From DEI Duplicity to DEI Denial

From politics and media, to HR and academia, DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) is all the rage throughout our nation as more attention is devoted to issues of race and ethnicity. The DEI issue garnered much attention earlier this year on college campuses as story after story revealed numerous controversies surroundding DEI policies and practices that created more questions than answers about whether the DEI realities actually promote true diversity, equity, and inclusion versus division, exclusion, and intolerance. DEI certainly came to a head late Spring as Palestinian proterstors waged a PR war on campuses throughout the country resulting in buildings occupied, classes interrupted, and Jewish students taunted and threatened.

Most recently, DEI once again captured the media spotlight as Vice President Kamala Harris became the replacement Democratic candidate when President Biden was pressured into submission by Democrat insiders. On Sunday July 21st, Biden announced that he would not run for re-election. This decision suddenly elevated Vice President Harris to become the heir apparent Presidential candidate for the November 5th elections.

Not long after Presidednt Biden's announcement, Republicans began referring to Harris as the "DEI Candidate". To be clear, this was not because of her embrace of "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" practices and policies. Rather, she was crawned with this label thanks to Biden and the media. No more than six months after Biden and Harris entered the White House, Biden signed Executive Order 14035, which establishes DEI as a government-wide intitative because, "As the Nation’s largest employer, the Federal Government must be a model for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, where all employees are treated with dignity and respect."

The Biden-Harris Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce spells out in great detail the parameters and expectations for how this government-wide program will be implemented and executed. The document proceeds to explain the broader context of how it originated and the overall mission with the following example:

This order reaffirms support for, and builds upon, the procedures established by Executive Orders 13583, 13988, and 14020, the Presidential Memorandum on Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in the National Security Workforce, and the National Security Memorandum on Revitalizing America’s Foreign Policy and National Security Workforce, Institutions, and Partnerships.  This order establishes that diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility are priorities for my Administration and benefit the entire Federal Government and the Nation, and establishes additional procedures to advance these priorities across the Federal workforce.

It is crystal clear that the Biden-Harris Administration takes great pride in projecting itself as THE diversity administration by virtue of it's explicit commitment to extolling the virtues and values of DEI and highlightihng its DEI trackrecord above and beyond any other adminstration in our nation's history.

That said, the pushback from the Biden-Harris administration and the left, media included, has been a sight to behold. Collectively, while they flippantly argue that the GOP is racist for labeling Harris a "DEI Candidate", their collective amnesia has overlooked numerous DEI details straight from the mouth of Biden that have either crowned her as a "DEI Candidate" or celebrated her DEI credentials.

Consider this August 30, 2019 CNN article headline, Biden says he would prefer a person of color or a woman as his vice president. From there, the article captures Biden's own words on the Vice Presidential candidate selection:

Spartanburg, South CarolinaCNN — 

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that when picking a running mate, he would prefer someone who was “of color and/or a different gender.”

“Whomever I pick, preferably it will be someone who was of color and/or a different gender, but I’m not making that commitment until I know that the person I’m dealing with I can completely and thoroughly trust as authentic and on the same page [as me],” Biden said while speaking to a roundtable of black journalists.

The comment echoed previous statements he’s made. When asked by CNN’s Chris Cuomo in July if he would need to have a female running mate, Biden replied, “I think it’d be great to have a female VP.”

Correct me if I'm wrong, but If that's not in the spirit and intent of DEI, then DEI is more elusive than a runaway Barry Sanders in an open field surrounded by Green Bay Packer defenders! Good luck trying to grasp, understand, and coherently apply DEI consistently. Better yet, maybe we need to change DEI altogether to somethign like DEC....Diversity, Equity, and C-O-N-F-U-S-I-O-N! But wiat, there's more.

In another example, consider this statement from the "WHITE HOUSE INITIATIVE on ASIAN AMERICANS, NATIVE HAWAIIANS, and PACIFIC ISLANDERS: NATIONA L STRATEGY to ADVANCE EQUITY, JUSTICE , and OPPORTUNITY for ASIAN AMERICAN, NATIVE HAWAIIAN, and PACIFIC ISLANDER COMMUNITIES", January 2023:

On his first day in office, President Biden signed Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government. The Executive Order committed to a whole-of-government equity agenda and recognized that although the ideal of equal opportunity is the bedrock of American democracy, entrenched disparities in our laws, public policies, and institutions too often deny equal opportunity to individuals and communities.

After highlighting the Biden list of DEI accomplishments, the document goes on to further state the following:

The Biden-Harris Administration reflects the rich diversity of America, with a series of historic firsts. In addition to having groundbreaking Asian American representation with the election of Vice President Kamala Harris, the President’s Cabinet also includes U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Katherine Tai and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Dr. Arati Prabhakar.

