DEI WTF?

So this week we have had the pleasure of witnessing a nearly 10% drop in the stock markets due to Trump’s bizarre and idiotic tariffs, and then huge nationwide protests that involved five million people. It looks like the regime’s cruelty and incompetence are already causing a major backlash, which is a good thing.

I want to focus today on the regime’s fixation on what it calls “DEI”, because I think it embodies elements of cruelty, incompetence and also corruption. It also interests me because of the psychological and spiritual questions it raises. Why are certain people so angry about what they call “DEI”, and what does it say about them and the way they see the world? I’m trying to understand their point of view because I believe all human beings are essentially very similar, and even if I don’t share their perspective I should be able to comprehend it.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives sprouted up in response to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Universities, corporations and government bureaucracies wanted to be seen as responsive to social pressure. This is all part of the long story of American race relations. We have had protests, progress and backlash going back to the beginning of the slave trade, up to and including the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights era, Affirmative Action, School Desegregation, the Obama presidency, and the Trump backlash. DEI programs represent an attempt to ensure that minorities are able to share in the benefits of American society, and the anti-DEI movement seeks to deny that racism exists, or in its more extreme form, that it ever existed.

If you take anti-DEI activists at their word, they see DEI as “reverse-racism” by minorities against white people, and they are just trying to bring about a “colorblind” society. They complain that giving “preference” to minorities in hiring leads to the unfair employment of un- or under-qualified people. These kind of arguments are familiar from the debate over affirmative action which I remember from my college years in the late 1980’s.

But today’s right wing, consistent with the MAGA movement, take their grievances to another level. They’ve labeled any type of recognition of minorities or women is “DEI”. They’ve moved to quash things like Black History Month, deleted thousands of government website pages on subjects like the Tuskegee airmen and Jackie Robinson, and circulated memos telling bureaucrats not to use words they consider “woke” including “immigrant”, “women”, “hispanic”, and “racism”. I’m not joking: you can find a full list here: https://pen.org/banned-words-list/

So it seems to me like the goal isn’t to prevent racism or sexism, but to pretend it doesn’t exist and has never existed. This is where it gets weird. As far as I can tell, they claim that they’re erasing the achievements of minorities and women because they’re not “real” achievements, i.e. if these people were white men then we wouldn’t consider what they’ve done to be significant. So for example, the first black baseball player to compete in the Major Leagues shouldn’t be recognized unless he set some kind of record. Just playing in the Major Leagues isn’t a big deal.

Of course, this kind of thinking totally ignores WHY it’s a big deal - because racism prevented blacks from playing in the Major Leagues for decades. The goal is to deny that racism and sexism has ever existed, or that it continues to exist. And that seems delusional and crazy.

Obviously, racism and sexism exist and continue to exist. And I have to wonder about people who claim otherwise. What makes them want to deny other people’s experiences? Look, as a white man I realize that I’ve benefited from “privilege”, and the historical oppression of non-white, non-male people. And that sucks. But I think it’s good to be aware of that fact, because it makes me not want to make the same mistakes or commit the same evils that my ancestors did. And I believe the study of oppression is an interesting lens through which to view history, but it’s not the only one.

Psychologically and spiritually, the whole “anti-DEI” movement is based on denial of human suffering. Suffering is difficult, and Buddhism teaches that human being always try to avoid suffering and move towards pleasure. Denial of suffering is natural - who wants to feel bad? Other people’s suffering is also difficult to bear. I’m guilty of telling other people to suck it up because I didn’t want their suffering to make me feel bad. And even worse, what is someone else tells us that their suffering is our fault? That tends to make us extremely defensive, right? Our first response is often to blame the person who is suffering for their own plight.

I think many conservatives don’t understand why “leftists” want to focus on past and present suffering, and they feel like they are being blamed. I get that. But the correct response, in my view, is to acknowledge past and present wrongs and try to NOT be racist. When Elon Musk told the German people to “get over the past”, he misses the point. Pretending the holocaust never existed makes it MORE likely that something similar could happen again. In the same way, acknowledging (not denying) that racism and sexism have cause incredibly amounts of harm makes it more likely that we can be better than our ancestors.

Acknowledging suffering leads to compassion - this is the basic idea of Buddhism. It doesn’t mean you can’t still call bullshit on people who blame all of their problems on external forces. Those people are in denial too. And they can do harm. During the Black Lives Matter protests in Madison, I remember a protest leader saying that all the businesses lining State Street needed to pay for racism. And I thought that was pretty stupid. Many of the small business owners on State Street are also minorities who own ethnic restaurants. Beware of anyone who tells you to inflict violence on others because of their pain, even if their pain is legitimate.

So to sum up, I believe this desire on the part of certain white people to delete the history of women and minorities stems from a desire not to acknowledge other people’s suffering. Without the ability to acknowledge suffering, past and present, we lose the ability to feel compassion. And without compassion, humans become capable of monstrous inhumanity. While it’s true that all of us lack compassion at times, and we can all work on this skill, it’s also true that our government is now led by a movement that has made lack of compassion (“fuck your feelings”) part of its brand. And we’re seeing the results.