DEI in Historical Context

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are euphemisms for discrimination, enmity, and injustice. 

The cycle is as old as Homo sapiens.

Members of a dominant race, ethnic group, religion, ideology, nationality, social class, tribe, or clan inflict injustices on members of a different race, ethnic group, religion, ideology, nationality, social class, tribe, or clan.

Driven by understandable anger, resentment, and revenge, the victims seek retribution in whatever way they can, including, where possible, by taking power from the victimizers, whether through peaceful or violent means and, ideally, replacing them as the dominant group.

The new dominant group eventually succumbs to hubris, arrogance, and an addiction to power.  It then becomes like the group that it replaced, similar to how abused children become abusive parents.

There are hundreds of examples in history.  A notable one is the Bolshevik Revolution against the czar and capitalism.  Rule by the proletariat became more oppressive than rule by the Russian monarchy.

Another example is the 1979 Iranian Revolution that resulted in the overthrow of the imperious and out-of-touch Pahlavi dynasty, which was replaced by the theocratic rule of Ruhollah Khomeini.  The revolution culminated in the massacre of perceived enemies of the new regime, including communists, socialists, social democrats, liberals, moderate Islamists, and members of the Baháʼí Faith.

Or take the Progressive movement of the early twentieth century in the US.  Its good intentions of breaking up concentrated economic power, helping the disadvantaged, and instilling liberal values soon morphed into authoritarian impulses. Examples:

– Hundreds of real and imagined communists and anarchists were rounded up without evidence and in violation of the Constitution in the Palmer raids, named after Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer;

– members of the labor union known as the Industrial Workers of the World were also rounded up and in some cases killed by corporate goons, with the acquiescence of local and federal law enforcement;

– the eugenics movement was launched and would last for decades, with the goal of keeping undesirables from procreating;

– reporters and common folk who questioned the First World War and President Woodrow Wilson were arrested and imprisoned for sedition; and

– the Immigration Act of 1924 was enacted to stop the flow of emigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe—migrants who were seen as non-White and described in vile and disgusting terms by dominant White Anglo-Saxon Protestants and such establishment newspapers as the New York Times.

Now those former non-Whites are not only categorized as White, but, under the guise of diversity, equity, and inclusion, are stereotyped as privileged, racist, supremacist, fragile, and, in an example of zero-sum thinking, as being well-off only because so-called people of color have been kept down.  Ignored is the inconvenient fact that an estimated 30 million Americans labeled as White live in poverty.

Also ignored by the DEI movement is the fact that in the White category, there are scores of unique ethnocultural groups of varying income, political power, education, physical features, skin shade, and histories of being victimizers or victims.  There are also scores of unique ethnocultural groups in the Asian and Hispanic categories.  There is more homogeneity within the Black, Pacific Islander and Native American categories, but these are also quite diverse.

Given that there are over one hundred ethnocultural groups in America, none of them is a majority but all are minorities, numerically speaking. Yet all the groups classified as White are seen as being in the majority while all the other groups are seen as being in the minority.  This is groupthink about groups.

Granted, from the perspective of disadvantaged non-Whites, all so-called Whites can look the same, can seem to have a common culture, and can appear to be wealthy, powerful, and advantaged, relatively speaking.  And if one’s forebears suffered discrimination and worse at the hands of Whites, then racial resentment is understandable.  But it is dangerous stereotyping to think, “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”  Such thinking was behind slavery, Jim Crow, the genocide of Native Americans, the Holocaust, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1924 Immigration Act, the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War, and so on.

Speaking of historical injustices and atrocities, the DEI industrial complex downplays the ones committed by non-Whites, such as the Comanche, the Mongols, Maoists, Pol Pot, imperial Japan, Boko Haram, Tutsis versus Hutus, Shiites versus Sunnis, Hindus versus Muslims, Arabs versus Persians, Turks versus Armenians, Armenians versus Azerbaijani, and so on, ad nausea.  Then there is the overlooked fact that Hispanics enslaved more Africans than the Anglos and Dutch did.

Instead of acknowledging its anthropological and mathematical malpractice of reducing the diversity of the nation to several contrived categories, the government is responding to political pressure by considering the addition of two new minority categories to the existing ones of Black, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American.  The two would be North African and Middle Eastern—as if these geographic areas are racially homogenous instead of racially diverse.

Do the categorizers even know that Tunisia is only 96 miles from Sicily?  Have they ever heard of the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage?  Do they think that the DNA of North Africa never mixed with the DNA of the Italian peninsula?

The cycle of injustices will never end as long as negative stereotypes, demonization, and identity politics continue.  Victims and victimizers will just change places. 

Make no mistake:  DEI is not about diversity, equity, and inclusion.  It’s about discrimination, enmity, and injustice against all Americans categorized as White.

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Mr. Craig J. Cantoni is an author, activist, and retired business executive who was at the leading edge of equal rights, equal opportunity, outreach, and anti-discrimination training over his career.