The evidence is undeniable that racial and ethnic identity for Biden is to be elevated, celebrated and promoted as DEI credentials, and it is because of this, that Harris has been branded as a "DEI Candidate". The criterion that makes "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" functional and relevant in politics, employment, academia, and elsewhere makes it equally applicable in the labeling of candidates whose racial and ethnic identity have already been celebreted in prior situations, which I have highlighted above. To deny this racial and ethnic manipulation is absurd, dishonest, and duplicitous. I say duplicitous because it is a double standard and contradictory when you assert and celebrate racial and ethnic identity when it's convenient and advantageous for self-serviing pruposes. But when rivals do the same as a critque of the misuse of racial and ethnic ideinty or to highlight candidates based on a questonable selecton process that disregards important deficiencies, DEI advocates erroneously cry foul, as if they're the only ones permitted to speak on the issue, which for them can only be in the affirmative. This is the heights of hypocrisy and is what makes politics detestable.

Biden's DEI duplicty was also on center stage duing a campaign speech on May 29th at Girard College. This speech is proof positive of Biden's role in the elevation of Kamala Harris's DEI credentials that ultimately led to and inspired the Republicans' use of the "DEI Candidate" term to critcally highlight the DEI system and to call into question the fitness of her Presidential candidacy given her leadershp failures on issues ranging from her role as "Border Czar" and the ongoing immigration woes we face nationally, to foreign policy and US energy independence, and everything in between. In the quote below, you'll see Biden celebrate Vice President Harris as the embodiment of all things DEI.

To me, the values of diversity, equality, inclusion are literally — and this is not kidding — the core strengths of America. That’s why I’m proud to have the most diverse administration in history that taps into the full talents of our country. And it starts at the top with the Vice President.

Again, and in closing, going back to the White House Initiative document mentioned a few paragraphs above, if Kamala as Vice President was history-making in the 2020 Presidential Election because she became the first "Asian American Vice President", her candicacy in this year's Presidential race, as selected by Biden himself, is the fulfillment of Executive Order 13985, which for Biden is what made DEI "a whole-of-government equity agenda". Kamala's candidacy is DEI in action through-and-through, and to argue otherwise is nothing but DEI Denial.

Let the Atrocity Olympics Begin: Uyghurs, Black Genocide, On your Marks!

On February 20, 2021, I published a blog titled China 2022 Olympics, Moral Failure, and the Case for Boycotts. Nearly a year later and we are set to begin two weeks of an abominable PR campaign celebrating China's rise to power through the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) while simultaneously ignoring and denying the ignominy of this regime's rapacious appetite for global conquest, human suffering, international hostility, and, in the case of the Uyghurs, ethnic brutality and oppression. Many find this year's event to be an absolute travesty and black eye on the Olympic tradition, and I firmly believe that an international boycott is defensible and appropriate given Uyghur oppression and the CCP's invidious role in the COVID-19 Pandemic.

In my original blog, I take direct aim at China's egregious human rights abuses involving everything from torture and organ harvesting to enslavement and outright genocide of the Uyghurs. Of course my critique of China, the Chinese Communist Party or CCP specifically, would not be complete without raising the ire and outrage of the world over the CCP's mishandling of the pandemic, where two years later the world continues to suffer miserably while the Chinese regime basks not in shame, lament, or forgiveness, but tone-deaf entitlement, arrogance, and gross negligence and narcissism.

There are many different directions I could take because the issues are that deep and the moral failures that profound. As the title indicates, however, the United States has its own reckoning to deal with, and I will treat that for the remainder of this blog. For contemporary considerations, especially when you factor in human loss, impact to future generations, and callous moral indifference, abortion and the African American community is today's frontrunner for America in the "atrocity Olympics" between the U.S. and China.

In the article, Abortion: The overlooked tragedy for black Americans, Arizona State Representative Walt Blackman makes some rather remarkable and compelling statements about abortion and black genocide:

...Yet, 36 percent of all abortions were obtained by black women. At a ratio of 474 abortions per 1,000 live births, black women have the highest ratio of any group in the country.

When you use those percentages, it indicates that of the over 44 million abortions since the 1973 Roe vs Wade Supreme Court ruling, 19 million black babies were aborted. African Americans are just under 13 percent of United States population.

It is undeniably good that we convey the positive stories of our community to our fellow countrymen. It is important that we pass on stories that empower us. However, it is harmful to all black Americans if we continue to let society look the other way when it comes to the devastation that political policies like abortion wreak on the black community.

