The radical Left has spent years insisting that racial disparity in American life proves the same, evil thing: America is systemically racist, meritocracy is a sham, and the solution is more diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy.
A recent Medium article by leftist activist Edward Richardson on Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action President Kevin Roberts illustrates this perfectly, as the hack attempts to paint Roberts as out of touch.
Roberts, Richardson claims, is wrong to argue America has progressed beyond the need for DEI because disparities still exist in wealth, homeownership, and education. He labels Roberts’ argument “ideological” while presenting his own as “empirical,” as though spewing random demographics onto the page somehow validates racist DEI policies.
Such arguments were the Left’s bread and butter as they conquered many of America’s institutions in past decades. Find a gap. Declare oppression. Demand radical corrective measures.
Different college-attainment rates or different representations in a profession are alleged problems that need solving with more DEI. An answer is decided before a question is even asked.
That rhetorical sleight of hand is the foundation of the entire DEI project.
Statistical differences between groups reveal nothing about the root causes of those gaps. There’s no proof that discrimination is the cause, nor that DEI, racist hiring targets, and ideologically biased training sessions are the solutions.
Yet Richardson makes that asinine leap. After listing racial differences in wealth, education, and homeownership, he concludes “DEI programs are not optional — they are necessary.” The evidence offered for DEI’s necessity is simply the continued existence of unequal outcomes.
How convenient.
If racial groups do not reach the same outcomes, institutions are told to manipulate hiring, promotion, admissions, contracting, and workplace culture until the numbers look sufficiently “equitable.”
Put another way, Richardson’s goal is not true equality but social engineering via bureaucratic blight delivered via DEI.
The entire DEI project depends on melting Americans into formless racial categories, then assigning moral meaning to the slop. Individual achievements disappear into a morass of group averages. Merit cannot exist in such a system because differences in effort and achievement are obstacles to equal outcomes.
The Supreme Court directly confronted this logic in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, rejecting race-conscious university admissions and holding that racial classifications must satisfy the Constitution’s equal-protection requirements.
Such principles of equal treatment used to be common knowledge even among kindergartners, but now a buffoon can type up a screed on Medium arguing it’s okay to be racist if it’s for a good cause!
And before one assumes Richardson is only racist against whites, he portrays Roberts’ opposition to the racial spoils system as a declaration that blacks no longer “need help,” a deeply paternalistic view of minorities that underlies DEI.
Blacks do not need an army of HR bureaucrats treating them like checkmarks too stupid to get ahead on their own, nor do they need universities endlessly lowering standards for them.
They deserve the same thing that each American, regardless of skin tone, deserves. That is, equal treatment under the law and the freedom to succeed based on their own merits.
Yet instead of doing the bare minimum of ensuring all Americans have the freedom to achieve these goals, DEI bureaucrats pursue aggressive social engineering policies. Why institute proven solutions when foisting mandatory seminars led by racist activists is so much easier?
And then, when the desired racial outcomes still fail to materialize, claim Americans didn’t work hard enough to end racism and demand more DEI.
It’s a total racket.
Richardson calls Roberts’ position ideological poison and his own empirical truth. But pointing at a gap and shouting racism is not proof of anything. And dividing Americans by race will never be a credible answer to racial division.