With rapidity and stealth, the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) ideology has come to replace the classical liberal values of merit, excellence, and intelligence (MEI).
The time for a national debate over the conflicting values of DEI and MEI is long overdue in the academy, professional organizations, media, government and large technology companies. DEI bureaucracies have mushroomed and many operate behind the scenes with ambiguous DEI definitions, goals and policies.
Who originated DEI? Why DEI and not another set of laudable values? Does "equity" refer to opportunity or result? How do those of mixed race fit in diversity assessments? Is the goal of racial representation proportionate to that of the population, the history of marginalization, or something else? DEI terms are defined so obtusely that they can refer to a spectrum of policies from mere platitudes to radical agendas including litmus tests and racial quotas.
In its most radical forms, DEI is derivative of neo-Marxist identitarian ideologies that attribute virtually all average group differences-from arrest rates to medical school admissions-to systemic discrimination. However, average group differences in outcomes can reflect a variety of factors as shown in Thomas Sowell's Social Justice Fallacies.
DEI is a significant cultural and ideological revolution, one that has been accomplished with almost no debate or operationalization of terminology. The unexamined acceptance of DEI, however defined, is surprising in a free society where critics are encouraged to challenge and debate significant social changes. DEI means many different things to many different people, but one thing remains constant-DEI backers, left wing media, and bureaucrats continue to avoid debating their critics.
Just as Alabama segregationist governor George Wallace never debated Martin Luther King, DEI backers with institutional power show no enthusiasm for defending their ideas in real debates. Without vigorous open and civil debate, DEI bureaucracies will continue to impose doctrinal training programs, litmus tests, censorship and discrimination. Unless this is challenged, we risk entering a new era of institutionalized McCarthyism and the demise of a free and prosperous multi-cultural America.
Corey Lee Wilson was raised an atheist by his liberal Playboy Bunny mother, has three Anglo-Latino siblings, a brother who died of AIDS, a biracial daughter, baptized a Protestant by his conservative grandparents, attended temple with his Jewish foster parents, baptized again as a Catholic for his first Filipina wife, attends Buddhist ceremonies with his second Thai wife, became an agnostic on his own free will for most of his life, and is a lifetime independent voter.Corey felt the sting of intellectual humility by repeating the 4th grade and attended 18 different schools (17 in California and one in the Bahamas) before putting himself through college at Mt. San Antonio College (without parents) and Cal Poly Pomona University (while on triple secret probation). Named Who's Who of American College Students in 1984, he received a BS in Economics (summa cum laude) and won his fraternity's most prestigious undergraduate honor, the Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity's Shideler Award, both in 1985.As a satirist and fraternity man, Corey started Fratire Publishing in 2012 and transformed the fiction "fratire" genre to a respectable and viewpoint diverse non-fiction genre promoting practical knowledge and wisdom to help everyday people navigate safely through the many hazards of life. In 2019, he founded the SAPIENT Being to help promote freedom of speech, viewpoint diversity, intellectual humility and most importantly advance sapience in America's students and campuses.
