Anyone who has experienced DEI in person can't miss the truth that it is an orchestrated maneuver to establish a power base rooted in "marginalized" identity. It's not about inclusion. It's about power, and that means exclusion.
Just as the Marxists claimed to love and want to help the masses aka the "proletariat" but it quickly became clear that what they really wanted was to attack and destroy the bourgeois capitalists, their spiritual descendants of the New Left (founded by Marxist gurus) claim to want to help and center "marginalized identities", but really just want to vent their hatred against people they perceive as their enemies (while of course scoring a nice check), which pretty much means straight white men and anyone who doesn't hate them enough.
Leftists sell hatred but disguise it as Tolerance/Diversity and sell Slavery in bottles labeled Liberation, but whenever they're given power their means and goals become obvious: to deconstruct, "problematize", to "heighten the contradictions", because the more we hate each other the more they benefit.
It is no surprise that their Struggle Sessions aka DEI seminars only make people angrier and more hostile and suspicious toward each other—that was the goal all along.
Yes, it is. It is tragically the trajectory of leftism when it gains too much power in a society. I certainly never thought I would see that happen in the U.S., Canada the U.K. and so on. during my lifetime.
It absolutely is a euphemism for ‘tear down’. Originates in a negating ideology that doesn’t empower anyone except those who exploit this divisive orientation. Thanks for sharing that link, some very good reads on that Substack.
Thank you so much for pointing this out. This is hardly surprising to anyone who had been paying attention for the last decade or so. The really sad thing about this is that it will actually be a surprise to some and many of these "surprised" individuals will instantly write it off as ignorant and racist - just as they were taught to do.
Ugh. I got a taste of the DEI treatment at the University of Washington in Seattle when my sister-in-law just wanted a job cooking in one of the food outlets on campus. She is a native Spanish speaker. Her English is really weak so we did the onboarding together over the course of almost 20 hours of videos and courses that she had to take just to get a job as a cook on campus. It was horrifying. I took screenshots of some of the ridiculousness, just so I could remember how ridiculous it was. When I think this is repeated at almost every college and corporation across America, I feel despair. I don’t know exactly the strategy that’s going to scrub this stuff out of our reality, but I really look forward to it and I hope someone’s got it figured out in the new administration
On a somewhat related note, apparently some minority applicants for university faculty positions have a harder time writing the now-mandatory DEI statements than the white applicants who have been steeped in this ideology—ironically disadvantaging the very populations that DEI was supposed to help.
I think I read it somewhere on Substack? Sorry, can’t remember exactly. But it seemed plausible so I remembered it. After all, if most Latinos/Latinas don’t use the term Latinx, how are they going to write compellingly about their oppression?
Makes sense, I've got my own anecdotes of it too. My guess is that if there isn't already a study out there somewhere supporting it, it will be done soon. Maybe by someone like Lee Jussim.
Elite overproduction is discussed, but what’s missing often is that it’s a gendered phenomenon. More women are going to universities and entering HR departments. The practitioners of DEI are largely women without other skills - their primary skills are communication and maybe project management, but little else. These women need somewhere to build symbolic capital (see Musa Al-Garbhi) and the most obvious place is DEI. Most of the women I know in this space didn’t exactly leave a lucrative career to practice DEI. Rather, it was the easiest way to raise their profiles. They don’t want their ineffectiveness and actual harm to come to light, so the media does their bidding. This is, largely, a female created issue and resistance to its dismantling is also feminine.
Yes, but the problem is not just that these women (primarily) lack competence in anything other than signaling social status, it is that they are *incapable of recognizing competence in others*.
Thus, when they see a "straight white man" getting accolades for a job well done, they have no basis for evaluating what a job well done looks like, and think the accolades must be because of the race and sex of the recipient.
I'm wondering what the inevitable 'backlash' to this will look like. And BE like. To be clear, I don't mean this in any 'threatening' type way, but genuinely curious. But it's a massive issue, which has led to myriad problems. And a correction is inevitable. What to do re: a massive chunk of an entire industry that is ~90% bureaucratic inefficiency that mitigates productivity and causes ACTUAL harms; is unskilled, yet drunk on power; and is mostly female.
