In July of 2023, public school principal Richard Bilkszto killed himself. When announcing his
death, his lawyer traced Bilkszto’s deteriorating mental health and ultimate demise to
diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) workshops. His school had mandated his participation
in them. Recordings show that he was harassed and humiliated by the DEI trainer for
questioning one of her claims.
A growing number of high-profile cases suggest that diversity workshops and their
supporting materials regularly promote questionable claims—particularly about the
overarching, malicious character of the majority or “white” population. Similarly, hostility
toward those who challenge DEI claims is part of the pattern. In Canada, students who
challenge claims have been punished or expelled; employees have been suspended. One
whistleblower who leaked DEI training session material maligning the majority population
lost his job.
While the hostility to which Bilkszto was subjected during his DEI training is not unusual, his
extreme response to it is extraordinary; but it also sounds an alarm. It draws our attention to
the potentially negative nature of this instruction that is now universally conducted—usually
as a compelled exercise—in most corporations, educational systems, government agencies,
and even professional colleges, as we have seen with the case of Dr. Jordan Peterson.
The DEI training that Bilkszto attended was focused heavily upon race, which is typical.
While DEI instruction can be as varied as it is pervasive, so-called “anti-racism education”
tends to get the most attention during workshops.
While job candidates not categorized as a minority are increasingly prevented from applying
for certain employment openings, the research shows that a reputation for promoting DEI
can more generally affect job applications to an organization. Specifically, findings reveal that
some Caucasian candidates perceive organizations that heavily promote messages of
diversity and inclusion as potentially discriminatory work environments.
DEI’s negative perception extends beyond potential job candidates. Two-thirds of human
resource specialists—those in charge of overseeing DEI initiatives—report that diversity
training does not have positive effects. Interestingly, both the research into DEI and the
majority of those involved in such training have arrived at the same conclusion: when it
comes to harmony and tolerance, DEI does not make things better, but it can make things
much worse.
While the “good” of DEI training remains elusive, the harms associated with it are less
equivocal. DEI instruction has been shown to increase prejudice and activate bigotry among
participants by making stereotypes top of mind, or by implanting new biases not previously
held. For example, in a laboratory setting, a University of Toronto research team determined
that race-focused DEI campaigns exerting strong pressure on people to check their prejudices
at the door, backfired—yielding heightened levels of bigotry. Simply put, such studies show
that when DEI-type workshop leaders instruct participants to suppress their biases—be they
existing or newly implanted—many will cling to them more tightly and generate new
justifications for them.
While the Caucasian majority is typically the focus of contempt in DEI instruction, leaving
them feeling isolated and demoralized, increasingly participants of Asian ethnicity are also
being targeted. In achieving, on average, greater salary and educational outcomes than the
majority population, this community presents a problem to the major claim of DEI
instruction that skin colour or ethnicity matters most to success. Take Billionaire Presidential
Candidate, author, podcaster, and serial entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, for example.
The solution that some DEI advocates have adopted is to deny that Asians qualify as visible
minorities. They claim that having outcomes similar to the majority population excludes one
from being a “person of colour”. It is instead all about where one fits on the hierarchy of
WOKE victimhood. Borrowing ideas from academic race studies, some DEI proponents have
thus begun to refer to Asians as “white adjacent” (or near white) and accuse them of
perpetuating ‘white supremacy’. On the extreme end, certain school boards in the United
States have gone so far as to remove the category ‘Asian’ from student profiles, lumping
anyone of Asian ancestry into the ‘White’ category.
Beyond denying minority status to those of Asian ancestry, the current trend among DEI
consultants and departments is to weight the scales against them—a move reminiscent of the
institutional racism they faced in some Western nations during the 19th & 20th centuries.
Nowhere has this been more obvious than in college admissions in the U.S. Striking evidence
reveals that, for the benefit of diversity and inclusion, Asian students are being denied
admission to some of America’s most elite universities.
Affirmative action discrimination and other forms of racial preference are also ubiquitous in
Canada’s public institutions. For example, Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) has a
new medical school admissions policy, reserving 75% of its seats for indigenous, black, and
other “equity-deserving” groups, who may still be considered for admission if their GPA is
below 3.3–an already low standard for admission.
There is ample evidence that race-based admissions policy is unwise. The negative impacts
of affirmative action in university admissions over the decades in the U.S. and elsewhere are
well documented. Besides the evidence of general harms of affirmative action, new reports
provide yet more reasons to think that TMU’s medical admissions policy will backfire. The
most obvious drawback: the quality of medical practice could be reduced as academic
standards for admissions are lowered and as race and other irrelevant factors are considered
instead of ability.
