Why People Hate DEI
President Trump has ordered a number of actions to eliminate DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) from the government workplace. This follows a number of companies scaling back or eliminating their own DEI practices. And there was much rejoicing.
In response, I’ve seen a couple of examples of pushback. Some point out innocuous things like promoting disability ramps as examples of DEI. This is disingenuous; small accommodations for ordinary people was never the focus of DEI. Others rail against the “re-segregation” of the government, which is pretty brazen, since the great re-segregation of American life - the dividing of the population up into identity groups and valuing them differently - was the whole point of DEI. Trump is attempting to end this.
Perhaps we can get a handle on why people hate DEI if we look at the Dylan Mulvaney/Bud Light fiasco. Bud Light is one of Annheuser-Busch’s flagship brands. It’s thin and nasty stuff. Its only virtue is it’s cheap. So why do people buy it? Because A-B built an image for Bud Light that appealed to a certain customer base, which was fanatically loyal to it. Dylan Mulvaney is a transgender “influencer” whom A-B hired to promote their beer, setting off a customer revolt that wound up costing A-B something upward of $2 billion.
Now, we may assume that at least some transgender people drink beer. It is right and proper that A-B should want them to drink their beer. Their beer having almost nothing to brag about, as beer, means persuading transgender people that it’s their kind of beer. Okay, no problem. But the advertising guru who designed the campaign didn’t design a campaign to add transgender people to their existing customer base. She designed a campaign that would replace their customer base. As she said, she wanted to change Bud Light’s image, which she called “frat boy beer” and I would have called “good old boy” beer. In other words, she started out with positive disdain for her existing customer base. Look, we’re the beer for the cool kids now. Oh, not you guys. Bud Light’s customer base reacted predictably. Having been told they weren’t wanted, they declared that they didn’t need to drink A-B’s sh*tty beer; there were plenty of other cheap, nasty brews available.
This emphasis on replacing one’s customer base rather than adding to it is the key to DEI, and the cause of its failure. Some years ago, I was asked to serve on our Scout Council’s diversity and inclusion committee (much to my surprise). I undertook this in good part. While some people might have been particularly interested in reaching out to sexual minorities or ethnic groups, my advocacy centered on socio-economic status and religion. The Boy Scouts have been pricing themselves out of their former customer base, and they have neglected to form strong bonds with their charter partners, especially churches. I’m all for adding kids from other racial groups, but in our eighteen counties in southern Indiana, there aren’t that many more black and brown kids to add, and many of those there are fit into the same conditions as many of our white kids - the poor and working classes. Likewise, I don’t object to gay Scouters, but the idea that liberalizing the membership requirements was going to mean a flood of new families and charter partners was a pipe dream. The essential problem is that BSA (or as we now must call it, Scouting America) has hankered after a different customer base for a long time, while assuming that their existing customer base would continue in their support. The precipitous decline in Scouting illustrates what happens when you ignore the people who pay the rent. You can’t remain a mass movement if your preferred self-image is boutique.
Now remember your office’s last Diversity Training. Remember the last time when someone corrected your pronouns. Remember the endless canards about “white fragility” and “Black lives matter” and so on. Remember being told that you can’t have a cross or a Bible in view in your workspace. Remember people telling you how people like you were the whole problem with America. DEI is the point of the spear of intersectionality, which sees all of society as a perpetual zero-sum game played by identity groups (ethnic/racial, sexual, orientational). In order to make society more fair, we have to divide people up into groups. Some groups are victims, and other groups are oppressors. Victim groups get a pass on all kinds of things. Everything is always the oppressor groups’ fault. Oh, you belong to an oppressor group? Well, no soup for you today, but you can always feel better about going to the back of the line since your disadvantagement means society is becoming ever more fair. People hate this. Even black and brown people hate this. It’s bigoted pseudo-scientific hokum.
Then there are the “allies.” These are people from oppressor groups who loudly signal their virtue in promoting the victim groups. Does this mean that people from supposedly victimized groups will replace the “allies” in their cushy positions? Oh, you sweet, innocent kid. Proclaiming yourself an “ally” is the way to hang onto the very perks you say you ought not have. It’s a sham, a scam, the ultimate grift. People see through this, and they hate it, too.
Does this mean that those who oppose DEI want to exploit people different from themselves? No. There are other ways to enhance people’s participation in society. Accommodating people who have particular needs or who have been under-represented doesn’t require this neo-Marxist ideology. Before DEI there was catholicity, the idea that the whole embraces all the parts. And in the traditional American way of understanding things, the pie can always be made larger so that more people can have a piece; life is not (particularly in America) a zero-sum game. Back to the Dylan Mulvaney/Bud Light fiasco, adding people isn’t the problem; favoring one group over another is the problem, and that is the whole practical point of DEI. There is no need to pit one group, one identity, against others. And if you eliminate victimhood, you also eliminate oppressor status, and then we don’t have to blame people for who they are anymore.
Eliminating DEI does not mean we somehow reach a state of nirvana where nobody is ever treated unfairly. That problem remains, but there are means of addressing it. People hate DEI because it increases the unfair treatment of all kinds of people, and because it subjects them to being bossed around by smarmy, self-righteous types who demand that ordinary people say what they know is not true and hide their own identity or suffer loss of jobs, loss of opportunities, and public shaming. Good riddance to it.