It will be a backlash against these female-dominated, do-nothing orgs. HR, administrative bureaucracies, public education, etc.
There will be some misogyny that goes with it which will be difficult to fight because either you buy into the idea that groups of people should be at war with each other, thus making misogyny a legitimate stance, or you never bought into it, but don't want the bedfellows that resisting actual misogyny will attract.
Women were always going to be the ones that wound up footing the bill. At the end of the day, the reason people don't run around using the N-word is that they don't want to get punched in the face. Women, despite the fantasies they seem to have about being Xena, Warrior Princess, don't have this option. They lack the ability to physically enforce dictates when all the trash talk hits the wall.
Despite my initial opposition to misogyny, I've personally reached the point where I don't think a lot of women even belong in the workplace. You can't be raised in such a way that chivalry makes you exempt from the consequences of your actions, then expect to lead men who routinely experience real-world consequences. Unless boundaries can be placed on their behavior, they just need to GTFO of public life. The politics they engage in is simply too dangerous.
Honestly I can’t argue against this anymore. I’ve been radicalized myself by incompetent women coming for me because they’re insecure about their own performance. It’s not that incompetent men also don’t exist. I am dealing with an incompetent man today who, frankly, deserves to be fired. I think you’re correct that many women don’t belong in the workplace because they can’t, contrary to what people might think, cooperate and not compete, especially with other women or men they’re threatened by. I’ve seen too many idiots use sexism as a way to shut down criticism of their work, and you straight up can’t be honest with a lot of them about their performance because the histrionics will ensue, and it’ll become an HR issue. But separately, this is also an overall problem of white collar bullshit jobs being created to absorb all the over educated mediocre people. A correction has been happening since the fed turned off the free money, but it’s still got a ways to go. In years past, I’ve also seen sexism and racism where there was none, which is why I say with such certainty you’re correct about this.
Yeah, I never would have written this 10 years ago, but this kind of thing has really come to a head. I don't know what the solution is, but I do know what worked in the past...
I too have been radicalized. When every effort to be "nice" turns into an invitation for more abuse, what recourse remains?
Edit: you're totally right about the over-educated part too. I think a lot of the byzantine structures and laws we have now sort of evolved to employ these people who may be smart in a strictly technical, IQ sense, but have no skills or understanding of history, human nature, or anything else. 80% of the world we live in is complete bullshit.
DEI is the day in the sun of the HR profession. Quite a few DEI consultants and trainers get paid a lot of money relative to what other HR professionals make.
I thought your post was well argued, Michael, but I think you might be overlooking how we have white men who are also recipients of affirmative action. Biden was definitely that, and while we’ve practiced what appears to be affirmative action on others (Obama was technically unqualified but his talent made up for it) until this point we’ve had politicians with natural talent to run. Suddenly, it’s unclear who has a personality on this side to go up against Trump.
Yeah, for sure . Those who can't do, DEI. But really, you give them too much credit if you think they have communication skills (and I don't even know what "project management" skills means)
There's a Left wing non-profit in my upstate town, the kind that asks for donations constantly and does nothing. The kind that turns down my offer of a donation of a science library for members' children. (with the racist sentiment, "It might be above their heads.") I walk by lately and there are meetings day and night, couple dozen lost Lefties at a time. When they're done with the meeting, they hang out at a local wine bar, drinking $25 glasses of white wine, eating $17 appetizers. Out of touch, perhaps?
No kidding. I used to go to those meetings. People come over to my working class town from Woodstock, the Disney of Hippie Land. Their rhetoric encourages crossdressing dudes like the one who repeatedly directly threatens House Rep. Nancy Mace with murder in the Women's lavatory. He's been identified by independent journalist, Andy Ngo, as Portland, Oregon (another latte town) Antifa member, Joshua R. Boyle. I bet if I walked into one of those meetings and showed them his videos, they'd claim it was justified.
