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Mark Cuban gets tripped up in DEI quagmire after falling down Rabbit Hole: ‘Who paid you?’

January 29, 2024 | | Print Article

Former Dallas Mavericks owner and “Shark Tank” celebrity Mark Cuban got into a lengthy debate about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies in an exchange on X that left the businessman branded as a “racist.”

It began when Cuban posted an article over the weekend from NBC News titled, “How right-wing influencers turned airplanes and airports into culture war battlegrounds.”

“The conservative media ecosystem is piggybacking on Americans’ fascination with air travel to stir up opposition to corporate diversity programs, an effort that may raise the salience of culture war issues at the start of the 2024 election year even as their claims are largely based on false or misleading information,” NBC’s David Ingram wrote.

“IYKYK,” Cuban wrote, using the “cool guy” shorthand for “if you know, you know.”

A popular account that goes by the handle “The Rabbit Hole” (TRH) replied by calling out Cuban’s history of “weak” defenses of DEI.

“When shown proof of how DEI discriminates, you wrote it off by stating private entities can do whatever they want,” TRH noted. “Since then the goalposts have repeatedly been shifted. Given the weak nature of your defenses of DEI, I suspect there is no real rebuttal to the criticisms myself and others have raised. The only hope is to keep moving the goalposts and pretending the evidence doesn’t exist. The alternative would be doing the brave thing of acknowledging you were wrong – although this would do a lot of good, it does not seem you’ve arrived at this destination yet.”


Over the next several hours, the two went back and forth.

“Should candidate selection, at any level, consider non-merit based criteria like race and sex?” asked TRH.

Cuban argued that DEI doesn’t necessarily mean the hiring isn’t merit based.

“When you show companies that want to increase the number of minorities that apply for jobs by 20, 50, 27000000 percent, pick any number , it’s not a hiring quota,” he said. “It’s a goal to expand the diversity of applicants, which may or may not lead to more hirings of minorities.”

“Is it possible that if the number of diverse candidates increases, and more minorities are hired than non, it’s possible that those minorities are MORE qualified for those positions and the company is a better company for hiring the most qualified candidates that happen to be minorities?” he asked.

“My argument is not minorities can’t be more qualified – Several Asian groups, as one example, have achieved greater levels of success in the West than the White majority (see second attached image),” TRH replied. “My argument has been, and remains, demographics should not be a factor.”

“I don’t want Whites benefitting from demographic privilege and I don’t want minorities benefitting from demographic privilege,” it said. “Colorblind meritocracy should be the goal.”

“You look at DEI programs as a ‘trigger’ for what you mistakenly believe are quotas,” replied Cuban. “How would you identify the companies that give preference to white candidates when it’s [sic] comes to recruiting and hiring?”

“The folly of these arguments is that you are attempting to decouple a demographic based ideology (DEI) from the demographic based policies that it inevitably ends up enacting,” TRH shot back.

“Even if we accept your euphemism of ‘expanding the candidate pool’ as legitimate, doing this on the basis of demographics is discriminatory,” the account argued.


Cuban dismissed The Rabbit Hole’s replies as a “word salad.”

“Do you lack self awareness?” TRH asked. “The entire DEI debate has been moving goalposts and semantic games on your part. Like I said earlier, you don’t have a good response to the critiques we are making of DEI so are desperately floundering at this point.”

“There you go,” Cuban replied. “Not answering the questions.”

“Trust me,” TRH responded. “The feeling is mutual.”

“Have you have hired people on the basis of demographics on the belief that doing so better positioned your companies to succeed?” TRH ultimately asked.

“I’ve never hired anyone based exclusively on race, gender, religion,” Cuban replied. “I only ever hire the person that will put my business in the best position to succeed.”

“And yes,” he added, “race and gender can be part of the equation. I view diversity as a competitive advantage.”

“Now how would you propose finding organizations that give preference to white people?” he asked. “Why aren’t you working as hard to show examples of white preference as you are DEI ? You claim to abhor both.”

In a mic-dropping moment, TRH replied, “Thank you for your transparency. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.”

By that point, many on X had made up their minds: Mark Cuban is a “racist.”

“So you’re racist?” asked Australian Sky News reporter Rita Panahi. “Weird flex.”

“Your definition of ‘diversity’ is a disproportionate amount of minorities, thus less opportunity for White people,” another user told Cuban. “Which is racism… against White people.”

“You’re not an idiot. You know this,” the user said. “The only question is who paid you to protest so much?”

Melissa Fine
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