
Source: Nonprofit Law Blog.
“Diversity equity inclusion” is the cowbird of progressivism. It crowds out ideals of equal justice for all individuals and a more equal society overall.
The DEI principle is equal representation for all groups within the various ranks of society, no matter how grossly unequal those ranks are. It is, or at least can be, a way to legitimize extreme inequality of wealth and power.
True progressives want to close the gap between the highest and lowest paid employees in corporations or institutions. They want to disempower the elites and empower the multi-racial working class.
Advocates of DEI want to achieve a balance of group representation within the present system of inequality. That is, top management and professional positions in a firm should, ideally, be 50 percent female, 15 percent African-American, 20 percent Hispanic and the appropriate percentages for the LGBTQ+ categories.
Now, in principle, it is possible to be an advocate of DEI in an organization and still favor better pay for janitors and service workers and advocate for labor unions.
In practice, this is rare to non-existent. Almost every large corporation, non-profit corporation or government agency has a DEI program. The vast majority of pro-DEI organizations are anti-union.
If an CEO adopts a DEI policy, that is a shield from criticism for being anti-union, a polluter or employing sweatshop labor abroad.
That’s why adopting a DEI program is an almost automatic response of corporate leaders who are attacking for doing or saying something offensive to African-Americans or other minorities. It is a new name for tokenism.
No doubt many executives sincerely believe DEI programs are just, beneficial and necessary. But no doubt many others consciously use DEI programs to divide and rule.
The question is power. No executive wants to have to deal with pressure from a labor union, environmental organization or other group they don’t control. Far better, from the executive’s standpoint, to have program administered by the organization’s Human Resources department.
I remember how, back in the 1990s, I was a member of a Newspaper Guild local, whose contract included a provision that unfair treatment based on race, religion and sex was legitimate grievance. We wanted to expand the contract to include the right of gay and lesbian persons to non-discrimination.
Nothing doing, management said. Our policy is treat gay and lesbian employees fairly, but we don’t want it to be a contractual right, we want it to be something that is a matter of choice for us.
At this point, however, without taking back anything I’ve already written, I do agree that some types of DEI programs do some good under some circumstances. I will now consider arguments for DEI and the extent to which I accept them.