I'm sorry, but because I have a YouTube channel under this name, I cannot reveal where I live. There are trolls who threaten, as you know from the response to Rep. Nancy Mace. Basically any Working Party affiliate is like this. Here's a window into my world, as the ex-wife of a man who says he's a woman, and as well, says he's 'mother' of the sons he fathered.
Looking at my own personal experience, all this DEI stuff makes me hostile to it. Any empathy I may have had, or doubts or concerns regarding racism, vanish. In fact, I push back now. I refuse to accept that things are worse than they were before I was born and before the Civil Rights Act passed. The whole whining industry strikes me as a big grift. I don't feel guilty for the way I was born and neither should anyone else.
Well, of course things are not worse in reality, they are infinitely better. When grifters like Jussie Smollet have to make up a hate crime, it's probably not that bad.
The fantasy that DEI has not increased racism, sexism and resistance to the anti-species agenda of LGBTQWERTY… is just that: fantasy.
Any time lunatics demand superiority of one group over another - which is what ALL “rights” and “equity” programs are about - there is a 100% probability of resistance by everyone else. No one wants to be discriminate against.
The craziest thing about DEI, however, is this insane catering to a tiny electoral cohort who has achieved nothing of significance in its entire global history, remained Neolithic, pre-Contact, and demands access - and underserved “achievement” - in areas for which this cohort has demonstrated zero capability over the 60 years of Affirmative Action.
DEI and affirmative action "catered to us" about as much as the abolition of slavery did. This long Revolutionary War has never fundamentally been about us.
I must say though, I love it when you cling to the inferiority narrative for dear life; in the end, witnessing the utterly dazed and confused state you're left in after us cave-dwellers unexpectedly flipped the script in our favor has always been, and will always be, its own reward.
"Two leading media organizations abruptly shelved coverage of a groundbreaking study." What is your source for that inside knowledge about what's going on behind the scenes at those two media organizations?
You should have made that clear in your reporting, with pertinent details, especially since that’s such an important part of the story. A follow up piece is warranted.
Why not just survey all the business leaders anonymously and ask them what they think of the toxic work culture mess caused by DEI? As a business leader I can tell you that all my peers are intent to clean house of all the indoctrinated grievance bots and hire a new HR director.
Hiring and firing should be done by team leads. HR just adds on another layer that makes decisions worse. They simply do not have the technical expertise to make good decisions.
Once you take out all the DEI duties, most of the jobs can easily be automated and done by one person or a much smaller team.
Federal and state deregulation can shrink the need for labor even more. Arithmetic is easy to automate.
Isn’t this the same as withholding studies that show no improvement in kid’s undergoing puberty blockers. .? It’s all the same with the overarching of Woke ideology.
Anyone who has experienced DEI in person can't miss the truth that it is an orchestrated maneuver to establish a power base rooted in "marginalized" identity. It's not about inclusion. It's about power, and that means exclusion.
Just as the Marxists claimed to love and want to help the masses aka the "proletariat" but it quickly became clear that what they really wanted was to attack and destroy the bourgeois capitalists, their spiritual descendants of the New Left (founded by Marxist gurus) claim to want to help and center "marginalized identities", but really just want to vent their hatred against people they perceive as their enemies (while of course scoring a nice check), which pretty much means straight white men and anyone who doesn't hate them enough.
Leftists sell hatred but disguise it as Tolerance/Diversity and sell Slavery in bottles labeled Liberation, but whenever they're given power their means and goals become obvious: to deconstruct, "problematize", to "heighten the contradictions", because the more we hate each other the more they benefit.
It is no surprise that their Struggle Sessions aka DEI seminars only make people angrier and more hostile and suspicious toward each other—that was the goal all along.
Absolutely! Interesting haw the left is now for authoritarian control and against freedom of speech.
Yes, it is. It is tragically the trajectory of leftism when it gains too much power in a society. I certainly never thought I would see that happen in the U.S., Canada the U.K. and so on. during my lifetime.
