How DEI Hurts America, Part One

Victor Davis Hanson

1. What is DEI?

DEI—”Diversity, Equity, Inclusion”—is the updated, vastly expanded version of affirmative action set-asides/favoritism/bias based on race.

But whereas affirmative action of the 1960s was designed to address the long history of discrimination against blacks (and to a lesser extent Hispanics), and was roughly associated with class (blacks were much poorer per capita than were whites), DEI expanded the victim class to anyone not white, heterosexual, male, Christian (e.g., blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, transsexuals, Asians, indigenous peoples, etc.).

The aim was to achieve on the basis of race a 70-30 binary of oppressors/oppressed. And when gender was added into the equation, then the victimizer class shrank to 35 percent, and the victimized expanded to 65 percent of the country.

Obviously, at that point, there were not enough alleged oppressors and too many oppressed to make charges of racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia stick. So now we are in the Orwellian world of almost anyone not a white, heterosexual, male self-identifying as a victim and citing past bias.

The locus classicus most recently is Karine Jean-Pierre, the former and now mostly disgraced Biden press secretary. On her recent book tour, on almost every occasion she talked her way into a jam of exaggeration, lies, and banalities. But she sought an out by reminding America that she was the first gay (1!), female (2!!), and black (3!!!) trifecta oppressed press secretary, and thus by implication deserved exemption from scrutiny on the basis of her victimhood that was deemed innate rather than demonstrably proven.

2. Who thought up DEI?

DEI was a faculty-lounge term until the Obama administration mainstreamed it. First, class was discarded as the symptom of oppression. The most powerful couple in the world, the Obamas, soon to be worth $100 million and owners of three or four majestic estates, under the new DEI rubric were still “victims” based on their race (compare Michelle’s ritual laments about how terribly America has treated her).

Note: no history of oppression need be proved or even cited. The Oaxacan who stepped across the border could claim victim status, despite never having set foot in the U.S., on the basis of being a “Latino.”

When class was removed, everyone from multimillionaires like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi to Rep, Ilhan Omar and Oprah Winfrey, were victims, while Joe Jones, the lower-middle-class long-haul truck driver was their victimizer based on his race, sex, and sexual orientation.

The lunacy of DEI, divorced from class, was evident in a recent interview with Michelle Obama. Instantly she began whining that she was oppressed by white Americans when she was in the White House.

Why? She was forced to have three full-time personal stylists, valets, and makeup artists just to satisfy, she claimed, white standards of beauty.

Or as she put it—in characteristic DEI insane fashion—black women (such as herself) were denied access to swimming opportunities, since their ensuing wet hair required hours of drying and re-straightening to meet white approval. (Michelle forgot that there are more curly or frizzy-haired whites than there are Asians; and the latter and many Hispanics proudly have hair that is uniformly “straight” or straighter than whites).

3. What Was the Purpose of DEI?

The obvious agenda was to flip American culture by appointing, hiring, and admitting non-white, female, and gay residents over their antitheses. Politics was the catalyst that assumed white males were likely more conservative, and non-white males far more liberal. And thus, favoritism to the latter expanded the power and numbers of the American leftwing movement.

Or was it worse than that, if we remember Tocqueville’s warning that most people would rather all be equal and poor, than all better off, but some more better off than others? Does the DEI left want to impoverish institutions by junking merit—deliberately? Does it wish that Yale become no different than a community college in New York, all equal? Is that why gifted programs in schools are under assault? Or grading itself?

I enrolled as a student at UC Santa Cruz in 1971 where there were no grades, only Pass/Fail with written evaluations by the professors. I can attest that attendance was lax. Term paper deadlines were negotiable. And the attitude was socialist ennui to the core: why write a good paper or ace an exam when the grade is the same as that given to the errant C-student?