DEIfication

By Larry Sand

The “diversity, equity and inclusion” onslaught is in full religious bloom, but there are signs of resistance.

DEI has gone national. The belief that quality takes a backseat to racial bean counting wormed its way into the White House in February, when President Biden signed an executive order that promises to create a national “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” bureaucracy. As Christopher Rufo reports, the DEI diktat, “Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” proposes three key strategies:

• Creating internal cadres and power centers through the deployment of “Agency Equity Teams.”
• Funding third-party political activism through grants to “community[-based] organizations.”
• Weaponizing civil rights law by requiring federal agencies to use artificial intelligence “in a manner that advances equity.”

The order prescribes that equity be “embedded… into the fabric of Federal policymaking and service delivery.” Also, this will not be a one-time project, and instead must be a multi-generational commitment, and remain the responsibility of agencies across the Federal Government.

To that end, the government will establish an “Agency Equity Team… to coordinate the implementation of equity initiatives.” Every aspect of government down to the design, development, and acquisition of artificial intelligence must advance equity.

The executive order, dripping with cultural Marxism, posits that “by advancing equity, the Federal Government can support and empower all Americans, including the many communities in America that have been underserved, discriminated against, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.”

The document basically suggests that if someone is poor, it is not their own doing or due to cultural failure, but rather it’s because of “systemic racism.” Lack of individual responsibility can never be blamed for one’s own failure. The Biden administration seems to be taking its marching orders from supreme race hustler Ibram X. Kendi who explains, “As an anti-racist, when I see racial disparities, I see racism.”

The advancing DEIst activity could spell disaster for the country. Even the National Institutes of Health has jumped on the DEI train. Via public records requests, John Sailer, director of university policy at the National Association of Scholars, acquired rubrics for evaluating diversity statements used by two NIH-funded programs. He reports that the South Carolina and New Mexico rubrics call for “punishing candidates who espouse race neutrality, dictating a low score for anyone who states an intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same.’ Applicants who are skeptical of DEI programming might choose to describe their commitment to viewpoint diversity. This too runs afoul of the rubrics, which mandate a low score for any candidate who defines diversity “only in terms of different areas of study or different nationalities but doesn’t mention gender or ethnicity/race.”

Sailer also reports that the University of California, San Francisco medical school has created a document titled “Anti-Racism and Race Literacy: A Primer and Toolkit for Medical Educators,” which is filled with outrageous assertions. Racism, the guide asserts, “refers to the prioritization of the people who are considered white and the devaluation, exploitation, and exclusion of people racialized as non-white.” At the same time, anti-racism involves shifting power from those who are white to those who are black. “Anti-racism examines and disrupts the power imbalances between racialized and non-racialized people (white people), to shift power away from those who have been historically over-advantaged and towards people of color, especially black people.”

When applied to medical care, these ideals, of course, can carry weighty consequences. As was reported in January 2022, New York, Minnesota, and Utah issued guidance for allocating Covid-related monoclonal antibodies that heavily prioritized racial and ethnic minorities.

The nation’s universities are the epicenter of DEIfication.

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