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By Mike Gonzalez | October 18, 2024 6:00 am | The Washington Examiner
No, you cannot escape the DEI reservation.
That’s the gist of a stern letter sent by nearly 50 of the most radical-left members of the House of Representatives to Fortune 1000 executives rebuking them for abandoning diversity, equity, and inclusion for the toxic hot potato that it is.
The “open letter,” dated Tuesday, Oct. 15, included a not-so-veiled threat.
“Your companies, our economy, and the public at large all benefit when everyone is given a fair shot at success,” the letter starts. “But recently, a handful of companies announced they are ending programs and practices shown to foster unity and equality. Undoubtedly, this will lead many communities to seek their products, services, and employment elsewhere.”
The letter is filled with this type of double-speak, misdirection, and projection. In reality, Wall Street and Main Street alike are jettisoning DEI programs because they have proven to be incredibly divisive and unprofitable. But because those who promote DEI can’t admit openly that they’re in the business of division-mongering for ideological reasons, or simply as a grift, they engage in Orwellian double-speak.
“We write to call on you to reject division and continue supporting programs, policies, and initiatives that give everyone a fair chance at achieving the American Dream,” wrote the lawmakers, which includes a who’s who of the woke caucus: Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ted Lieu (D-CA), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Katie Porter (D-CA), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), and many others, 49 in all.
The lawmakers then defended the DEI policies that corporations are abandoning — such as trainings, signing mission statements, hosting drag queen events, etc. — under the sole rubric of “inclusion,” perhaps a tacit admission that many people have soured on diversity and equity.
“Inclusion is a core American value, and a great business practice. By embracing this value, you create safer and fairer workplaces without sacrificing quality or financial success,” the letter said.
And nobody would disagree, except that “inclusion,” as the woke define it, has come to mean language codes. In practice, “inclusion” has resulted in people being expelled from public places for wearing clothes that support life or simply mention Jesus. These are violations of the 1st Amendment and the opposite of inclusion.
The Left is trying to justify its desire to repress free speech by insisting that “misinformation” is “dangerous” and therefore information they disagree with must be made illegal. By these standards, these lawmakers should have their laptops taken away.
The lawmakers go on to claim that DEI is profitable, arguing, “Research shows that the companies whose workforces reflect our nation’s gender and racial diversity are more likely to outperform all other companies.” This assertion is based on a single McKinsey study that was footnoted. Sadly for them, that study has been debunked and found irreplicable and unscientific.
Even more ludicrously, the letter includes two footnotes pointing out that members of the so-called Generation Z cohort support DEI policies and that 30% of them identify as LGBT. But Gen Zers are those young Americans born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, the generation most subjected to a barrage of indoctrination in racial and gender theories, so that only proves the success of this indoctrination.
As for the 30% figure, it alone would be a sign that what we are witnessing is social contagion when it comes to sexual practices. Would be, that is, if the source were believable. Again, alas, that number comes from the Human Rights Campaign, which is not an independent player here.
The HRC is an LGBT extortion racket that intimidates companies into accepting its “Corporate Equality Index.” The index is as misnamed as the outfit itself; as I wrote last month, companies must “either agree to sign up for the full LGBTQ agenda, including, especially, the transgender part, or else.”
In fact, it was very likely the HRC that ginned up this letter. The effort was led by Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), one of HRC’s biggest supporters on the Hill.
No sooner was the congressional letter out Wednesday morning than HRC started giving oxygen to it. “The congressional letter comes on the heels of a pointed letter from 20 national civil rights organizations calling on corporate executives to reject far-right divisiveness around DEI programs,” the group posted on its website.
But the letter’s timing was unfortunate. It appeared at the same time as a New York Times piece — yes, you read that right — that dismissed DEI as “a well-meaning failure.”
Correspondent Nick Confessore wrote of his experience with DEI at the University of Michigan: “On campus, I met students with a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives. Not one expressed any particular enthusiasm for Michigan’s D.E.I. initiative. Where some found it shallow, others found it stifling. They rolled their eyes at the profusion of course offerings that revolve around identity and oppression, the D.E.I.-themed emails they frequently received but rarely read.”
Worse, DEI has made Michigan less inclusive — not surprising when one considers this ideology’s core divisiveness ands insistence on deepening, even curating, grievances.
“Michigan’s D.E.I. efforts have created a powerful conceptual framework for student and faculty grievances — and formidable bureaucratic mechanisms to pursue them. Everyday campus complaints and academic disagreements, professors and students told me, were now cast as crises of inclusion and harm, each demanding some further administrative intervention or expansion. On a campus consumed with institutional self-criticism, seemingly the only thing to avoid a true reckoning was D.E.I. itself,” wrote Confessore.
This may have been news to the New York Times, but it’s hardly news to those who have been paying attention for the past decade. Which explains why businesses will continue to run for the hills, no matter what the woke on the Hill do.
Mike Gonzalez is the Angeles T. Arredondo senior fellow on E Pluribus Unum at the Heritage Foundation and author of NextGen Marxism: What It Is and How to Combat It. Heritage is listed for identification purposes only. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect any institutional position for Heritage or its Board of Trustees.