Whenever social progress occurs in a society there inevitably follows a backlash.
I will start with House Minority
Leader Hakeem Jeffries speech defining and supporting DEI:
Diversity,
equity and inclusion are American values. The motto of the US is E Pluribus
Unum. Out of many, one. That’s diversity. The 14th Amendment provides equal
protection under the law. That’s equity. We pledge allegiance to the flag. In
that pledge, we promise, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice
for all. A-L-L. That’s inclusion. Not complicated. Diversity, equity and
inclusion are American values. It’s about economic opportunity. It’s about
merit for everyone, based on what you know, not who you know.”
The DEI movement towards
fairer hiring practices for ethnic and gender minorities got a huge boost
following the death of George Floyd. The backlash started immediately with
claims that the protesters were organized by Antifa.
Ideally DEI means that
if a member of a minority has equal or better qualifications for a job then
they should be seriously considered or even preferentially hired. The majority,
long used to preferential treatment in the workforce, perceives this as a
threat to them and considers it a form of reverse discrimination. The
resentment of this majority led to the MAGA policy of anti-DEI.
At its worst the
anti-DEI movement considers any member of a minority in an important position
to be a “DEI hire” (there was even an accusation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett
being a DEI hire after she voted with the liberal justices on a recent Supreme
Court case). Implied in this accusation is that no woman, person of color, gay
or trans person could possibly be qualified for such a position. Such
accusations, such as Trump’s knee-jerk reaction to the January 29 helicopter-plane
collision in Washington, assumes that anyone hired under a DEI policy would be
unqualified for their job.
That of course is rarely
if ever the case. More than doubling the pool of potential employees by
including minorities necessarily increases the quality of the hires rather than
decreasing it. When Norway mandated a minimum 40% of corporate board members for
both genders, the qualifications for all board members increased.
Imagine you are tasked
with hiring 25 new law graduates for your firm. Of the 100 that applied you
eliminate 50 because they are women, 15 because they are black or brown, and 10
because they are gay or trans. It’s highly unlikely the 25 that are left are
the best qualified.
When Katanji Brown
Jackson was nominated for the Supreme Court in 2022, Joe Biden had said that he
would pick a Black woman. That qualifies her as a DEI hire. But that doesn’t
mean she wasn’t qualified for the position. Here is what the Senate Committee
on the Judiciary wrote about her:
Judge
Ketanji Brown Jackson is an exceptionally well-qualified jurist whose
credentials, experience, and evenhanded approach to the administration of
justice make her an outstanding candidate for the Supreme Court.
At the time I imagined having a conversation with a
Republican supporter who objected to her nomination, arguing that the
nomination should have been made on merit rather than gender or ethnicity. My
rebuttal would have been that Brown is more highly qualified than any of
Trump’s three nominations, so in that case why didn’t Trump nominate her?
The Republicans who are busy eradicating every remnant of DEI
from the federal government want Americans to think that they are replacing it
with merit. Looking at Trump’s horribly unqualified nominations for secretary
and other posts, and the quality of the people they are replacing (e.g. Fox
News host Pete Hegseth replacing Four-star General Lloyd Austin for Secretary
of Defense) quickly disillusions one of that notion.
Rather, they are replacing DEI with their own version, what I
call SCAWM for Straight Cis Abled White Men. To give credit where it’s due,
there are several women in Trump’s cabinet, and one at least (Attorney General Pam
Bondi) has some experience in her position, and FBI Director Kash Patel’s
parents were immigrants from India. But
here in Trump’s cabinet the deciding quality in the candidates is unswerving
loyalty to Donald Trump and a willingness to break the law should that be
required of them.
Let’s start an anti-SCAWM movement.
Sources:
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/judge-ketanji-brown-jackson
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