A recent U.S. study on affirmative action in another industry—intelligence—validates this
concern. In an article in Econ Journal Watch, John A. Gentry of Missouri State University’s
School of Defense and Strategic Studies outlines the effects of affirmative action and DEI
policies on the operational performance of 18 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA,
the NSA, and the Defence Intelligence Agency.
Like other federal agencies, Gentry writes, the intelligence agencies have
“Been a setting of burgeoning DEI policies and programs, especially since 2011, designed to
favour privileged demographic groups in hiring, promotions, awards, and assignments.”
The results?
First, while the intelligence community has historically emphasized apolitical public service,
the introduction of DEI injected political motivation into its procedures and activities.
Second, teamwork was impaired because the heavy-handed orthodoxy of DEI causes self-
censorship by government personnel who do not support this agenda. Third, many
intelligence officers say that DEI resulted in more tolerance of bad judgement and poor
operational performance in the name of diversity. This has harmed human intelligence
collection. Intelligence analysis was similarly impacted. Finally, DEI spawned activism has
reduced public confidence in intelligence agencies. Gentry therefore concludes that:
“Politically driven advocates of DEI not only fail to understand that domestically driven
demographic diversity does not improve the performance of foreign-focused intelligence
services, they have significantly damaged the operation performance of the agencies.”
While Gentry’s piece was on the American intelligence sector, it is not difficult to see how
many of the same negative consequences—like politicization of the profession, self-
censorship and reduced public confidence—could arise from insertion of racial quotas in
Canadian medical school admissions and promotion of social justice over medical expertise
within the profession.
Yet more evidence that TMU’s affirmative action policies will backfire comes from a recent
NY Times review of the University of Michigan’s expanding DEI initiatives. It concluded that
“Instead of improving students’ ability to engage with one another across their differences,
Michigan’s DEI expansion has coincided with an explosion in campus conflict over race and
gender.”
Students and faculty members at the school reported a less positive climate on campus and
were less likely to interact with people of a different race after the introduction of DEI
programs. This report is devastating because of how widespread these initiatives are at the
University of Michigan. It has invested nearly $250M since 2016 on DEI staff and
programming. Each and every university department, unit and office must have a DEI action
plan, and some 240 employees there work in DEI offices or have one of those key words—
diversity, equity or inclusion—in their job titles.
When this latest piece on the University of Michigan is added to the volumes of evidence
showing negative impacts of affirmative action at universities, the TMU medical school’s
admissions policies cannot prove beneficial. Nor should this inspire confidence that other
illiberal policies—such as race-based anti-poverty programs, race-based federal procurement,
or a race-based justice system—would deliver good things to Canadians. Treating people
disparately based upon race does not enhance social harmony—or any other desirable
outcomes.
In his most recent book entitled Social Justice Fallacies, Dr. Thomas Sowell of the Hoover
Institute explains how the quest for social justice is a powerful crusade of our time, with an
appeal to many different people, for various reasons; but those who use the same words do
not always present the same meanings. Clarifying those meanings is the first step toward
finding out what we agree upon. From there, it is largely a question of what the facts are.
Sowell reveals how many things thought to be true simply cannot stand up to documented
facts, which are often the opposite of what is widely believed.
However attractive the social justice vision, the crucial question is whether the social justice
agenda will get us to the fulfillment of that vision. History shows that the social justice
agenda has often led to the opposite direction, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.
More things are involved besides mere mistakes. All human beings are fallible, and social
justice warriors may not necessarily make any more mistakes than the rest of us; but
crusaders with an utter certainty about their mission are often undeterred by obstacles,
evidence, or even fatal dangers. That is where much of the Western world is today. The
question is whether we will continue on heedlessly, past the point of no return.
American author Heather MacDonald has also written extensively on this topic. According
to MacDonald, we are in crisis, from the university to the workplace. Toxic ideas first spread
by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fuelled intolerance, and widened
divisions in our greater culture. Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton? Oppressive. Western
history? Tyranny. Professors correcting grammar and spelling, or employers hiring by merit?
Racist & sexist. Students emerge into the working world believing that we are defined by our
skin colour, gender, and sexual preference, and that oppression based upon these traits is
endemic within Western Culture. Speech that challenges these campus orthodoxies is
silenced by brute force.
In The Diversity Delusion, MacDonald argues that the root of this problem is belief in the
West’s endemic racism and sexism—a belief that has engendered a metastasizing diversity
bureaucracy in society and academia. Diversity commissars denounce meritocratic standards
as discriminatory, enforce hiring quotas, and teach students and adults alike to think of
ourselves as perpetual victims. From #MeToo mania that blurs flirtations with criminal acts,
to implicit bias and diversity compliance training that sees racism in every interaction,
MacDonald argues that we are creating a society of narrowed minds, primed for grievance,
and jeopardizing the very concept of having a competitive edge.
