostensibly doomed the DEI industry.
But DEI was already on its last legs. Half of all Americans no longer approve of racial, ethnic, or gender preferences. DEI had enjoyed a surge following the death of George Floyd and the subsequent 120 days of nonstop rioting, arson, assaults, killings, and attacks on law enforcement during the summer of 2020.
In those chaotic years, DEI was seen as the answer to racial tensions. DEI had insidiously replaced the old notion of affirmative action -- a 1960s-era government remedy for historical prejudices against black Americans, from the legacy of slavery to Jim Crow segregation.
But during the Obama era, "diversity" superseded affirmative action by offering preferences to many groups well beyond black Americans. Quite abruptly, Americans began talking in Marxist binaries. On one side were the supposed 65-70 percent white majority "oppressors" and "victimizers" -- often stereotyped as exuding "white privilege," "white supremacy," or even "white rage."
They were juxtaposed to the 25-30% of "diverse" Americans, the so-called "oppressed" and "victimized." Yet almost immediately, contradictions and hypocrisies undermined DEI.
First, how does one define "diverse" in an increasingly multiracial, intermarried, assimilated, and integrated society?
DNA badges?
The old one-drop rule of the antebellum South?
Superficial appearance? To establish racial or ethnic proof of being one-sixteenth, one-fourth, or one-half "non-white," employers, corporations, and universities would have to become racially obsessed genealogists.
Yet refusing to become racial auditors also would allow racial and ethnic fraudsters -- like Senator Elizabeth Warren and would-be new mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani -- to go unchecked. Warren falsely claimed Native American heritage to leverage a Harvard professorship. Mamdani, an immigrant son of wealthy Indian immigrants from Uganda, tried to game his way into college by claiming he was an African-American.
Second, in 21st-century America, class became increasingly divergent from race. Mamdani, who promised to tax "affluent" and "whiter" neighborhoods at higher rates, is himself the child of Indian immigrants, the most affluent ethnic group in America.
Why would the children of Barack Obama, Joy Reid, or LeBron James need any special preferences, given the multimillionaire status of their parents?
In other words, one's superficial appearance no longer necessarily determines one's income or wealth, nor defines their "privilege" or lack thereof.
Third, DEI is often tied to questions of "reparations." The current white majority supposedly owes other particular groups financial or entitlement compensation for the sins of the past.
Yet in today's multiracial and multiethnic society, in which over 50 million residents were not born in the U.S. and many have only recently arrived, what are the particular historical or past grievances that would earn anyone special treatment? What injustices can recent arrivals from southern Mexico, South Korea, or Chad claim, as they would know little about, and have experienced firsthand nothing prior from Americans, the United States, or its history?
Is the DEI logic that when a Guatemalan steps one foot across the southern border, she is suddenly classified as a victim of white oppression and therefore entitled to preferences in hiring or employment as someone diverse or victimized?
Fourth, does the word "minority" still carry any currency?….
Read more:
townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2025/08/08/why-dei-was-already-dying-n2661555