💯. DEI empowers (any ‘minority’ identity) by actively disempowering the oppressor (white, male, hetero, etc)
I think that it is actually worse than that. “Empowerment” is just the excuse to tear down:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/radical-ideologies-feast-on-mental
It absolutely is a euphemism for ‘tear down’. Originates in a negating ideology that doesn’t empower anyone except those who exploit this divisive orientation. Thanks for sharing that link, some very good reads on that Substack.
This. Always has been, always will be.
So the NYT and Bloomberg are liars and bigots. Surprise, surprise.
Thank you so much for pointing this out. This is hardly surprising to anyone who had been paying attention for the last decade or so. The really sad thing about this is that it will actually be a surprise to some and many of these "surprised" individuals will instantly write it off as ignorant and racist - just as they were taught to do.
Ugh. I got a taste of the DEI treatment at the University of Washington in Seattle when my sister-in-law just wanted a job cooking in one of the food outlets on campus. She is a native Spanish speaker. Her English is really weak so we did the onboarding together over the course of almost 20 hours of videos and courses that she had to take just to get a job as a cook on campus. It was horrifying. I took screenshots of some of the ridiculousness, just so I could remember how ridiculous it was. When I think this is repeated at almost every college and corporation across America, I feel despair. I don’t know exactly the strategy that’s going to scrub this stuff out of our reality, but I really look forward to it and I hope someone’s got it figured out in the new administration
On a somewhat related note, apparently some minority applicants for university faculty positions have a harder time writing the now-mandatory DEI statements than the white applicants who have been steeped in this ideology—ironically disadvantaging the very populations that DEI was supposed to help.
Do you have a source on this? That's really interesting
I think I read it somewhere on Substack? Sorry, can’t remember exactly. But it seemed plausible so I remembered it. After all, if most Latinos/Latinas don’t use the term Latinx, how are they going to write compellingly about their oppression?
Makes sense, I've got my own anecdotes of it too. My guess is that if there isn't already a study out there somewhere supporting it, it will be done soon. Maybe by someone like Lee Jussim.
Not ironic, DEI has nothing to do with minorities and everything to do with elitism.
How very inclusive of them to make it harder for her to get a job as a cook.
🔥
Very interesting story!
Could you provide those screenshots without any repercussions to you or your sister-in-law? I’d be very curious to see them.
I'm not sure how to share those .png screenshots here... I did dig up a few, though...
Could you DM via Twitter or email? I’d be interested too.
Thanks anyway
let me go dig into that today and I’ll get back to you.
McKinsey pushed a pro-DEI study that was debunked. The "elite" consulting firm is known for suppressing any data that does not support the narratives that make them rich on fees. More details in the WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/diversity-was-supposed-to-make-us-rich-not-so-much-39da6a23
Most people with any kind of common sense can arrive at the same conclusion. Millions of wasted dollars on this “inconvenient” study.
Elite overproduction is discussed, but what’s missing often is that it’s a gendered phenomenon. More women are going to universities and entering HR departments. The practitioners of DEI are largely women without other skills - their primary skills are communication and maybe project management, but little else. These women need somewhere to build symbolic capital (see Musa Al-Garbhi) and the most obvious place is DEI. Most of the women I know in this space didn’t exactly leave a lucrative career to practice DEI. Rather, it was the easiest way to raise their profiles. They don’t want their ineffectiveness and actual harm to come to light, so the media does their bidding. This is, largely, a female created issue and resistance to its dismantling is also feminine.
Yes, but the problem is not just that these women (primarily) lack competence in anything other than signaling social status, it is that they are *incapable of recognizing competence in others*.
Thus, when they see a "straight white man" getting accolades for a job well done, they have no basis for evaluating what a job well done looks like, and think the accolades must be because of the race and sex of the recipient.
