Intersectionality and its offspring Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) enforcement programs are destroying one of the foundations of American exceptionalism: the role of the individual.
Merriam-Webster defines the poisonous theory of intersectionality as follows: the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.
Kimberly Crenshaw coined the term in 1989. At the academic level, the concept is supposed to explain certain experiences in the lives of non-majority groups. It tries to define life according to one’s group discrimination profile. The theory is bogus because it completely ignores the individual and his/her life. Tiger Woods is black but one would be hard-pressed to imagine that his life experiences growing up are in any way similar to those of a black youth from an inner city whose father is in jail and whose brother was killed by a gang. But intersectionality is like a moral steamroller that simplifies life into groups of oppressed and oppressors, good guys and bad, so the two black men would be thrown into the same box. Oppressed groups can never be oppressors or racists and the opposite for the oppressor groups. If the demented theory had stayed in the university, then the worst that society would have suffered would be some baristas whose worldview was ridiculous. Unfortunately, the theory and its peddlers (think Ibram X. Kendi) have infiltrated virtually every aspect of American life and culture. Below is just a sampling of the failures in our country that have sprung out of this academic Frankenstein theory.
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Universities tolerate race-separated graduations and genocidal marches. The military worries about pronouns and drag queen story hour instead of the Chinese army and recruiting failures. The border is wide open, and millions pour in and displace veterans, students, and locals for governmental largess, space and protection. United Airlines cares less about passenger safety than about the color or sexual orientation of its future pilots. Hollywood feels compelled to make unwatchable movies that get the DEI stamp of approval but do not bring in audiences. Professional athletes take a knee for the anthem of a country in which they earn millions. And the list goes on and on. This factually wrong and destructive theory has jumped the university fence to ruin nearly every facet of American society.
The fundamental problem with intersectionality—other than it being completely wrong and ultimately bigoted—is that it looks at people as some cog in a much larger group machine. The United States, in its founding, put its future on the shoulders of the individual. However large the country would be, it would be individuals who would make a difference, and the government’s role was to encourage the individual through property rights, freedoms and opportunity. A very small but telling change to US patent law was made during the Obama administration. Since the time of Jefferson, the owner of a US patent was the one who could prove that he or she was the first to invent. In Europe, the owner is the first to file for patent protection. In the vast majority of cases, the first to invent is also the first to file, but not always. Large companies like IBM can file thousands of patent applications each year, even on things which they have not yet reduced to practice. The Jeffersonian system protected the small-time inventor, the American tinkerer. If he could prove in court through notebooks and the like that he invented that billion dollar invention before the big company had, then he rightfully owned the patent. This arrangement gave great power to the individual inventor, the backbone of American entrepreneurship. Obama aligned US policy to that of Europe (which has no startup or risk-taking culture) and tipped the scales towards big companies and away from individuals.
I am currently reading a biography about Admiral Hyman Rickover. Admiral Rickover was born in a small shtetl in Poland in 1900. He moved to the US in 1906 and ended up in Chicago. He pushed his studies and worked on the side to make money for his family. With expanded Naval Academy openings due to World War I, he was accepted into Annapolis just over a decade after reaching the US with no knowledge of English. At the Naval Academy, he was an outsider. He was introverted and spent most of his time studying (he hung a blanket in the shower so he could study at night without waking up others). On one occasion, he took the last piece of bread on the table, and another plebe said that it was no surprise as Rickover was a Jew. The issue was settled in a gym, where the antisemite pummeled the weaker Rickover and the issue was finished. Rickover moved up in rank and asked to be transferred to an engineering assignment. The Navy eventually sent him to Oak Ridge, Tennessee to learn about nuclear power. Admiral Rickover learned the trade and went on to build the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus. He also built the first civilian reactor but is immortalized as the father of the nuclear navy. Dozens of surface ships and submarines roam the high seas today with energy from safe reactors that are the products of Rickover’s exacting engineering and production standards. He served for 63 years, longer than anyone in any US service.
If Rickover had been around today rather than a hundred years ago, he would have been dropped off in the “Jewish oppressor” bin of intersectionality. His being an immigrant would be immaterial, as he was the wrong type of immigrant. Only certain types of immigrants deserve American generosity, such as NY Mayor Adams’ plan to give illegal aliens credit cards with $10,000 inside and no oversight as to their use. Today’s Rickover would have been overlooked by the Navy; his exceptional engineering skills and personal drive would have been chalked up to white privilege and not to an amazing work ethic and endless hours of studying and effort. A far less talented person with the right DEI score would have been given the Nautilus to build and would have blamed any future explosion on the white contractors who did not make the reactor according to his drawings. Rickover lived in a period where hard work, determination, and skills could get you two Congressional gold medals, four Navy stars, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Time Magazine cover, two submarines in your name and an Annapolis hall with your name on it. To his dying day, Rickover thanked the country that took him and his family in and gave him so much. He saw his efforts to build the nuclear navy as his way to pay back the US by keeping her safe.
How great were Rickover’s accomplishments? The USS Nautilus today is a museum in Connecticut. 70 years after it took to the seas, you can visit it, but you cannot enter the reactor compartment. Even today, it remains a tightly-kept secret.
Intersectionality and its banal offshoots of white privilege, white fragility, and the like completely ignore the individual. By its system, a white doctor who spends his whole career saving black lives is still a racist and probably has some white knight fantasies. America was made great by millions of individuals of every background, each contributing what he or she had to give. Our judgments, if they need to be made, should be on the individual and not some group to which he or she is nominally associated.
We filed our alumni lawsuit against Harvard yesterday. Its “plummeting reputation” (NY Times) is in large part due to buying into the fake and destructive ideology of intersectionality. For the US to succeed, it will need to jettison DEI and put the focus back on the individual and meritocratic advancement. It worked in the past and it can work again going forward.
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