This is a summary of the New Discourses Bullets Podcast on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion by James Lindsay.
The term equity is used frequently by many organizations in politics, business, government, and our schools. The term sounds like equality in the American tradition, where equality has been traditionally defined as equal opportunity for all Americans and put forth in the vision of the American Dream. Equity is a distortion of this American tradition, a repackaged form of socialism that is based upon the theory that any form of unequal outcomes is a result of systemic injustice. This becomes the basis to argue for power to change the system by reallocating resources and forcing equal outcomes. This principle can be applied to any area in which you can identify unequal outcomes. In traditional Marxist socialism, this would be applied to perceived inequities in the distribution of money across social classes. In modern America, this is more typically applied to racial, gender, or educational “capital,” where any difference in outcomes based upon these categories is attributed to systemic injustice and requires action to force changes.
Diversity is another term that has been appropriated by the political left and given a new meaning that does not refer to a diversity of backgrounds and experiences. Diversity now refers to representation of racial, gender, or other woke identities. This is fundamentally a political movement that sees the world through power dynamics. This perspective rejects the color-blind approach to diversity that has been pursued by American culture since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The woke diversity movement limits the way we see the world – their lens is one that classifies everyone by their race, gender, or class status. Diversity experts claim to be the ones who get to determine what is truly diverse, and when placed in a position of authority they enforce the party line view. This can be easily observed in the objections to diversity programs that seem to only push specific groups as diverse, especially in schools.
Inclusion is the next term to be hijacked by the woke left. Inclusion has been redefined to mean that anyone who does not support the DEI paradigm will be “called out” and excluded from the group. It is a rhetorical technique that enables censorship of the power dynamics based upon the identity groups. Who wants to be accused of not being inclusive? The accusation alone is often enough to undermine your moral authority and results in self-censorship, even when one just is pointing out the lack of authentic inclusion in DEI programming. Some programs will also reference the idea of belonging, which is inclusion plus positive affirmation. This affirmation, whether applied to racial or gender categories, often defies logic and is therefore destructive of the hard sciences such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, and engineering. The transgender movement can easily be seen as an extreme example, as men appropriating the female body for themselves shout down anyone who questions this in the public domain as not sufficiently inclusive.
The goal of this DEI movement is ultimately one of control, undermining the freedoms that we enjoy in an open society like America. The Marxist radicals of the 1960s and 1970s all moved into the education field, as they knew that they could push their strategies into the schools and push their agenda, and when social equity has been injected long enough into our children society will behave in the way the woke want it to behave. It’s no longer time to sit back and let this happen in our schools. We must step up, protect our kids, and preserve the excellent education they deserve. If you want to join the discussion about these topics, stop by our Facebook group or send us a note at admin@oakwoodstrongschools.com.
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