{"id":1151128,"date":"2023-02-14T17:10:39","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T22:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/the-sudden-dominance-of-the-diversity-industrial-complex\/1151128\/"},"modified":"2023-02-14T17:10:39","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T22:10:39","slug":"the-sudden-dominance-of-the-diversity-industrial-complex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/the-sudden-dominance-of-the-diversity-industrial-complex\/1151128\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sudden Dominance Of The Diversity Industrial Complex"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"ftpimagefix\" style=\"float:left\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/sudden-dominance-diversity-industrial-complex\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" data-entity-type=\"file\" data-entity-uuid=\"d7daa106-234d-443a-9009-54b4a8435d95\" class=\"inline-images image-style-inline-images\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.zerohedge.com\/s3fs-public\/styles\/inline_image_mobile\/public\/inline-images\/565837.png?itok=7-G3W-sP\" alt=\"\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p><span class=\"field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden\">The Sudden Dominance Of The Diversity Industrial Complex<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item\">\n<p><em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearwire.com\/articles\/2023\/02\/14\/the_sudden_dominance_of_the_diversity_industrial_complex_880202.html\" rel=\"noopener\">Authored by Thomas Hackett via RealClear Wire<\/a>,<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Little more than a decade ago, DEI was just another arcane acronym, a clustering of three ideas, each to be weighed and evaluated against other societal values<\/strong>. The terms <strong>diversity, equity, and inclusion<\/strong> weren\u2019t yet being used in the singular, as one all-inclusive, non-negotiable moral imperative. Nor had they coalesced into a bureaucratic juggernaut running roughshod over every aspect of national life.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>They are now.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Seemingly in unison, and with almost no debate, <strong>nearly every major American institution \u2013 including federal, state, and local governments, universities and public schools, hospitals, insurance, media and technology companies and major retail brands \u2013 has agreed that the DEI infrastructure is essential to the nation\u2019s proper functioning<\/strong>. From Amazon to Walmart, most major corporations have created and staffed DEI offices within their human resources bureaucracy. So have sanitation departments, police departments, physics departments, and the departments of agriculture, commerce, defense, education and energy. Organizations that once argued against DEI now feel compelled to institute DEI training and hire DEI officers. So have organizations that are already richly diverse, such as the National Basketball Association and the National Football League. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Many of these offices in turn work with a sprawling network of DEI consulting firms, training outfits, trade organizations and accrediting associations that support their efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFive years ago, if you said \u2018DEI,\u2019 people would\u2019ve thought you were talking about the Digital Education Initiative,\u201d Robert Sellers, University of Michigan\u2019s first chief diversity officer, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/campus-life\/were-not-the-same-institution-we-were-five-years-ago-trotter-multicultural-center-hosts-celebration-of-dei-strategic-plan\/\" rel=\"noopener\">said in 2020.<\/a> \u201cFive years ago, if you said DEI was a core value of this institution, you would have an argument.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Diversity, equity and inclusion is\u00a0an intentionally vague term used to describe sanctioned favoritism in the name of social justice.<\/strong> Its\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusion\" rel=\"noopener\">Wikipedia entry<\/a>\u00a0indicates a lack of agreement on the definition, while\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/diversity,%20equity%20and%20inclusion\" rel=\"noopener\">Merriam-Webster.com<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.apstylebook.com\/help?query=Diversity%2C+Equity+and+Inclusion&amp;button=\" rel=\"noopener\">Associated Press online style guide<\/a>\u00a0have no entry (the AP offers\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prnewsonline.com\/ap-style-diversity-equity-inclusion\/\" rel=\"noopener\">guidance on related terms<\/a>).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Yet however defined, it&#8217;s clear DEI is now much more than an academic craze or corporate affectation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s an industry in every sense of the word,\u201d says Peter Schuck, professor emeritus of law at Yale. \u201cMy suspicion is that many of the offices don\u2019t do what they say. But they\u2019re hiring people, giving them titles and pretty good money. I don\u2019t think they do nothing.