Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is a multi-billion dollar industry in America that, unlike, most businesses that produce usable goods and services DEI actually produces: division, enmity and inequality. According to Research and Markets market report the global market for Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) estimated at US$7.5 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$15.4 Billion by 2026. This is a staggering amount of money spent to produce virtually nothing. (It must be nice to get paid to do a job, where you get to discriminate against people you don’t like, but call it “social justice” — in case you are a Biden voter, this is sarcasm)
In principle, diversity, equity and inclusion are admirable words, however, in actual practice, they have been used by many DEI departments to create policies that actually punish people based on race, sexual preferences and gender. Coca-Cola made national news when, during a training session, they asked their Caucasian employees to be “less white.” Disney’s DEI training materials included suggestions to reject equality and strive for equality of outcomes, and the list of ridiculous company practices goes on and on. Most Americans see the hypocrisy perpetrated by the manipulation of language that is completely inconsistent with the words: diversity, equity and inclusion. This has been a fact of life for universities for numerous decades.
However, two Supreme Court decisions that struck down admitting students to college based on race have been a huge setback for the DEI crowd. The court determined that Harvard (6-2) and the University of N. Carolina (6-3), who have used race as a determinant on whether or not students would be admitted to their institutions have been told that this is unacceptable because it is inconsistent with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In essence, admissions officers have often used biased racial preference methods to determine which students will be allowed to attend their universities and who will not be admitted. These admissions processes hinge on what they call “holistic” methods, which are basically subjective ways of determining whether or not an applicant should be admitted. They either minimize or ignore objective measures of student accomplishments, which include SAT/ACT scores, GPA’s and other tangible measures that determine whether or not a student has the requisite skills to be successful at their universities.
Proponents of DEI have continuously attacked merit in favor of diversity. This has led to admissions practices that admit students who don’t have the academic backgrounds to be successful and this is borne out by the fact that three in every ten students drop out after or within the first year in college and 40% of college students drop out of college in the U.S. each year according to ThinkImpact.com. To any rational person, it’s obvious that an individual who doesn’t have the academic background will be frustrated when placed in an academic setting that is beyond his/her academic level. This situation doesn’t benefit anyone, except the institutions who get paid regardless of whether a student graduates, and contributes to a lot of wasted money and time.
Of course, these realities didn’t sit well with many liberals, who complained that eliminating these affirmative action programs would severely limit opportunities for black students, but they never looked at the other side of the coin, which is the impact such policies have on white and Asian students who worked very hard only to be denied opportunities that they have earned. As someone who was directly impacted by affirmative action programs and denied employment, it is beyond frustrating to know you are the most qualified and denied a position that you earned through merit and hard work.
President Kennedy issued an executive order in 1961, which created the first affirmative action program, which was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson a few years later. These programs were seriously strengthened in the 1970’s and 80’s and lists were created for many civil service jobs where a white applicant had to score significantly higher than a black applicant to get a job to rectify past injustices. Thus, affirmative action has been in effect for decades as a remedy for past injustices. Yet, those who were unjustly denied opportunities in the past are either dead or too old to receive the benefits. Did proponents of it expect it to go on forever?
Baseball was segregated until 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. Should baseball have employed a policy that atoned for its discrimination against black players? Perhaps pitchers who were black could have only need to get two strikes to strike out white batters? Or black position players could have started the count with 2 balls when they stepped up to bat against white pitchers? Of course, this is absurd, but it’s equally absurd to say to someone who has worked very hard and is the best candidate for a job or place in a college classroom, but his or her race is the reason that he or she is denied the opportunity.
The notion that every aspect of life must be equal for everyone may fit with the Marxist notion of a Utopian society, bit it has NEVER truly been employed because it’s unrealistic. Even nature discriminates, which is why some people have the physical attributes to give them the height to be able to compete in the NBA. Society is not simply an assembly line produced box of crayon colors where there are X numbers of each color in the box before it is sealed. There is tremendous diversity within a person’s race, but myopic hypocrites never look deeper than a person’s skin color. Sadly, those who are on the diversity bandwagon seem to believe that this only applies to what they deem to be “diverse,” and they refuse to account for the fact that two people of the same race can be completely different. This is the rationale for ridiculous notions like “white privilege” and “white fragility,” which are both convenient terms that the left employs to make generalizations about individuals who are Caucasian.
The thing that has made America a great country has been the idea that talent, hard work and persistence matter. The moment that merit is ignored is the moment when the ideal becomes a sham. When merit is denied everyone loses. No championship team, in any sport, ever won the championship by putting the most “diverse” team on the field. They won with talent and by putting the best team on the field, and if this is good enough for the sports industry, why doesn’t it apply to the rest of society from universities to businesses?
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