Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs aren’t exactly new. They’ve been on the scene in business for some time but just went nameless for a time. For decades, corporations and universities have wanted their image to look like something out of a rainbow coalition postcard, and while there’s nothing wrong with having a diverse workforce, hiring for the sake of diversity has had demonstrably negative effects.
It’s what happens when you hire based on identity and not on merit.
(READ: If You Want to Collapse a Civilization, Just Institute DEI Initiatives)
When DEI programs came on the scene and gave this method of hiring a name and an institution, the failures it brought upon whatever it touched made the concept toxic in terms of public relations. Anything it was attached to, such as the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards being forced on companies, also became hot to the touch.
As Bonchie reported on Monday, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is currently having a bad case of the sads because Florida Governor Ron DeSantis broke his favorite ESG toy. At least, he blames DeSantis. In reality, the reason ESG and DEI are in such a bad way is that these programs are everything wrong with society today. It suppresses success, encourages racist and sexist hiring practices, and reinforces a radical leftist belief that this is a racist country that requires correction by rich white people who think they know better.
But let’s be clear. Fink can still see through his black eye. He is, at the end of the day, a radical leftist and radical leftists don’t just give up on an idea when it fails. Instead, they’ll just go to the drawing board and find a new way to keep pushing it, just with a different strategy.
What kind of strategy can we expect? We might have a very strong clue if we look at universities, where radical leftist experimentation is happening 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
According to Campus Reform, the University of Arkansas is dissolving its DEI program, but before we celebrate, understand that what we’re looking at isn’t a smoldering ruin but a strategy to divide and conquer:
But Associate Vice Chancellor for University Relations Mark Rushing seemed to indicate that the scattered employees would not have the same responsibilities they had under the DEI division. He told Inside Higher Ed that their new responsibilities would “now support all students and employees.” Nor would they have their performance measured by DEI metrics, but they would be fully incorporated into their respective offices– indicating that DEI would become secondary, or even voluntary.
DEI activists also disagreed on what the University’s move meant. One DEI researcher told Inside Higher Ed that cutting back on centralized DEI administrations could not only improve outcomes, but shield them.
In short, DEI employees will be placed inside other departments and continue the work they were doing, just now doing so from within and without the now toxic DEI department attached to them. They can operate with DEI intent but without the DEI label.
It’s a smart strategy. Instead of giving people a focal point to fight against, you hide your agents in every department, making it far more complicated to discover the source of the problem. Instead of fighting one battle, people looking to eliminate the DEI problem must now fight many. Any attempts by a state-governing body to eliminate DEI from universities can do so all day, but the DEI programs will still continue outside of any official capacity.
In the corporate world, this might take on a different look. A corporation may say they’re dissolving their DEI departments but the employees who worked at these departments may not ever see a pink slip. They’ll likely be reassigned to different departments where they continue their work under a different title. The public might believe they’re stepping away from these toxic programs, but their ESG score (or whatever Fink will relabel it as) doesn’t go down.
It’s slimy, it’s shady, and it fits the radical left’s playbook perfectly.
