Charles Blow: Rejection of DEI is ‘A New Era of Oppression’

NY Times columnist Charles Blow says the recent backlash to DEI initiatives is the dawn of a new era of oppression for black Americans.

I now believe that we are in the early phase of yet another backlash, with the dismantling of affirmative action, governmental attacks on the teaching of Black history and the full-court press on the political right to get rid of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.

The symbolic alignment of a cross-section of Americans, particularly the young, with Black liberty and Black lives after the murder of George Floyd and the wave of protests that it brought forth, retreated with the speed of the tide before the advance of the tsunami.

The results for this era could be wide-reaching, altering the composition of student bodies and corporate workforces, locking in and perpetuating privilege and disadvantage for a generation. And as with previous backlashes, some liberals have grown weary, distracted or disaffected, and their allyship has withered and fallen away.

Blow’s point is that there is a broader backlash taking place. What he doesn’t examine is whether such a backlash might be warranted. On the contrary, the framing of the article, which starts with Reconstruction and works its way through the next 100 years, assumes that all such backlashes are racist and illegitimate.

This assumption spares Blow from having to put forth any effort to defend what he’s actually defending, i.e. affirmative action, DEI training, the 1619 Project, the BLM movement, etc. He literally devotes zero effort to making the case for these policies and groups. We’re just supposed to assume that since their opponents are always wicked therefore the policies and groups must be just.

Just to take one example, what is the evidence that corporate DEI training works? It has certainly become a big business and a profitable one for certain individuals, but the evidence that it creates any lasting change is lacking. In fact, it may do more harm that good. Are we no allowed to discuss that?

Blow’s readers aren’t buying his non-argument. As many of them see it, what he describes as a backlash is really just the pendulum swinging back to the center after swinging too far to the left in 2020. Here’s the top comment:

What Mr. Blow describes as “oppression” is instead a much needed and long overdue swing back to the center.

The doctrine of racial essentialism has distorted the English language and poisoned our common discourse; it has put common sense on the back burner in its own quasi-religious quest for redemption and purity; it has chilled freedom of thought on our college campuses and freedom of speech in our public squares; and it has eroded the very notion of “excellence” in its all consuming obsession with “identity.”

Given that Mr. Blow has built a career on promoting racial essentialism and related ideologies like DEI, I don’t blame him for seeing this swing back toward the center as an existential threat.

But when all one has is an anti-racist hammer, everything looks like a white supremacist nail. And that distorted view of the world was never going to lead toward the kind of real diversity, equity, and inclusion that is both just and sustainable.

And another one:

Here’s where I think the issue is. The majority of people rightly support non-discrimination based on race or gender. But they don’t extrapolate from that to say we should replace colorblind meritocracy, or high shared standards of behavior, or the overall purposes and principles of the country, with a schematic that makes racial redistribution a major determinant of public policies. It is a wonderful thing to treat people equally, but a different and much more contentious thing to try to “even the score” at the cost of other important values and principles.

And another:

this backlash is a reaction to the left and the policies they have been pushing. A majority of Americans do not support AA or DEI. At the end of the day people just want to be treated fairly when applying for school admission or a job.

And one more though this could go on for a while.

I believe that much of this “backlash” is to the insane amount of money and man-hours workplaces and schools now dedicate to DEI training sessions with no empirically demonstrated value.

Or maybe a backlash to industries eliminating job applicants who cannot demonstrate how they have “advanced DEI initiatives” in their careers, no matter how far removed their work might be from issues of race.

Or a backlash to an elite university world in which the families of high-achieving Asian high school students feel compelled to pay thousands of dollars to consultants to help their children “de-Asian” their college applications in order to improve their chances of admission.

I could go on. The point is that there have been many initiatives of dubious value that come with real and profound human, economic, social, cultural, etc. costs. Fair-minded people can question and even resist these initiatives for reasons other than wanting to stymie “Black progress.”

Also, in many cases, the “backlash” is aimed at Whites who have created and promoted these programs and policies.

The meta-conversation about a backlash is a convenient one for those who can’t or won’t defend the actual policies being glossed over here. Defending the policies themselves is much harder work specifically because most Americans don’t support them when you get down to the details. That is why the pendulum is swinging back.