As staggering as these numbers are, they are conceivably higher when you account for the fact that most, if not all, abortion data is provided to the CDC by Planned Parenthood, the lead organization when it comes to abortion referrals and services in the United States. It is fair to assume that these numbers are likely under-reported to obscure the facts and temper public shock, outrage, and disapproval. Still, the data speaks loud and clear and yet the silence, as State Rep. Blackman accurately points out, is equally deafening from political leaders, community leaders, clergy, corporate investors, and child advocacy groups. This reminds me of Hanna Arendt's banality of evil, where government leaders in China and America are caught in the grips of ghoulish evil, silence, and moral indifference as the world witnesses government sponsored atrocity.

As for the inhumanities against the Uyghurs and America's virtual silence and unwillingness to be a beacon of hope that inspires protest for all the right reasons, perhaps the American "dilemma" our nation's leaders face can be found in the 19 million aborted black babies that continue to devastate black America. This ongoing body count is exactly why many are calling abortion in the black community black genocide in America. Thus, is this the reason why we are witnessing moral cowardice from the Biden-Harris Administration over the Uyghurs because of the obvious indifference and noxious disregard they have over black genocide? They'll never say and we'll never know, but I find it highly disturbing and ironic that between the Uyghur atrocities and black genocide, endless inhumanities and ethnic injustices are being tolerated and ignored both by the Biden-Harris Administration and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In fact, all you have to do is read the position statements by both groups to see hypocrisy in action amidst human atrocity respectively.

Below is a snapshot of President Biden's October 14, 2021 statement on the "United States Election to the Human Rights Council."

The United States stands ready to work with partners and allies to help lead the world toward a more peaceful, prosperous future, grounded in respect for human dignity. Together, we will stand up for the rights of all, including women and girls, members of LGBTQI+ communities, members of ethnic and religious minorities, those living with disabilities, and members of other marginalized groups. We will promote accountability for governments that abuse human rights. And we will stand in solidarity with, and continue to work tirelessly in support of, the activists, human rights defenders, and peaceful protestors on the front lines of the struggle between freedom and tyranny.

Similarly, here's a statement from the IOC on human rights that comes from its Recommendations for an IOC Human Rights Strategy that's dated March 2020:

The IOC Code of Ethics is also an important reference point for the organization. Fundamental Principle 1 in the Olympic Charter states that “Olympism seeks to build a way of life based on … respect for universal fundamental ethical principles”. The Code of Ethics seeks to define this broad term in Article 1 to include a number of issues, one of which is “[r]espect for international conventions on protecting human rights insofar as they apply to the Olympic Games’ activities and which ensure in particular: - respect for human dignity; - rejection of discrimination of any kind on whatever grounds …; -

Given the Uyghur realities that are widely known to the world along with the 19 million aborted black babies, better known as black genocide, both official statements reflect the heights of hypocrisy, shallowness, and tone-deaf leadership. Both pathetically demonstrate profound moral incoherence, though America strives to remain rooted and grounded in integrity, freedom, and justice as exemplified by the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. In the case of the Biden-Harris Administration, however, what's extremely disturbing is that we are only one week into Black History Month and yet no recognition of or attempts to course-correct the abortion trajectory in black America as we accelerate toward 20 million black aborted babies! Clearly, the Biden Harris Administration, Xi Jinping and the CCP regime, and the IOC are deeply invested in perpetuating and ignoring human atrocity and genocide, and the world community ought to be outraged at this level of moral incompetence.

For the next two weeks, America's credibility suffers each day it refuses to speak up for and speak out against the Chinese Communist Party's inhumane treatment of the Uyghurs. Likewise, silence and neglect over black genocide and the 19 million aborted black babies in America is an ongoing painful reality that inflicts incalculable damage to black America, economically, politically, spiritually, emotionally, generationally, and most noticeably...numerically.

We hear a lot about systemic racism today, and If systemic racism is the cause celebre globally due to the Black Lives Matter movement, between the Uyghur atrocities and black genocidal abortion (systemic racism on steroids), Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party along with the Biden-Harris Administration are knee deep in systemic racism and losers in the worst "atrocity Olympics" since the Berlin Games of1936, and we know what happened after that spectacle and how the dark clouds of Hitler and his Nazi regime changed the world forever. Starting with the IOC and the Olympic tradition, when will we learn from history? Obviously we didn't learn from 1936 as Hitler marched through Europe to persecute the world with antisemitism, global inhumanity, and warring of the nations, but here we go again with another round of the "atrocity Olympics" and the denial of life, liberty, and human dignity.

