DEI Goes Underground

Rooting out DEI requires more than a key word search. DEI is buried deep into educational, corporate and government material and culture.

(Transcript for DEI Goes Underground available below.)

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Transcript:

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe. – Marilyn vos Savant

Hello again. Ed Thompson here, and I hope this podcast finds you doing well. This is Buried Lede #23, entitled, DEI Goes Underground.

While we can breathe a sigh of relief in seeing the president commit to getting DEI out of government agencies like education and the military, actually getting this pernicious, destructive ideology rooted out is not as easy as signing an executive order.

Springing from the Marxist doctrines of oppression versus oppressed, DEI came out of the gate with the deceptive name Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. After all, who wouldn’t want Diversity, Equity and Inclusion? Like so many Marxist Utopian ideas, that sounds good on paper but translates in practice to the worst of oppressions. Having segregated graduations or classes is divisive not inclusive. Telling children of color they are victims and white children they are racist oppressors is not diversity it is division. There is even an attempt to use supposed cultural norms to excuse poor academic achievement or behavior. The implication is that holding certain groups to the same standards as others would somehow be racist, when the complete opposite is true. DEI is not what it seems.

Currently, it may not be acceptable to label programs with titles like DEI enforcement or DEI implementation, but the left in America have become master craftsmen in their cunning and willingness to twist and bend words to their Orwellian liking. I call it lying, but let’s be generous and say their euphemisms abound. To make matters worse, they are now papering DEI over with terminology that lends itself to reasonable justification by the not quite bright.

One example in the Florida education system is The Leader in Me book, published by Franklin Covey, and used in Pinellas and other FL counties. While the initial stated lofty goals might sound like it is academically oriented, on page 13 is this line, “Greatness is not seen as affirming a high position or accomplishing a heroic feat, but as having strong character and unique talents which may or may not include the ability to read, write, or use a calculator.” That belies any pretense of actual education. Elsewhere in the program, the dedication to DEI is explicitly laid out, but you wouldn’t know that without thoroughly examining the materials.

In the case of the University of Central Florida, the school’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion was simply renamed the Office of Access and Community Engagement. UCF kept Andrea Guzman, Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, by changing her title to fit the new, rebranded office. At Florida State University, the most recent Fall 2024 “Professional Drag Show” event was renamed “Owl Manor” to circumvent the law.

The left would compare their subterfuge to the underground railroad of the pre-Civil War era helping slaves escape from oppression. I say it’s more like the Nazi trains carrying unsuspecting Jews and other disfavored people to “new and better” camps with freshly installed shower facilities.

Right or wrong, the psychs who run the DEI program of Marxist ideology will not give up easily. For that reason, it takes more than looking for a few key words to alert you to the DEI presence in educational, corporate or government material and practice. DEI swept into education with no opposition, including weaving its way into the school texts themselves. Corporations were shamed into opening their HR departments to the so-called ‘experts’ who proceeded to enforce DEI and anti-racism indoctrination as requirement for employment. The Biden administration went flat out ramming DEI and anti-racism into every federal agency, including the military. The military recruitment numbers immediately tanked and have only begun to recover after Trump issued a no-DEI executive order since taking back the White House.

So how do we eradicate the anti-American and divisive DEI and anti-racism that has worked its way into every corner of society? The starting point for each one of us is to stand up and call out DEI for being unworkable and destructive. Like most bad ideas, DEI can only persist when no one dares speak out against it. The time to speak is now.

At the local level it takes talking out loud and challenging those who refuse to end DEI programs in school or at work. When someone says diversity is our strength, you say no, it is competence and unity that are our strengths. When they tell you it isn’t fair that outcomes are different, you say people are different and forcing equal outcomes despite those differences in intelligence, competence and work ethic is what would be unfair. When they say being inclusive means having to favor one group over another, you say, no, that is bias and exclusion at its worst.

As for what to look for, the best way is to assess material by looking at it through the lens of what we should have as ideals. Is everyone treated fairly, is everyone given an equal opportunity, and is everyone expected to perform to the same standard to get any anticipated reward.

A key with educational material is to roll up your sleeves and look for slanted ideas and unnecessary indoctrination that has been injected. Don’t buy lofty generalities or the outright lies denying that DEI or CRT is being used. You must follow the wisdom of look don’t listen, and read for yourself. Truth is always the great leveler, which should be the goal of any educational information. If we are teaching people how to think, and not what to think, everybody wins. This was once the goal of education that made great civilizations great.

Looking at the entertainment industry, we see the abusive use of DEI. Trying to diversify World War II American soldiers who were largely white men into other races and women wouldn’t make any more sense than doing a story about a Congolese tribal war by including whites and Asians or depicting Henry the VIII or Thomas Jefferson as Asian women. Hollywood insists on going further. Instead of simply including a diversity of characters where appropriate, they make DEI the plot, with characters lecturing the audience with words or deeds to prove the DEI or CRT premises and shove them down the audience’s throat.

You can make the straight people all stupid and mean, and the gays all noble and fair but that doesn’t make it any more true than making all blacks violent and dumb and all whites decent and smart, or all men brutal and all women caring. One key to spotting DEI at work is the generalizing of any group as good or bad. Group bias runs heavy throughout DEI, CRT, anti-racism and other Marxist or totalitarian ideologies. Pitting one group against another is the totalitarian way to power.

A major flaw in DEI is viewpoint discrimination. For example, BLM, Black Lives Matter, is considered a valid and desirable viewpoint while ALM, All Lives Matter, is characterized as racist and wrong. When you find censorship and invalidation of viewpoints, you may have found DEI at work.

There is good reason why the simple yet powerful themes laid down in America’s founding documents, like the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, are popular with all people. The idea that individuals have natural rights and freedoms and that those apply to everyone with equal measure, have resonated many times around the world. The truth is undeniable.