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s difficult to know how large the DEI Industrial Complex has become. The Bureau of Labor Statistics hasn\u2019t assessed its size. Two decades ago, MIT professor Thomas Kochan estimated that diversity was already an $8 billion-a-year industry. Yet along with the addition of equity, inclusion, and like terms, the industry has surely grown an order of magnitude larger. Six years ago, McKinsey and Company estimated that American companies were spending <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mckinsey.com\/featured-insights\/gender-equality\/focusing-on-what-works-for-workplace-diversity\" rel=\"noopener\">$8 billion a year on diversity training<\/a> alone. DEI hiring and training have only accelerated in the years since. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the scope and rapidity of institutional embrace,\u201d <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/the-identity-cult-and-the-mass-conversion-of-our-institutions\" rel=\"noopener\">writes Marti Gurri,<\/a> a former CIA analyst who studies media and politics, \u201c<strong>nothing like it has transpired since the conversion of <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Constantine_the_Great\" rel=\"noopener\">Constantine<\/a><\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Yet in our time, no Roman Emperor has demanded a complete cultural transformation. No law was passed mandating DEI enactment. No federal court ruling has required its implementation. There was no clarion call on the order of President Dwight D. Eisenhower\u2019s \u201cmilitary industrial complex\u201d warning. No genuine public crisis matched the scale of the response. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The sources of this transformation are both deep and fairly recent. On one level, they can be traced back to the egalitarian movements that have long shaped American history \u2013 from the nation\u2019s founding, through the Civil War and Reconstruction to the battles for women\u2019s suffrage, the civil rights movement, and same-sex marriage. In other ways, the rapid transformation can seem no more explicable than an eccentric fashion trend, like men of the late 18th century wearing periwigs. However, a few pivot points of recent history bent its arc in DEI\u2019s direction. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>The push for affirmative action is the most obvious influence,<\/strong> a program first conceived during the Reconstruction era but then abandoned for nearly a century. Although triumphs for social justice, the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights acts of the late 1950s and 1960s didn\u2019t stop discrimination; the country would need to take more affirmative steps toward assisting minority groups and achieving more equitable outcomes, proponents argued. A controversial policy from the start (with the Supreme Court expected to curb its use in college admissions this term), affirmative action was further complicated by immigration reforms that allowed for more non-European immigrants, setting off a seismic demographic shift that continues to reverberate. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>The diversity movement of the early 1990s was in part an attempt to capitalize on the new multicultural reality. <\/strong>Stressing individual and institutional benefits rather than moral failings, early corporate diversity training programs hewed to traditional values of equality and meritocracy. Creating a diverse workplace, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/1990\/03\/from-affirmative-action-to-affirming-diversity\" rel=\"noopener\">R. Roosevelt Thomas wrote in the Harvard Business Review, in 1990,<\/a> \u201cshould always be a question of pure competence and character unmuddled by birth.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And in many ways it appears to have worked. Just look at the tech industry, where immigrants from East and South Asia have flourished. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.workingimmigrants.com\/2021\/04\/the-amazing-educational-success-of-nigerian-americans\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Nigerian immigrants are perhaps the most successful group in America, with nearly two-thirds holding college degrees. <\/a>Doors have opened wide to the once-closeted LGBT community. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But in other ways, the recent explosion of DEI initiatives reflects shortcomings of earlier efforts, as suggested by the headline of 2016 article in the Harvard Business Review, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2016\/07\/why-diversity-programs-fail\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cWhy Diversity Fails.\u201d<\/a> Even as high-achieving first- and second-generation immigrants have thrived in certain industries, particularly STEM fields, people of color remain scarce in senior institutional positions. There is also the deeper issue of what many in the post-George Floyd era have taken to calling systemic or structural racism, citing major disparities for black Americans in education, healthcare, homeownership, arrests, incarceration, and household wealth.