There is however hope in the works of authors, composers, and artists who have long
inspired the best in us. Compiling her decades of research and writing on the subject, “The
Diversity Delusion” calls for a return to the classical liberal pursuits of open-minded inquiry
and expression, by which everyone can discover a common humanity.
In her follow up book entitled, When Race Trumps Merit, MacDonald poses some troubling
questions. Does your workplace have too few black people in top jobs? Then it must be
racist. Does the advanced math and science high school in your city have too many Asians?
Then it is racist. Does your local museum employ too many white women? Then it too is
racist.
After the BLM protests of 2020, prestigious institutions, from the medical profession to the
fine arts, pleaded guilty to ‘systemic racism’. How else to explain that blacks are over
represented in prisons and under-represented in corporate suites and faculty lounges, their
leaders asked?
The official answer for such disparities is “disparate impact”, a once obscure legal theory that
is now transforming our world. Any traditional standard of behaviour or achievement that
impedes exact racial proportionality in any enterprise is now presumed racist. Medical
school admission tests, expectation of scientific accomplishment in awarding research grants,
the enforcement of criminal law—all are under assault, because they have a ‘disparate
impact’ upon under-represented minorities.
MacDonald provides an alternative explanation for such racial disparities. It is wide
academic skill gaps that cause the lack of proportional representation in our most
meritocratic organizations; and vast differences in criminal offending actually account for the
racially disproportionate prison populations.
The need for such a corrective argument could not be more urgent. Federal science agencies
now treat researchers’ skin colour as a core qualification. Museums and orchestras choose
which art and music to promote based upon race. As witnessed recently in Brampton, ON,
police officers avoid making arrests and prosecutors decline to bring charges to avoid
disparate impact on minority criminals—especially recent immigrants to the West.
MacDonald’s commentary breaks powerful taboos, but is driven by a sense of alarm. It is
also supported by detailed case studies of how disparate-impact thinking jeopardizes
scientific progress, destroys public order, and poisons appreciation of art and culture. As
long as alleged racism remains the only permissible explanation for racial difference, then we
will continue tearing down excellence and putting lives, as well as civilizational achievement,
at risk.
The equity battle goes beyond decriminalization. Many schools today no longer
disproportionately punish blacks for misbehaving, regardless of their bad behaviour, while
also adjusting test standards to eliminate gaps in academic performance. If minorities cannot
pass the tests to enter academically elite high schools, alter admissions standard to increase
diversity, even if overall school quality suffers. Higher education has become equity
obsessed so schools ignore test scores to ‘curate’ a more racially diverse student body. That a
black admitted to Harvard struggles scholastically and would thrive at the less elite Boston
University is irrelevant to equity champions. The primary goal is outward appearances, not
what is academically best for the overwhelmed black student.
The damage caused by pursuing equity now even applies in how doctors treat injured
children. A recent essay by Naomi Schaefer Riley recounts two urgent medical journal
articles advising doctors not to report injuries to children—a legally mandated policy to
protect kids—since reporting child abuse would disparately harm certain minorities.
Why?
Well, because black children suffer physical abuse and neglect at triple the rate of white ones,
so that reporting these injuries exposes black parents to punishment. For social justice
doctors produced by equity driven medical schools like TMU, reporting abuse constitutes
medical malpractice. One equity advocate even proposed eliminating the entire child-welfare
system, since it harms minorities by detracting from what is sorely needed—more and better
food, shelter, health care, education, and art. Capitalism—not abusive parents—is the real
problem. Anti-poverty programs are the solution to child abuse.
The shift from ending inequality to eliminating the appearances of it is predictable. Trillions
have been spent and countless anti-discrimination laws passed to achieve racial equality,
with pitiful results. Significant racial divides remain for illegitimacy, poverty, educational
attainment, accumulating financial assets, crime and multiple medical conditions, as the
menu of reasonable cures only shrinks. Even relatively draconian solutions such as
mandatory racial quotas do not move the equity needle.
These failures are too large to ignore but openly acknowledging them is still heresy. So,
rather than confess failure, just conjure the illusion of success by virtue signalling equity.
This policy is reminiscent of the Potemkin Villages created by Field Marshal Grigory
Potemkin to deceive Russian Empress Catherine II into believing that rural Russia was a
paradise; but now, rather than picturesque houses and well-fed, happy peasants, we have
elite schools that reflect society and cities where crime is supposedly in decline.
