Woke progressives have spent a considerable amount of time and energy over the past several years trying to hide and deny the existence of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion agenda. The reasons are obvious - The philosophy removes all merit from society and replaces it with a cult of perceived oppression. Academic prowess, mental drive, personal success, inherent intelligence or toughness; none of these things matter anymore when it comes to college admissions, corporate employment, municipal job access or political promotion.
All that has mattered for almost a decade is skin color, gender, sexual orientation and how much a person's minority status raises the ESG score of a particular institution.
DEI goes far beyond the notion of Affirmative Action. While the value of AA alone is questionable in western societies today, it is simply a legal affirmation that companies should hire minorities that have the correct qualifications and not ignore them based merely on their ethnicity. Does AA still lead to unqualified hires? Yes. But DEI takes the problem to a whole new level by incentivizing the erasure of merit as a "social construct."
That is to say, DEI demonizes the concept of merit as evil and racist. Such an ideology can only lead to one thing: The saturation of all important jobs and positions with people that represent the lowest common denominator, not to mention the inevitable downfall of civilization.
The effects of hiring practices based on woke virtue signaling are becoming more apparent by the day. Corporations that engage in DEI all see the quality of their labor, the quality of their management and the quality of their products and services decline. It is a near guarantee that any company that goes woke will eventually go broke (unless they are getting artificial support from investment firms and government programs).
The proliferation of the system has led to a growing public outcry, not only because DEI is specifically discriminatory against straight white men even when they are the best candidates for higher education or a particular job, but also because hiring the unqualified leads to a degradation of value everywhere we turn.
Most people don't care if a doctor or lawyer or firefighter or architect or their manager in charge is a minority, they just want the best person for the job. DEI makes this impossible. By creating quotas and percentages of minority representatives within any working environment, there is no way to fill those positions without hiring people that fail the basic standards. There aren't enough qualified minorities in existence to meet the fabricated demand.
Beyond that, DEI is detrimental to minority professionals with actual skills, because now whenever we see a minority in a vital job we're going to wonder if they got that position because they're capable or because of their skin color and sexual preferences.
In other words, DEI = Didn't Earn It.
The political left is outraged at the exposure of DEI and have taken to social media recently to declare the use of the term a "racial slur." As the Mayor of Baltimore, Brandon Scott, argued in his interview with Joy Reid on MSNBC, he thinks white people who say "DEI" are using it in place of the "N-word."
It should be noted that Baltimore has had minority mayors in power since 1987 (with the exception of Martin O'Malley) and the city has been in steep decline for decades. Of course, correlation is not necessarily causation - The fact that all of these mayors were Democrats might have more to do with the city's problems than their skin color. The point is, Brandon Scott has no room to blame white people for the failings of his city. Black people have been in charge of Baltimore for a long time; maybe it's time to take responsibility.
And this is the crux of DEI thinking, isn't it? Adherents to the ideal want more access to "power" and authority without without the talent needed to handle it or the responsibility required to wield it. They want access to college education based on assumed disadvantage rather than real accomplishment. They want accolades for simply existing as minorities in a world they claim is holding them back, all while being treated with kid gloves and extensive privilege.
Truly successful people don't need to have their hands held through the process of life at every turn. They accomplish their goals through hard work, intelligence and persistence. Leftists say that DEI is necessary because there are "invisible barriers for minority groups" in the west. This is a lie.
A perfect example is the Asian community, which is a tiny portion of the US population yet they find academic and business success at an extraordinary rate. Promoters of DEI constantly ignore the data when it comes to Asians in America and are often hostile towards them exactly because they win on merit alone, proving the entire basis of DEI wrong. Diversity quotas within many colleges have even discriminated against Asians in favor of other minorities (or female applicants) because they are considered "too advantaged." The problem was so pervasive it was taken to the Supreme Court in 2023.
The bottom line is that merit is the only reasonable way to run a society. Once decisions are made and leaders are chosen based on who claims they are the most historically oppressed there is no way to clarify value. Who is truly more worthy - A person whose DNA barely connects them to trespasses from distant history? Or, a person who is able to do the job right? Diversity is not necessarily strength. Historic oppression is meaningless. Merit is everything.