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>More recently, a spate of widely publicized police killings of unarmed African Americans has galvanized a growing belief, especially among progressives and especially since Donald Trump\u2019s election,<strong> that America is an irredeemably racist nation<\/strong>. In 2020, in the wake of the Floyd murder and in advance of a fraught election, a moral panic set in. Having increased their ranks, social justice entrepreneurs and bureaucrats were poised to implement an ideological agenda and compound their institutional power.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Although no hard numbers exist on the exact size of the industry, the \u201cDEIfication\u201d of America\u201d is clear.<\/strong> From Rochester, New York, to San Diego, Calif., cash-strapped municipalities have found the funds to staff DEI offices. Startups and small companies that once relied on their own employees to promote an inclusive culture now feel compelled to hire diversity consultants and sensitivity trainers to set them straight. The field is so vast it has born a sub-field:<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/11\/20\/style\/diversity-consultants.html\" rel=\"noopener\"> recruiting agencies for DEI consultants.<\/a> So-called \u201cauthenticity readers\u201d tell publishing companies what <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/01\/26\/opinion\/american-dirt-book-publishing.html\" rel=\"noopener\">are acceptable depictions<\/a> of marginalized groups and<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/online\/2017\/11\/01\/the-problem-with-problematic\/\" rel=\"noopener\"> who is entitled to tell their stories<\/a>. Master\u2019s degree and certificate programs in DEI leadership at schools like Cornell, Georgetown, and Yale offer new and lucrative bureaucratic careers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At Ohio State University, for example, the average DEI staff salary is $78,000, according to public information gathered by economist Mark J. Perry of the American Enterprise Institute \u2013 about $103,000 with fringe benefits. Not to be outdone by its Big Ten conference rival, the University of Michigan pays its diversity officers $94,000 on average \u2013 about $124,000 with benefits. Until he retired from the position last summer, Michigan\u2019s chief diversity officer, Robert Sellers, was paid over $431,000 a year. His wife, Tabbye Chavous, now has the job, at the vice provost rank and a salary of $380,000. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For smaller organizations that cannot afford a full-time equity officer, there are other options for shoring up social justice bona fides \u2013 namely, working with any of the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wholewhale.com\/tips\/helpful-list-of-dei-companies-and-consultants\/\" rel=\"noopener\">hundreds of DEI consulting agencies<\/a> that have risen like mushrooms after a night\u2019s rain, most of them led by <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/BIPOC\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cBIPOC\u201d<\/a> millennials. With some firms, the social justice goals are unmistakable. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/racialequityinstitute.org\/\" rel=\"noopener\">The Racial Equity Institute<\/a> is \u201ccommitted to the work of anti-racist transformation\u201d and challenging \u201cpatterns of power\u201d on behalf of big-name clients like the Harvard Business School, Ben &amp; Jerry\u2019s, and the American Civil Liberties Union. With others, the appeal has less to do with social change than <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hello-collective.com\/\" rel=\"noopener\">exploring marketing opportunities and creating a \u201c&#8221;with-it\u201d company culture,<\/a> where progressive politics complement the office foosball tables and kombucha on tap.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mckinsey.com\/featured-insights\/diversity-and-inclusion\/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cDiversity wins!\u201d<\/a><\/strong><strong> declares the management consultancy McKinsey &amp; Company.<\/strong> Certainly diversity officers have been winning, although opposition is building in <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2023\/feb\/02\/ron-desantis-block-dei-program-state-colleges-florida\" rel=\"noopener\">Florida<\/a> and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/attorneys-general-sue-biden-admin-over-rule-that-lets-esg-into-retirement-savings\" rel=\"noopener\">elsewhere<\/a>,\u00a0where the wider woke agenda that includes DEI has advanced. Even minimally trained practitioners are in high demand, and signs of their influence abound. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a>Wells Fargo offers cheaper loans to companies<\/a> that meet racial and gender quotas. Private equity and venture capital firms like <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.blackrock.com\/corporate\/about-us\/diversity-equity-and-inclusion\" rel=\"noopener\">BlackRock<\/a> and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kkr.com\/our-firm\/life-kkr\/commitment-diversity\" rel=\"noopener\">KKR<\/a> declare their commitment to racial \u201cequity.