Why Americans Oppose DEI

Public opinion has turned against DEI. It is tempting for DEI advocates to wish this reality away and call the DEI rollback part of the “white backlash.” Or claim that people just don’t want to learn real history. Or keep DEI in place under another name. Some administrators in academia are simply rebranding DEI as “community engagement” or “belonging centers.” But we all know what you are doing—it’s the same thing with a slightly different label.

DEI advocates are no doubt convinced of their position. They do not want to change. Their jobs depend on DEI policies. They think the DEI cause is righteous and central to the mission of higher education.

A majority of Americans find DEI policies objectionable, however. My home state of Idaho recently banned DEI policies, joining many states in passing sweeping bans. The recent dismantling of DEI at the University of Michigan may be a watershed moment for DEI in higher education. Michigan had been a leader in DEI advocacy, when measuring its funding of DEI initiatives and the number of DEI administrators on its payroll.

Something is happening here. What it is, is rather clear.

Let’s face facts: DEI advocates are increasingly in the minority. They are fighting rear-guard actions against a majority of people in the country, and in many states. They are fighting against democracy to preserve their DEI domain.

Might it not be better to understand why Americans are increasingly frustrated with the DEI regime? Might it not be better to recognize why DEI is so unpopular in America? There is common sense in the anti-DEI position that should be appreciated and understood.

The public philosophy implicit in DEI policies is traceable to what was once our reigning civil rights ideology—the disparate impact regime. Disparate impact ideology traces all disparities between groups—between blacks and whites, between men and women, for instance—to systemic discrimination.

When blacks do not attend a university in the same numbers as whites, that university is thought to be discriminatory. Perhaps it is admissions tests, a lack of role models, or insufficient marketing. The list goes on. DEI advocates promise to lessen these disparities by adopting race-conscious policies. Special scholarships are introduced to hire or admit more blacks, and programming is added that’s expressly aimed at attracting black faculty.

One interesting fact about DEI policies is that they do not work all that well on their own terms. I have written a number of articles about how inclusion policies, for instance, make people of all races feel that they do not belong on campus and how equity policies do not lead to equity. This happens at university after university, yet no one in the DEI industry seems to care.

My conclusion is that DEI policies are about cultural revolution, not results. This new culture—call it the diversity persuasion—is bad for the university.

Standards

Many have made the legitimate argument that the diversity persuasion detracts from merit-based institutions. It is difficult to maintain high standards of achievement and learning when an institution’s goal is erasing racial or sexual disparities. The result is grade inflation, lower levels of learning, and a host of other problems. For many, the attack on standards is the main problem with DEI.

DEI Lie

The problem with DEI goes deeper than just the compromising of standards. The idea that all disparities are traceable to discrimination is an obvious untruth—a lie. The greatest book proving this is Thomas Sowell’s Discrimination and Disparities. Sowell shows that different groups with somewhat different subcultures value and prioritize different things. Different groups have, on the whole, different talents, interests, and abilities. The world is multivariate, not unicausal.

Disciplinary Corruption

Disciplinary corruption is not the same thing as DEI policies. Disciplinary corruption is when DEI or critical theories become sown into a discipline’s professional standards. DEI policies are top-down demands from university administration.

The attempt by universities to impose a false ideology leads to intellectual corruption. When the diversity persuasion conquers a discipline, its findings and research concerns become increasingly corrupt and far removed from reality. Disciplines like history and English—which, when they focus on history and literature, are among the most vital studies in the world—become corrupt and lose their intellectual vitality when they focus on gender and race.

Social Harmony

DEI as an official policy makes social peace impossible to accomplish. Americans want to live in social harmony with one another, to tolerate one another. Reasonable attachment to our country and civilization must be cultivated. A reasonable patriotism—as opposed to a blood-and-soil patriotism—must be based in reality. We must all know and appreciate how the country serves our interests and makes good things possible.

DEI is an accusation against the country. It makes reasonable accommodations impossible, because it is a philosophy of endless accusations and endless demands.

Social Engineering

University administrators under the spell of DEI demand that the world conforms to a theory that is, at most, only partly true. This has much to do with the DEI lie. People and groups are somewhat different, which leads to disparities or gaps. That is the way of the world, which DEI fights against at every step.

For DEI advocates, since disparate impact is a problem the world over, everything ultimately must be brought under the control of the state or the university to eliminate disparities. Everything is presumptively illegal. Everything must be brought under the control of clumsy administrators who promise to make things right through tinkering and social engineering. This is why we have gotten an increasingly racialized set of bureaucratic and judicial edicts that impose handicaps and confer privileges based on race, sex, or group identity rather than the protection of individual rights. This is why the University of Michigan and other universities had DEI officials overseeing nearly every aspect of university operations.

Living the lie of DEI makes it necessary to remake the world to reflect its lies. Living according to a lie creates the need for endless, frustrating social engineering.

Decline in Trust

The rise of disparate impact ideology coincides with a terrific decline in public trust and mutual trust in our society. We have, under its auspices, gone from a high-trust to a low-trust society. This makes sense. DEI is based on a rejection of our heritage. It is anti-Enlightenment. It is anti-individual rights. It ultimately demands the control of thought and speech. It prefers a multicultural country, where we emphasize and celebrate our differences and try to make heritage Americans feel guilty about our colorblind constitutional principles and social norms. It emphasizes oppression so that people will become attached to a new, as-yet-to-be-seen country. And nowhere does this multicultural country embody the freedom, goodwill, and affection necessary to hold a people together in happy and peaceful coexistence.

Americans increasingly recognize this problem and are saying “enough.” Public servants should listen to those Americans as fellow citizens who want to achieve a workable social harmony in our country.

DEI and University Mission

The university’s chief missions are to promote workforce education, to promote professional education, to pass on an appreciation of our civilization, and to ensure basic numeracy and literacy. DEI is tangential to these missions. In fact, it compromises them. It teaches that workforce education is not honorable. It lowers standards for admission into professional schools. It undermines our civilizational heritage. It gives people excuses for not achieving basic numeracy and literacy.

The diversity persuasion is a bad public philosophy. It makes a reasonable patriotism difficult to cultivate. It promises a future of endless social engineering to bring about equal outcomes. It undermines America’s traditions of freedom, individual rights, and the rule of law. It undermines social harmony and public trust. Since DEI is based on a lie, it misshapes our minds, our laws, and our country, and makes our future worse. It is a cause of polarization. It is a solvent on social bonds. Things will only get worse in this country if we continue down the DEI road.

The alternative is a colorblind future. We should seize it. It’s what our laws and our culture demand. It is a workable solution. Gaps will still exist, but they will always exist. Universities should be open to all, of course, because that is precisely what is needed for a workable social harmony to emerge.

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