The Racial Equity Fallacy (part 3): A Douglassonian Critique

Frederick Douglass has had a noticeable presence in a number of my commentaries since I started this blog a few years ago. He truly is one of my favorite historical figures. This is probably so because of his oratory eloquence, historical impact, and his intellectual ferocity when it came to the abolition of slavery and advocating for the interests of Blacks, intellectually, politically, spiritually, and economically.

In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, one passage stands out as one of the more memorable and defining statements for who he was and what he represented.

The work of instructing my dear fellow-slaves was the sweetest engagement with which I was ever blessed. We loved each other, and to leave them at the close of the Sabbath was a severe cross indeed. When I think that these precious souls are to-day shut up in the prison-house of slavery, my feelings overcome me, and I am almost ready to ask, "Does a righteous God govern the universe? and for what does he hold the thunders in his right hand, if not to smite the oppressor, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the spoiler?" These dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I teach them because it was reputable to be thus engaged. Every moment they spent in that school, they were liable to be taken up and given thirty-nine lashes. They came because they wished to learn. Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul to be doing something that looked like the bettering the condition of my race.

These words demonstrate a Douglass who was fully in touch with and convicted about the enormity of chattel slavery and what was needed to overcome the hellish conditions that plundered life, liberty, and happiness for slaves in America desperate for freedom and basic human dignity.

Douglass hammered home the issue of freedom throughout his life and in many of his speeches. This only makes sense, for he bore witness to some of the most depraved and despicable atrocities in human history, horrors that violated humanity's most fundamental God given right, human freedom. This compromise was indefensible to its core because in Douglass' worldview, humanity was created for every individual to freely pursue their chosen purpose free from oppression, injustice, and human atrocity.

In parts one and two of this series, I highlighted a wide range of conceptual, practical, and Constitutional problems associated with Critical Race Theory (CRT) and its related movements (Social Justice, Racial Equity, and Systemic Racism). Core to this community is the shared belief that a robust emphasis on equity over equality is the pathway to true racial justice. It is well established, however, that in order to achieve equity, inequality is a natural and accepted outcome wherein Whites, it is believed, must surrender their privilege, entitlements, and the benefits that accrue from whiteness. The CRT community does not regard this as problematic but rather vindication and justification for historical disparities. In the end, the move of equity over equality is necessary in order to achieve the greater goal of equitable outcomes and the redistribution of social benefits and burdens. In short, not only is this moral compromise, but it is Unconstitutional at its core because CRT is both hostile to and incompatible with the very virtues and values of freedom and fairness safeguarded by our Constitution.

While today's racial challenges are a far cry from those of Douglass's day, his thoughts from well over a century ago offer prescient words of wisdom that should not be ignored nor confined to the past. Like all historical figures, Douglass, in particular, embraced the challenges of his day with extraordinary passion, relentless conviction, and purpose-driven principles to accomplish great things for humanity. HIs life is relatable to contemporary America through his courage and inspiration which should motivate us to remain resilient amid crisis and conflict. From the thoughts and words of Douglass, we can be inspired to overcome the flaws and failures of what we are witnessing today in this moment of rising radical racial antipathy.

Douglass's speech in 1890 titled The Race Problem confronted the efforts of southern Resurrectionists to deny African Americans their newly won civil rights that became legally protected by the federal government. This address took place in Washington, DC at Metropolitan A.M.E. Church, and his goal was to educate the public and advocate for the continued protection of African American civil rights as authorized by federal law. Throughout his lecture, he referred to the frequently cited "Race Problem" with suspicion and annoyance seemingly to suggest there is something wrongheaded about this expression, language that to Douglass deserved outright condemnation and rejection.

In the opening, Douglass shares his objection to how the problem is viewed and defined exclusively as "The Negro Problem", a term that had taken root in the South post Civil War. Douglass states the following:

For this reason, and for my own self-respect, I shall endeavor to say only what I believe to be the truth upon what is popularly called "The Negro Problem...."

. . . It has been well said that in an important sense words are things. They are especially such when they are employed to express the popular sentiment concerning the Negro: to couple his name with anything in this world seems to damage it and damage him likewise. Hence I object to characterizing the relation subsisting between the white and colored people of this country as the Negro problem, as if the Negro had precipitated that problem, and as if he were in any way responsible for the problem....

Clearly, Douglass seeks to challenge myth and inflammatory rhetoric with truth and sociological facts. The same applies today with respect to CRT and how they deconstruct race and history through the lens of equity and the use of social disparities and dogma at the expense of established norms and principles that are grounded in the Constitution, namely equality, due process, and equal protection.