\u201d <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/bank-of-america-racial-reeducation-program\" rel=\"noopener\">Bank of America tells its employees they are implicated in a white supremacist system. <\/a>Lockheed Martin asks its executives to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/lockheed-martins-woke-industrial-complex\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cdeconstruct their white male privilege.\u201d<\/a> Major tech companies like Google publicly chart the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/about.google\/belonging\/diversity-annual-report\/2022\/\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cBlack+ and Latinx+\u201d<\/a> people they\u2019ve hired, and assure the public that Artificial Intelligence will <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/ai.google\/social-good\/\" rel=\"noopener\">prioritize the DEI political agenda<\/a>. ChapGPT, an AI model that can generate remarkably cogent writing, is been designed with a liberal bias, summarily rejecting requests that don\u2019t conform to the algorithm\u2019s notions of\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MikhailaFuller\/status\/1624834929467990019\/photo\/1\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cpositivity, equality and inclusivity.\u201d<\/a> <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/racial-politics-at-disney\" rel=\"noopener\">Disney instructs employees to question colorblind beliefs<\/a> espoused by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/latest-news\/absolutely-insane-connecticut-law-would-axe-fitness-requirements-for-female-firefighters\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Fire departments are told to lower their physical fitness requirements for women.<\/a> Similarly, universities are dropping standardized tests to yield more admissions of certain minorities (typically not Asians). And the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, hoping to award more \u201cfilms of color,\u201d inspects <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2020\/film\/awards\/oscars-inclusion-diversity-rules-standards-explained-1234763473\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Oscar-nominated films for cast and crew diversity<\/a>. (Netflix has been a notable exception, last May <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/entertainment-arts\/business\/story\/2022-05-24\/lat-et-ct-netflix-lay-offs-poc-diversity\" rel=\"noopener\">laying off dozens of employees working on such issues.<\/a> Under Elon Musk, Twitter is also flouting woke orthodoxies.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In education, college students are required to take\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/college.georgetown.edu\/academics\/core-requirements\/?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email\" rel=\"noopener\">DEI-prescribed courses<\/a>. <strong>Community college employees in California are evaluated on their\u00a0<\/strong><strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/go.boarddocs.com\/ca\/cccchan\/Board.nsf\/files\/CCD3QR0802D4\/%24file\/deia-competencies-and-criteria-(updated)-a11y.pdf\" rel=\"noopener\">DEI competencies<\/a><\/strong><strong>.<\/strong> Loyalty oaths to the DEI dogma are demanded of professors. Applicants to tenure-track positions, including those in math and physics, are rejected out of hand if their\u00a0<a>mandatory DEI statements<\/a>\u00a0are found wanting. Increasingly, DEI administrators are involved in hiring, promotion, and course content decisions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAcademic departments are always thinking, \u2018We need to run this by Diversity,\u2019\u201d says Glenn Ricketts, public affairs officer for the National Association of Scholars. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The industry\u2019s reach can also be seen in the many Orwellian examples of exclusion in the name of inclusion, of reprisals in the name of tolerance. Invariably, they feature an agitated clutch of activists browbeating administrators and executives into apologizing for an alleged trespass against an ostensibly vulnerable constituency. When that has been deemed insufficient or when senior executives have sensed a threat to their own legitimacy, they\u2019ve offered up scapegoats on false or flimsy pretexts. That might be a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/uF5Ym\" rel=\"noopener\">decades-long New York Times reporter,<\/a> a head <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2022\/11\/guggenheim-racism-controversy-curator-nancy-spector\/671529\/\" rel=\"noopener\">curator at a major art museum,<\/a> an adjunct <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/wwwhttps\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/01\/08\/us\/hamline-university-islam-prophet-muhammad.html.nytimes.com\/2023\/01\/08\/us\/hamline-university-islam-prophet-muhammad.html\" rel=\"noopener\">art history professor,<\/a> a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2021\/10\/14\/yale-law-school-party-invitation-trap-house\/\" rel=\"noopener\">second-year law student,<\/a> or a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/cre10\" rel=\"noopener\">janitor at a pricey New England college.<\/a> (The list is long.