Can this false reality endure? Will we believe the “new and improved” crime statistics that
merely reflect decriminalization and minimal enforcement? Will we believe the equity-driven
upbeat statistics about soaring graduation rates and declining school violence in inner city
schools? In other words, will the social justice campaign really work?
Probably not. In today’s world, it is difficult to hide unpleasant reality given the multiplicity
of information sources. Sooner or later, harsh reality seeps out, and the manipulations
necessary to sustain the fake utopian vision collapses. Even in the old Soviet dictatorship,
where truth-telling begged a trip to the Gulag, the regime failed to fool the people. In today’s
West, most of us know that calling the 2020 George Floyd riots a “mainly peaceful Summer of
love” is a lie.
Nor will we tolerate endless government intervention to level all outcomes. After all, the list
of inequalities is infinite, so achieving equity requires relentless intervention. There will be
programs to close the home ownership gap, close gaps in obesity, gaps in longevity, gaps in
personal happiness, and myriad others necessary to social justice. Eventually, with so many
gaps to close, government will increasingly grow all-powerful, hardly what any of us should
want from government.
The pursuit of equity also assumes that all people are so alike that the government possesses
the power to level differences. Can government ensure that there are just as many female
engineers? Or zero racial differences in athletic performance? The underlying principle of
equity—all outcomes can be made equal—is simply not credible.
Finally, are these equity driven subterfuges sustainable? Likely not. What happens in New
York if hundreds of black pedestrians are now killed while jaywalking? Recall how elite
schools quickly dropped standardized tests in admissions to obscure the low-test scores of
certain minorities. This equity measure failed, and schools restored ‘racist’ metrics like the
SAT. Yes, officials can decriminalize shoplifting, but they cannot prevent ransacked
businesses from fleeing the city. The vacant stores tell the truth. You can fake graduation
rates, but employers will still refuse to hire illiterates.
Justin Trudeau, Kamala Harris, and the likeminded champions of equity will fail. No
government can close every gap, regardless of the fakery or coercion. Reality is irrepressible,
and we cannot substitute fantasy for truth, no matter how much power we grant to the state
to fix all of our problems. There is one overriding truism: we never use race, except as a
means to power. Race is never an end. It is always a means. It has no role in human affairs,
except as corruption.
Since racism is in our DNA, and Critical Race Theory (CRT) is the DNA of DEI, focusing on
race to eliminate all disparate outcomes has exploded into every vestige of our culture. It has
literally taken over every branch of government in the U.S. and Canada, including the
military, and is fully staffed in most every university and corporation. Like nearly all leftist
policies claiming to solve problems created by leftists, DEI is nothing but another corruption
that is the very antithesis of what it purports to be.
DEI practitioners would have us believe that it is a mere reflection of a changing society and
the desire to make sure everyone is represented fairly. They sell it with soft sounding words
to make us feel all warm and fuzzy. It is all teddy-bears and safe spaces. Love and kindness.
Or is it?
Dr. Sowell asks a poignant question:
Race is not the only corruption of DEI. While many school boards sold it to taxpayers as a
way to close the decades old and entrenched achievement gap between blacks and whites in
the U.S., it is really just a Trojan Horse for every leftist ideological agenda.
Gender Dysphoria is a real mental disorder that, according to author Abigail Shrier,
historically affects less than .01%, mostly boys ages 2-4. Supported by their parents in their
anatomies, over 85% simply outgrew it. In layman’s terms: a phase for the vast majority. Yet
DEI advocates have also embraced this corruption of science and biology that took a rare
mental disorder and turned it into a political movement designed to “destroy the
heteronormative, white, male heterosexual power structure”; and if men can become women
and women men, the natural structure of creation could be toppled. Just like CRT, the goal is
to destroy Western Civilization.
DEI has no role in human affairs beyond corruption. It has no place in the West. It is the
complete opposite of what all coaches of sports, business, and life have taught us for
centuries: to overcome adversity and persevere against the odds. To fight through pain, to
come back stronger after disappointment and loss. To rise up after rejection, objection,
failure, job loss, bankruptcy, divorce, and death of loved ones. To quote Friedrich Nietzche:
DEI teaches us to curl up in a ball like a victim, wallowing in a sea of micro-aggressions.
Weak. It is a Trojan Horse of destructive lies, devoid of objective and Biblical truth, robbing
parents of their agency over their own children.
DEI: Dividing and Destroying Western Civilization. An Environment of Exclusion.
Eliminator of Excellence. Ideology of Ignorance and Idiotic Insanity. Only crazy people
would want to burn down all Hope for Humanity over a leftist theory. A really bad, evil
theory that must be rejected everywhere, by everyone.
Hey Ho! DEI has got to Go!