Douglass continues his brilliant treatment of the so-called Negro Problem with the following:

With their usual cunning, these enemies of the negro have made the North partly believe that they are now contending with a vast and mysterious problem, the mere contemplation of which should cause the whole North to shudder and come to the rescue. The trick is worthy of its inventors, and has been played for all that it is worth. The orators of the South have gone North and have eloquently described this terrible problem, and the press of the South has flamed with it, and grave Senators from that section have painted it in most distressing colors. Problem, problem, race problem, negro problem, has, as Junius says, fitted through their sentences in all the mazes of metaphorical confusion.

. . . The true problem is not the negro, but the nation. Not the law-abiding blacks of the South, but the white men of that section, who by fraud, violence, and persecution, are breaking the law, trampling on the Constitution, corrupting the ballot-box, and defeating the ends of justice. The true problem is whether these white ruffians shall be allowed by the nation to go on in their lawless and nefarious career, dishonoring the Government and making its very name a mockery. It is whether this nation has in itself sufficient moral stamina to maintain its own honor and integrity by vindicating its own Constitution and fulfilling its own pledges, or whether it has already touched that dry rot of moral depravity by which nations decline and fall, and governments fade and vanish.

Douglass shows how the deceptive tactics of southern "Resurrectionists" agitated the North through exaggerated rhetoric by using race to portray and define the problem as Black and extreme. While race continues to be a problem in America today, one that is present in a number of different manifestations, Critical Race Theorists exploit narratives, history, stories, current events, data, and anecdotes to create an ominous portrayal of systemic racism as a ubiquitous yet flawed threat to American society writ large. But notice Douglass's charge: to preserve and defend the integrity of the Constitution with truth, fidelity, and moral courage! By making this a Constitutional issue, Douglass has expanded the scope of the problem from a regional North-South dynamic to a national one vis-à-vis the Constitution, civil rights, and the federal government. Douglass makes this explicitly clear in the next section, as he presses the matter further with his own brand of today's intersectionality. In the following, he directly appeals to the cause of women's suffrage to make the case that equality, under the banner of civil rights, is federally protected and, therefore, morally defensible.

Our American women are asking for a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution, whereby they may vote. They ought to have it. If the American people shall adopt such an amendment, the women problem will cease to exist.

In like manner, when the negro was declared free by the highest authority in the land, when the whole system of his bondage was broken up, when he was invested by the organic law of the land with the title, dignity and immunity of an American citizen, and when it was declared that any discrimination made by any State against him on account of race or color was unlawful, I hold that his race condition could no longer be consider a problem. The thing was done: it was finished. The nation had taken its position and all the parts of the nation must ultimately adjust themselves to the whole. The individual States may be great, but the United States is greater. The mountain will not and cannot go to Mahomet, so Mahomet must and will in the end go to the mountain. Herein is the ground of my hope.

....The time may never come this side the millennium when men will not ask "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" But what business has government, State or National, with these prejudice? Why should grave statesmen concern themselves with them? The business of government is to hold its broad shield over all and to see that every American citizen is alike and equally protected in his civil and personal rights. My confidence is strong and high in the nation as a whole. I believe in its justice and in its power. I believe that it means to keep its word with its colored citizens. I believe in its progress, in its moral as well as its material civilization. Its trend is in the right direction. Its fundamental principles are sound. Its conception of humanity and of human rights is clear and comprehensive. Its progress is fettered by no State religion tending to repress liberal thought: by no order of nobility tending to keep down the toiling masses: by no divine right theory tending to national stagnation under the idea of stability. It stands out free and clear with nothing to obstruct its view of the lessons of reason and experience.

The Race Problem by Frederick Douglass is refreshing because it reinforces core American principles and ideals and offers the kind of timeless and transcendent thinking that is desperately needed today to restore the efficacy of equality and the Constitution. As Douglass battled southern racists and the Democratic Party, he was clear-eyed and unapologetic in his fidelity to and support for the Republican Party who paved the way for emancipation and civil rights for African Americans nationally.

I affirm that while the National Government shall remain in the hands of the Republican party and under the principles of that party, no State will or can permanently disfranchise any of its citizens because of race or color or previous condition. Attempts may be made to do this, but the race problem in that respect is solved, and the case cannot be permanently reopened.

For Douglass, this was a monumental triumph by the federal government and The United States over the tyranny of individual states, for these states alone did the unthinkable by seceding from the Union to form a Confederacy that trampled over the authority of the Constitution and basic human rights to uphold and prosper from an evil and unjust system we know as chattel slavery, a system that indelibly harmed America and African Americans to this day. Through Douglass, however, we can unite as Americans by fiercely defending the sanctity of equality as protected by our Constitution and thereby use Douglass to champion equality over the hazards of equity and all that it seeks to undo through Critical Race Theory.