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Often enough, the inquisitions have turned into public relations <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2022\/10\/27\/new-york-times-tom-cotton-oped-james-bennet\/\" rel=\"noopener\">debacles<\/a> for major institutions. But despite the intense criticism and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2021\/02\/behind-the-scenes-of-donald-mcneils-new-york-times-exit\" rel=\"noopener\">public chagrin<\/a>, the movement marches on.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The expansion \u201chappened gradually at first, and people didn\u2019t recognize the tremendous growth,\u201d Perry says. \u201cBut after George Floyd, it really accelerated. It became supercharged. And nobody wanted to criticize it because they would been seen as racists.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Not playing along with the DEI protocols can end an academic career. For example, when Gordon Klein, a UCLA accounting lecturer, dismissed a request to grade black students more leniently in 2020, the school\u2019s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion office intervened to have him<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thefp.com\/p\/why-i-am-suing-ucla\" rel=\"noopener\"> put on leave and banned from campus.<\/a> A counter-protest soon reversed that. <strong>However, when Klein also declined to write a DEI statement explaining how his work helped \u201cunderrepresented and underserved populations,\u201d he was denied a standard merit raise, despite excellent teaching evaluations. (He is suing for <\/strong><strong>\u00a0defamation and other alleged harms.) \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Scores of professors and students have also been subject to capricious, secretive, and career-destroying investigations by Title IX officers, who work hand-in-glove with DEI administrators, focusing on gender discrimination and sexual harassment. As writer and former Northwestern University film professor Laura Kipnis recounts in \u201cUnwanted Advances,\u201d individuals can be brought up on charges without any semblance of due process, as she was, simply for \u201cwrongthink\u201d \u2013 that is, for having expressed thoughts that someone found objectionable. With activist-administrators assuming the role of grand inquisitors, \u201cthe traditional ideal of the university \u2013 as a refuge for complexity, a setting for free exchange of ideas \u2013 is getting buried under an avalanche of platitudes and fear,\u201d she writes. And it would appear that students and professors would have it no other way. By and large, they want more bureaucratic intervention and regulations, not less.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As more institutions create DEI offices and hire ever more managers to run them, the enterprise inevitably becomes self-justifying. According to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/1955\/11\/19\/parkinsons-law\" rel=\"noopener\">Parkinson\u2019s Law<\/a>, bureaucracy needs to create more work, however unnecessary or unproductive, to keep growing. Growth itself becomes the overriding imperative. The DEI movement needs the pretext of inequities, real or contrived, to maintain and expand its bureaucratic presence. As Malcolm Kyeyume, a Swedish commentator and self-described Marxist, writes<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/wokeness-the-highest-stage-of-managerialism\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cManagerialism requires intermediation and intermediation requires a justifying ideology.\u201d<\/a> \u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ten years ago, Johns Hopkins University political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg found that the ratio of administrators to students had doubled since 1975<\/strong>. With the expansion of DEI, there are more administrators than ever, most of whom have no academic background. On average, according to a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.heritage.org\/education\/report\/diversity-university-dei-bloat-the-academy\" rel=\"noopener\">Heritage Foundation study,<\/a> major universities across the country currently employ 45 \u201cdiversicrats,\u201d as Perry calls them. With few exceptions, they outnumber the faculty in history departments, often two or three to one.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At Michigan, Perry wasn\u2019t able to find anyone with the words \u201cdiversity,\u201d \u201cequity,\u201d or \u201cinclusion\u201d in his job title until 2004; and for the next decade, such positions generally remained centralized at the provost level, working for the university as a whole. But in 2016, Michigan president Mark Schlissel announced that the university would invest <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.freep.com\/story\/news\/local\/michigan\/2016\/10\/06\/university-michigan-invest-diversity-programs\/91657770\/\" rel=\"noopener\">$85 million in DEI programs<\/a>. Soon after, equity offices began to \u201cmetastasize like a cancer,\u201d Perry says, across every college, department, and division, from the college of pharmacy to the school\u2019s botanical garden and arboretum, where a full-time DEI manager is now \u201cinstitutionalizing co-liberatory futures.\u201d All the while, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mlive.com\/news\/ann-arbor\/2014\/02\/university_of_michigan_renews.html\" rel=\"noopener\">black enrollment at Michigan<\/a> has dropped by nearly 50% since 1996. