Whenever one leans into something, it behooves them to consider all the while whether the day will come when they will regret having done so. I went from supporting affirmative action to being skeptical of it before realizing it’s a bad idea. The skepticism piece is the key part of the step. Sometimes you come back to where you were. Sometimes you find yourself on the other side of things.
However, even when I supported affirmative action, I opposed quota systems either explicit or implicit. DEI is an instantiation of an implicit quota system. But it’s worse than that. DEI is a system of tokenism, where members of various tribes, inherited and inescapable or invented and stepped into, are selected to sit on the court of power to achieve a type of hegemony characteristic of imperial regimes. Because individuals are picked as tokens, aptitude and talent are neglected and mediocrity results. That’s the practical effect of diversity. In principle, diversity is antithetical to the ethic of individualism, which is the core of any free society. Diversity in inimical to individualism because it subsumes concrete persons into abstract groups.
Equity has its place, such as in the recognition that treating men and women equally requires recognizing that there are group differences (e.g., sports), but as a euphemism for equality of outcome, it has no place in a free society. See Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s “Harrison Bergeron” for a dramatic illustration of the problem. The quick version: mediocrity (again). Inclusion of identities, real or made up, demands not only the exclusion of certain opinions but submission to politics and ideologies that individuals may not support. In other words, inclusion is characteristic of authoritarian and illiberal desire. Compelled speech is a good useful example. While proper nouns are arbitrary, pronouns indicate real things.
In local news, on Wednesday, the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents changed its stance on DEI, approving a previously rejected deal on diversity positions and salary increases with an 11-6 vote. Just four days earlier, the board had turned down the same deal but succumbed to political and financial pressures, ultimately accepting the agreement facilitated by UW System President Jay Rothman and Assembly Speaker Republican Robin Vos. Amy Bogost, the board vice president, emphasized the significant challenges confronting the universities as a driving force behind the decision. Three members, including Regent President Karen Walsh and UW-Parkside student Regent Jennifer Staton, altered their votes in favor of the agreement.
“You can attempt to justify it, that these roles are going to be reallocated or we’re going to improve the system in the future,” Regent Evan Brenkus said before his colleagues flip flopped. “But the truth is this: You are selling our minorities out for millions of dollars.” Many of my colleagues agree with Regent Brenkus. But there’s no selling out of minorities here. This was a compromise (which doesn’t go nearly far enough in eliminating DEI) that will allow some relief from the group-based politics and policies pushed by the Democratic Party. Vos expressed my sentiments when he said, “It’s a shame they’ve denied employees their raises and the almost $1 billion investment that would have been made across the UW system, all so they could continue their ideological campaign to force students to believe only one viewpoint is acceptable on campus.” To be sure, the Regents came around, but let’s not forget how progressives feel about that matter. Without Republicans willing to stand on principle, this madness continues unabated.
We all know what this is about. The professional-managerial class is determined to quash attempts to open the system to viewpoint diversity and restore equality in the system. They’re so committed to woke progressive ideology that they were prepared to deny workers in the system a much needed raise in the face of Bidenomics. It’s frustrating to be forced to suffer on account of ideology. My salary was being held hostage to crackpot ideas. By relenting, 800 million dollars is now available for employee salary increases and construction projects. As part of the agreement, 43 diversity positions across campuses will undergo restructuring, and the overall job count within the UW System will remain unchanged until 2026.
Like I said, that doesn’t go nearly far enough. The Republican position was moderate to a fault. DEI should be uprooted entirely from higher education. There is no place in public colleges and universities for identitarian politics. No faculty position should be based on any ideological or political considerations. What needs to happen is the emplacement of a recruiting system that prevents the discrimination of applicants based on viewpoint. The reason why the college and universities are so woke is in part because administrators and faculty screen applicants based on politics. Another big piece is that conservatives do not feel anthropology, sociology, etc., are welcoming to their political leanings, and so they avoid those fields. They’re right. So, woke in, woke out.
Here you can see how woke education has fucked up young Americans. Rufo has highlighted the 18-24 category. Nearly 80 percent of this cohort think white people are oppressors and should be passed over for opportunities in education and occupation. Look also at the 25-34 cohort. There it’s split. That’s bad enough. Taken together, tens of millions of Americans believe something that is empirically false and destructive to equality and freedom. Moreover, as we have seen, this ideology induces acts of harassment, intimidation, and violence against whites, especially Jews, and Asians. It is also associated with widespread mental illness and self-harm, on which the medical-industrial complex is all too eager to capitalize (literally).
This is no accident. This is the work of DEI. DEI is an anti-American/anti-Western project to disorganize the proletariat and prepare our youth for incorporation in the corporate state regime as dutiful subalterns, either professional-managerial types or docile bodies. DEI does this not only by turning non-whites against whites (and so-called white-adjacents) but by turning whites against themselves. It’s a project to engender in successive generations loathing of self and society.
DEI benefits the ruling elite and the professional-managerial class that operates the levers of corporate power, i.e., the administrative state and technocratic apparatus. This is the soft fascism of progressive corporatism and neoliberalism, what Sheldon Wolin called “inverted totalitarianism,” which is rapidly deteriorating into the hard fascism of the police state, the instruments for which have already been emplaced. The Democratic Party is the operational tip of the project’s political-ideological spear.
Concerning the alchemy of social justice, here are some recent essays you might find useful: The New Left’s War on Imaginary Structures of Oppression in Order to Hide the Real Ones; Race-Based Discrimination as a Model for Social Justice; Frantz Fanon and the Regressive Ethics of the Wretched: Rationalizing Envy and Resentment—and Violent Praxis; Why the Woke Hate the West; Woke Progressivism and the Party of God; The Peril of Left-Wing Identitarianism.
freedom and reason 