I'm wondering what the inevitable 'backlash' to this will look like. And BE like. To be clear, I don't mean this in any 'threatening' type way, but genuinely curious. But it's a massive issue, which has led to myriad problems. And a correction is inevitable. What to do re: a massive chunk of an entire industry that is ~90% bureaucratic inefficiency that mitigates productivity and causes ACTUAL harms; is unskilled, yet drunk on power; and is mostly female.
It will be a backlash against these female-dominated, do-nothing orgs. HR, administrative bureaucracies, public education, etc.
There will be some misogyny that goes with it which will be difficult to fight because either you buy into the idea that groups of people should be at war with each other, thus making misogyny a legitimate stance, or you never bought into it, but don't want the bedfellows that resisting actual misogyny will attract.
Women were always going to be the ones that wound up footing the bill. At the end of the day, the reason people don't run around using the N-word is that they don't want to get punched in the face. Women, despite the fantasies they seem to have about being Xena, Warrior Princess, don't have this option. They lack the ability to physically enforce dictates when all the trash talk hits the wall.
Despite my initial opposition to misogyny, I've personally reached the point where I don't think a lot of women even belong in the workplace. You can't be raised in such a way that chivalry makes you exempt from the consequences of your actions, then expect to lead men who routinely experience real-world consequences. Unless boundaries can be placed on their behavior, they just need to GTFO of public life. The politics they engage in is simply too dangerous.
Your comment has validity.
Honestly I can’t argue against this anymore. I’ve been radicalized myself by incompetent women coming for me because they’re insecure about their own performance. It’s not that incompetent men also don’t exist. I am dealing with an incompetent man today who, frankly, deserves to be fired. I think you’re correct that many women don’t belong in the workplace because they can’t, contrary to what people might think, cooperate and not compete, especially with other women or men they’re threatened by. I’ve seen too many idiots use sexism as a way to shut down criticism of their work, and you straight up can’t be honest with a lot of them about their performance because the histrionics will ensue, and it’ll become an HR issue. But separately, this is also an overall problem of white collar bullshit jobs being created to absorb all the over educated mediocre people. A correction has been happening since the fed turned off the free money, but it’s still got a ways to go. In years past, I’ve also seen sexism and racism where there was none, which is why I say with such certainty you’re correct about this.
Yeah, I never would have written this 10 years ago, but this kind of thing has really come to a head. I don't know what the solution is, but I do know what worked in the past...
I too have been radicalized. When every effort to be "nice" turns into an invitation for more abuse, what recourse remains?
Edit: you're totally right about the over-educated part too. I think a lot of the byzantine structures and laws we have now sort of evolved to employ these people who may be smart in a strictly technical, IQ sense, but have no skills or understanding of history, human nature, or anything else. 80% of the world we live in is complete bullshit.
One thing it definitely looks like is the election of Trump
I see this going out with a whimper. It’ll be the grander version of calling everyone racist.
DEI is the day in the sun of the HR profession. Quite a few DEI consultants and trainers get paid a lot of money relative to what other HR professionals make.
Agreed, and who is the queen of “practitioners of DEI… without other skills, except communication?”
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/kamala-harris-is-the-future-of-the
I thought your post was well argued, Michael, but I think you might be overlooking how we have white men who are also recipients of affirmative action. Biden was definitely that, and while we’ve practiced what appears to be affirmative action on others (Obama was technically unqualified but his talent made up for it) until this point we’ve had politicians with natural talent to run. Suddenly, it’s unclear who has a personality on this side to go up against Trump.
Yeah, for sure . Those who can't do, DEI. But really, you give them too much credit if you think they have communication skills (and I don't even know what "project management" skills means)
There's a Left wing non-profit in my upstate town, the kind that asks for donations constantly and does nothing. The kind that turns down my offer of a donation of a science library for members' children. (with the racist sentiment, "It might be above their heads.") I walk by lately and there are meetings day and night, couple dozen lost Lefties at a time. When they're done with the meeting, they hang out at a local wine bar, drinking $25 glasses of white wine, eating $17 appetizers. Out of touch, perhaps?
That kind of self-righteous arrogance pisses me off!