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Despite the titles and the handsome salaries, most DEI administrative positions are support staff jobs, not teaching or research positions. In contrast with the provisions of Title IX, DEI is not mandated by law; it is entirely optional. DEI officers nevertheless exert enormous influence, in part because so few people oppose them. The thinking seems to be that if you\u2019re against the expanding and intrusive diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda, you must be for the opposite \u2013 discrimination, inequality, and exclusion.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy telling themselves that they\u2019re making the world a better place, they get to throw their weight around,\u201d says Ricketts. \u201c<strong>They have a lot of money, a lot of leverage, and a lot of people who just don\u2019t want to butt heads with them<\/strong> \u2013 people who just want to go along to get along. People who are thinking, \u2018If we embrace DEI, nobody can accuse us of being racist or whatever.\u2019 They\u2019re trying to cover their backsides.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Some organizations, it seems, are merely trying to keep up with cultural trends.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Consider Tucson, Ariz., where diversity is not a buzzy talking point but an everyday reality. With a population that is 44% Hispanic, 43% white and only 4.6% black, the city has had no major racial incidents in decades. Yet like hundreds of others communities, Tucson suddenly decided in direct response to the George Floyd murder 1,600 miles away that it needed an office of equity. To many observers, it seemed that the city was just \u201cgetting jiggy with it,\u201d \u00a0pretending to solve a problem that didn\u2019t exist. After a two-year search, it hired Laurice Walker, the youngest chief equity officer in the country, at age 28, with a salary of $145,000 \u2013 nearly three and a half times what Tucson\u2019s mayor, Regina Romero, earns.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Not that the mayor is complaining. \u201cI think this position is about putting an equity lens into all that we do,\u201d Romero said <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kgun9.com\/news\/local-news\/tucson-hires-first-chief-equity-officer-youngest-in-the-country\" rel=\"noopener\">in May,<\/a> by which she means \u2013 well, nobody is quite sure what \u201cequity\u201d means, particularly with respect to federal legislation clearly prohibiting positive and negative discrimination alike.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But trying to get out in front of the DEI train can also result in getting run over by it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When the city council of Asheville, N.C., hired Kimberlee Archie as its first equity and inclusion manager, its members probably didn\u2019t anticipate being accused of having a \u201cwhite supremacy culture.\u201d After all, city manager Debra Campbell is black, as are three of the seven women making up the city council. The council had cut police funding and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/07\/16\/us\/reparations-asheville-nc.html\" rel=\"noopener\">unanimously approved a reparations resolution<\/a>. Archie nevertheless complained that her colleagues still weren\u2019t doing enough to advance racial equity. \u201cWhat I describe it as is kind of like the bobblehead effect,\u201d <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bpr.org\/news\/2020-10-02\/asheville-equity-advocates-resign-amid-racial-reckoning\" rel=\"noopener\">she said in 2020<\/a>. \u201cWe&#8217;d be in meetings \u2026 and people&#8217;s heads are nodding as if they are in agreement. However, their actions didn&#8217;t back that up.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The drama in western North Carolina illustrates a dilemma that organizations face going forward. They can pursue an aggressive political agenda in which white supremacy is considered the country\u2019s defining ethos (per The New York Times\u2019\u00a0&#8220;<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_1619_Project\" rel=\"noopener\">1619 Project<\/a>&#8220;) and present discrimination as the only remedy to past discrimination (see <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ibram_X._Kendi\" rel=\"noopener\">Ibram X. Kendi<\/a>). Or they take the path of least resistance, paying rhetorical tribute to DEI enforcers as the \u201cbobbleheads\u201d that Archie disparages but doing little more than that. After all, they still have universities, businesses, and sanitation departments to run, alumni and investors to satisfy, students to teach, research to pursue, roads to be paved, sewage to be treated, costs to be minimized, and profits to be maximized. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps, too, senior administrators and executives are beginning to realize that, <strong>despite the moral panic of 2020, the most culturally diverse country in the world might not be irredeemably racist, even if it\u2019s no longer acceptable to say so.