The Patriot Post® · In Brief: End DEI
We’ve said before that the acronym for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) would be better rearranged to spell DIE. That’s because of the threat it poses to American Liberty. Bari Weiss, a refugee from The New York Times, agrees.
Twenty years ago, when I was a college student, I started writing about a then-nameless, niche ideology that seemed to contradict everything I had been taught since I was a child.
It is possible I would not have perceived the nature of this ideology—or rather, I would have been able to avoid seeing its true nature—had I not been a Jew. But I was. I am. And in noticing the way I had been written out of the equation, I started to notice that it wasn’t just me, but that the whole system rested on an illusion.
What I saw was a worldview that replaced basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad). It replaced lots of things. Colorblindness with race-obsession. Ideas with identity. Debate with denunciation. Persuasion with public shaming. The rule of law with the fury of the mob.
People were to be given authority in this new order not in recognition of their gifts, hard work, accomplishments, or contributions to society, but in inverse proportion to the disadvantages their group had suffered, as defined by radical ideologues. According to them, as Jamie Kirchick concisely put it in these pages: “Muslim > gay, Black > female, and everybody > the Jews.”
Weiss describes seeing this play out especially on college campuses, which then filters into other areas of life. “The takeover is so comprehensive that it’s now almost hard to notice it — because it is everywhere.” As a Jew, Weiss worries most about it among the Jewish community because of how detrimental it can — and has — become. But it certainly doesn’t stop there.
It isn’t only Jews who suffer from the suggestion that merit and excellence are dirty words. It is strivers of every race, ethnicity, and class. That is why Asian American success, for example, is suspicious. The percentages are off. The scores are too high. From whom did you steal all that success?
Of course this new ideology doesn’t come right out and say all that. It doesn’t even like to be named. Some call it wokeness or anti-racism or progressivism or safetyism or critical social justice or identity-Marxism. But whatever term you use, what’s clear is that it has gained power in a conceptual instrument called “diversity, equity and inclusion,” or DEI.
In theory, all three of these words represent noble causes. They are in fact all causes to which American Jews in particular have long been devoted, both individually and collectively. But in reality, these words are now metaphors for an ideological movement bent on recategorizing every American not as an individual, but as an avatar of an identity group, his or her behavior prejudged accordingly, setting all of us up in a kind of zero-sum game.
Critically, she notes, “‘DEI’ is not about the words it uses as camouflage. DEI is about arrogating power.”
And the movement that is gathering all this power does not like America or liberalism. It does not believe that America is a good country—at least no better than China or Iran. It calls itself progressive, but it does not believe in progress; it is explicitly anti-growth. It claims to promote “equity,” but its answer to the challenge of teaching math or reading to disadvantaged children is to eliminate math and reading tests. It demonizes hard work, merit, family, and the dignity of the individual.
An ideology that pathologizes these fundamental human virtues is one that seeks to undermine what makes America exceptional.
She concludes, “It’s time to end DEI for good.”