In response, I’ve seen a couple of examples of pushback. Some point out innocuous things like promoting disability ramps as examples of DEI. This is disingenuous; small accommodations for ordinary people was never the focus of DEI. Others rail against the “re-segregation” of the government, which is pretty brazen, since the great re-segregation of American life - the dividing of the population up into identity groups and valuing them differently - was the whole point of DEI. Trump is attempting to end this.
Perhaps we can get a handle on why people hate DEI if we look at the Dylan Mulvaney/Bud Light fiasco. Bud Light is one of Annheuser-Busch’s flagship brands. It’s thin and nasty stuff. Its only virtue is it’s cheap. So why do people buy it? Because A-B built an image for Bud Light that appealed to a certain customer base, which was fanatically loyal to it. Dylan Mulvaney is a transgender “influencer” whom A-B hired to promote their beer, setting off a customer revolt that wound up costing A-B something upward of $2 billion.
Now, we may assume that at least some transgender people drink beer. It is right and proper that A-B should want them to drink their beer. Their beer having almost nothing to brag about, as beer, means persuading transgender people that it’s their kind of beer. Okay, no problem. But the advertising guru who designed the campaign didn’t design a campaign to add transgender people to their existing customer base. She designed a campaign that would replace their customer base. As she said, she wanted to change Bud Light’s image, which she called “frat boy beer” and I would have called “good old boy” beer. In other words, she started out with positive disdain for her existing customer base. Look, we’re the beer for the cool kids now. Oh, not you guys. Bud Light’s customer base reacted predictably. Having been told they weren’t wanted, they declared that they didn’t need to drink A-B’s sh*tty beer; there were plenty of other cheap, nasty brews available.
This emphasis on replacing one’s customer base rather than adding to it is the key to DEI, and the cause of its failure. Some years ago, I was asked to serve on our Scout Council’s diversity and inclusion committee (much to my surprise). I undertook this in good part. While some people might have been particularly interested in reaching out to sexual minorities or ethnic groups, my advocacy centered on socio-economic status and religion. The Boy Scouts have been pricing themselves out of their former customer base, and they have neglected to form strong bonds with their charter partners, especially churches. I’m all for adding kids from other racial groups, but in our eighteen counties in southern Indiana, there aren’t that many more black and brown kids to add, and many of those there are fit into the same conditions as many of our white kids - the poor and working classes. Likewise, I don’t object to gay Scouters, but the idea that liberalizing the membership requirements was going to mean a flood of new families and charter partners was a pipe dream. The essential problem is that BSA (or as we now must call it, Scouting America) has hankered after a different customer base for a long time, while assuming that their existing customer base would continue in their support. The precipitous decline in Scouting illustrates what happens when you ignore the people who pay the rent. You can’t remain a mass movement if your preferred self-image is boutique.
Now remember your office’s last Diversity Training. Remember the last time when someone corrected your pronouns. Remember the endless canards about “white fragility” and “Black lives matter” and so on. Remember being told that you can’t have a cross or a Bible in view in your workspace. Remember people telling you how people like you were the whole problem with America. DEI is the point of the spear of intersectionality, which sees all of society as a perpetual zero-sum game played by identity groups (ethnic/racial, sexual, orientational). In order to make society more fair, we have to divide people up into groups. Some groups are victims, and other groups are oppressors. Victim groups get a pass on all kinds of things. Everything is always the oppressor groups’ fault. Oh, you belong to an oppressor group? Well, no soup for you today, but you can always feel better about going to the back of the line since your disadvantagement means society is becoming ever more fair. People hate this. Even black and brown people hate this. It’s bigoted pseudo-scientific hokum.
Then there are the “allies.” These are people from oppressor groups who loudly signal their virtue in promoting the victim groups. Does this mean that people from supposedly victimized groups will replace the “allies” in their cushy positions? Oh, you sweet, innocent kid. Proclaiming yourself an “ally” is the way to hang onto the very perks you say you ought not have. It’s a sham, a scam, the ultimate grift. People see through this, and they hate it, too.
Does this mean that those who oppose DEI want to exploit people different from themselves? No. There are other ways to enhance people’s participation in society. Accommodating people who have particular needs or who have been under-represented doesn’t require this neo-Marxist ideology. Before DEI there was catholicity, the idea that the whole embraces all the parts. And in the traditional American way of understanding things, the pie can always be made larger so that more people can have a piece; life is not (particularly in America) a zero-sum game. Back to the Dylan Mulvaney/Bud Light fiasco, adding people isn’t the problem; favoring one group over another is the problem, and that is the whole practical point of DEI. There is no need to pit one group, one identity, against others. And if you eliminate victimhood, you also eliminate oppressor status, and then we don’t have to blame people for who they are anymore.
Eliminating DEI does not mean we somehow reach a state of nirvana where nobody is ever treated unfairly. That problem remains, but there are means of addressing it. People hate DEI because it increases the unfair treatment of all kinds of people, and because it subjects them to being bossed around by smarmy, self-righteous types who demand that ordinary people say what they know is not true and hide their own identity or suffer loss of jobs, loss of opportunities, and public shaming. Good riddance to it.