<\/strong> The United States twice elected an African American man named Barack Hussein Obama as president. His first attorney general was a black man, who would be replaced by a black woman. His vice president would pick a woman of mixed race as his running mate. The mayors of 12 of the 20 largest U.S. cities are black, including the four largest cities. Likewise, many of the people whom Americans most admire \u2013 artists, athletes, musicians, scientists, writers \u2013 are black. Lately most\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macfound.org\/fellows\/results?fellow_class=2022&amp;fellow_class2=2022&amp;include_deceased=Include&amp;radio=0#fellowssearch\" rel=\"noopener\">winners<\/a> of MacArthur Foundation &#8220;genius&#8221;\u00a0grants are people of color. Gay marriage is legal, and enjoys wide public support, even among conservatives. The disabled, neurodivergent, and gender-divergent are applauded for their courage and resilience. And nonwhite groups, particularly Asians, Latinos, and African immigrants, have been remarkably upwardly mobile (often without official favoritism).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Clearly, troubling disparities persist for African Americans. <strong>What\u2019s much less clear is that racism, systemic or not, remains the principal cause of these disparities or that a caste of equity commissars will reverse them<\/strong>. And now, it would seem that narrowing these disparities runs counter to their self-interest.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cI don\u2019t want to deny that there\u2019s genuine goodwill on the part of some of these programs<\/strong>,\u201d says Prof. Schuck, stressing that he hasn\u2019t examined their inner workings. \u201cBut some of these conflicts are not capable of being solved by these gestures. They have to justify their own jobs, their own budgets, however. And that creates the potential for a lot of mischief. They end up trafficking in controversy and righteousness, which produces the deformities we\u2019ve been seeing in policies and conduct.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Still, to hear DEI officers, it\u2019s they who are beleaguered and overwhelmed. Yes, they have important-sounding jobs and rather vague responsibilities. They are accountable to nobody, really. Rather than fighting \u201cthe man,\u201d they now are the man, or at least the gender-neutral term for man in this context. But this also means that they are starting to catch flak, particularly as the evidence mounts that the institutions they advise and admonish aren\u2019t actually becoming more fair, open, and welcoming. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/5696943\/diversity-business\/\" rel=\"noopener\">They\u2019re not even becoming more ethnically diverse.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Like other DEI advocates, the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education has declined to answer questions for this article. Its officers are too busy traveling to conferences to do so, a spokeswoman said. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.diverseeducation.com\/demographics\/article\/15289869\/diversity-officers-gather-to-advance-equity-and-antiracism-strategies-on-campus\" rel=\"noopener\">at a recent association meeting<\/a>, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/tssw.tulane.edu\/anneliese-singh\" rel=\"noopener\">Anneliese Singh of Tulane University<\/a> invoked Rosa Parks\u2019 refusal to take a back seat to discrimination. Although Parks was a housekeeper and diversicrats have comfortable university sinecures, their struggles are analogously distressing, Singh suggested. The latter, too, are on the \u201cfront lines\u201d in a harrowing war. However, she said, her colleagues needed to remember what mattered most: Looking out for themselves.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<strong>It is not self-indulgence<\/strong>,\u201d she said, now quoting the feminist and civil rights activist Audre Lord. \u201cIt is self-preservation. And that is an act of political warfare.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For the moment, it\u2019s a war Singh and her DEI colleagues are clearly winning.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>      <span class=\"field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden\"><a target=\"_blank\" title=\"View user profile.\" href=\"https:\/\/cms.zerohedge.com\/users\/tyler-durden\" lang=\"\" class=\"username\" xml:lang=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden\">Tue, 02\/14\/2023 &#8211; 20:45<\/span><\/p>\n<p>From:<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/sudden-dominance-diversity-industrial-complex\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"The Sudden Dominance Of The Diversity Industrial Complex\" rel=\"noopener\">Zerohedge<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Sudden Dominance Of The Diversity Industrial Complex Authored by Thomas Hackett via RealClear Wire, Little more than a decade ago, DEI was just another&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1151128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1151128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1151128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1151128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1151128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}