Wrapping selfishness and status-seeking behavior in a camouflage of morality does great damage to society.
No kidding. I used to go to those meetings. People come over to my working class town from Woodstock, the Disney of Hippie Land. Their rhetoric encourages crossdressing dudes like the one who repeatedly directly threatens House Rep. Nancy Mace with murder in the Women's lavatory. He's been identified by independent journalist, Andy Ngo, as Portland, Oregon (another latte town) Antifa member, Joshua R. Boyle. I bet if I walked into one of those meetings and showed them his videos, they'd claim it was justified.
And what organization is it?
I'm sorry, but because I have a YouTube channel under this name, I cannot reveal where I live. There are trolls who threaten, as you know from the response to Rep. Nancy Mace. Basically any Working Party affiliate is like this. Here's a window into my world, as the ex-wife of a man who says he's a woman, and as well, says he's 'mother' of the sons he fathered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgsq3wxXsDQ&t=36s
Looking at my own personal experience, all this DEI stuff makes me hostile to it. Any empathy I may have had, or doubts or concerns regarding racism, vanish. In fact, I push back now. I refuse to accept that things are worse than they were before I was born and before the Civil Rights Act passed. The whole whining industry strikes me as a big grift. I don't feel guilty for the way I was born and neither should anyone else.
Well, of course things are not worse in reality, they are infinitely better. When grifters like Jussie Smollet have to make up a hate crime, it's probably not that bad.
Really well written and argued, Colin.
Thank you!
The fantasy that DEI has not increased racism, sexism and resistance to the anti-species agenda of LGBTQWERTY… is just that: fantasy.
Any time lunatics demand superiority of one group over another - which is what ALL “rights” and “equity” programs are about - there is a 100% probability of resistance by everyone else. No one wants to be discriminate against.
The craziest thing about DEI, however, is this insane catering to a tiny electoral cohort who has achieved nothing of significance in its entire global history, remained Neolithic, pre-Contact, and demands access - and underserved “achievement” - in areas for which this cohort has demonstrated zero capability over the 60 years of Affirmative Action.
Here’s an idea: treat everyone equally.
DEI and affirmative action "catered to us" about as much as the abolition of slavery did. This long Revolutionary War has never fundamentally been about us.
I must say though, I love it when you cling to the inferiority narrative for dear life; in the end, witnessing the utterly dazed and confused state you're left in after us cave-dwellers unexpectedly flipped the script in our favor has always been, and will always be, its own reward.
Who is the electoral cohort you refer to?
African Americans.
"Suppressing this research does NOT further the goal of making society more inclusive and accepting—it undermines it."
Typo.
Thanks. Fixed!
"Two leading media organizations abruptly shelved coverage of a groundbreaking study." What is your source for that inside knowledge about what's going on behind the scenes at those two media organizations?
I have access to the email exchanges between the study authors and the news organizations.
You should have made that clear in your reporting, with pertinent details, especially since that’s such an important part of the story. A follow up piece is warranted.
They always out themselves in email.
Thanks. Knowing this gives the piece more credibility.
Well duh!
A study? Isn't the root of DEI from studies?
Why not just survey all the business leaders anonymously and ask them what they think of the toxic work culture mess caused by DEI? As a business leader I can tell you that all my peers are intent to clean house of all the indoctrinated grievance bots and hire a new HR director.
So why don’t they?
Firing the entire HR department is not discrimination, and it clearly will help the bottom line and employee morale.
Someone needs to do the hiring, firing, payroll, benefits, workers' comp, etc.
Hiring and firing should be done by team leads. HR just adds on another layer that makes decisions worse. They simply do not have the technical expertise to make good decisions.
Once you take out all the DEI duties, most of the jobs can easily be automated and done by one person or a much smaller team.
Federal and state deregulation can shrink the need for labor even more. Arithmetic is easy to automate.
Isn’t this the same as withholding studies that show no improvement in kid’s undergoing puberty blockers. .? It’s all the same with the overarching of Woke ideology.
Sounds similar to me.