On 29 Jan 2025, the new administration released an Executive Order titled "Ending Radical Indoctrination In K-12 Schooling." The Order directs the Department of Education, and various other federal agencies, to assess the extent to which schools that receive federal funding run afoul of the various odious policy prescriptions outlined in it. In Part I of my examination of the Executive Order, I focused on its attacks on trans children. In this, Part II, I address the Order's attacks on various minorities, focused on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA), under the ludicrous heading of "Discriminatory Equity Ideology" (itself an ostensibly clever alternative meaning of three quarters of the DEIA acronym). This piece assesses DEIA programs beyond simply teaching about them in K-12 schools, the specific focus of the Order (as, of course, DEI is attacked more broadly through other EOs). My apologies in advance for this essay's length.
For every position filled by a woman, historically disadvantaged minority, or disabled person (such as yours truly!), there are dozens of white people (mostly, though not exclusively, straight, able-bodied, white men) convinced they are more qualified and that the only reason the person was hired was because of their identity. Further, they'll often assert that DEIA, or its precursor, affirmative action, is in fact a measure of "reverse," or anti-white, racism. This EO gives full effect to these ignorant and insulting sentiments, and to the notion that DEIA programs necessarily ignore merit and overall qualifications. The Order casts DEIA efforts as inherently discriminatory.
The conservative answer to DEIA is "meritocracy," an ultimately mythical talent and skill evaluation system that ensures only those with true "merit" will fill positions in government and the private sector. Meritocracy ostensibly facilitates selecting only the most qualified candidate is selected (setting aside the fact that there is almost never a "most qualified" candidate for any position, which will have to be a subject for another piece). Of course conservatives idealize "meritocracy," as it mysteriously results in straight, able-bodied, (and usually more affluent) white men filling the most important roles, vastly out of proportion with their percentage of the population.
Foundational to opposition of DEIA programs is the presumption that they involve considering or selecting un-or-less-qualified candidates for a given position. Further, DEIA opponents view such initiatives as setting quotas for members of groups historically discriminated against. This is, of course, poppycock. As (now) former government employment lawyer Karla Gilbride notes in a recent piece for Slate, diversity initiatives involve expanding the pool of potential candidates for a given opening in various ways, so that more people, from more diverse backgrounds, can compete, increasing equity by including more people in the pool. Having thus expanded the candidate pool, employers select applicants based on relevant qualifications, not on whether they are minorities, or women, or disabled.
The truth is that DEIA initiatives enhance meritocracy, casting wider nets to identify the largest possible pool of qualified candidates for an opening. For example, my father (like me, a white male) spent the first 16 years of his career in public accounting, hired fresh out of college by Arthur Andersen. Prior to his hiring, Andersen recruited candidates only from more elite schools (such as, in the Great Lakes region, the University of Michigan, Norte Dame University, and Northwestern University). The year he was hired was the first in which Andersen expanded its recruitment to include such state schools as Wayne State University, his alma mater. This expansion had the effect of increasing the diversity of Andersen's candidate pool, including, in this case, a greater number of qualified candidates from lower socioeconomic strata (my father's family was distinctly working class, living in the then-modest suburb of Royal Oak). It would, of course, take much more time for companies like Andersen to expand their ranks with minorities, women, and disabled people, but this effort certainly increased the socioeconomic diversity at the firm.
In the same way, schools and employers who cast a wider recruitment net, to include graduates from a broader array of schools, including predominantly minority secondary schools and HBCUs, present themselves with a greater number of qualified candidates for their openings. Over time, more people from a greater diversity of backgrounds will come to be selected for admission or employment. This enables true meritocracy to function, ensuring that schools or employers can truly identify the greatest number of the best qualified candidates for their openings; it's nigh impossible to find such candidates if you limit your search to only elite, wealthy schools
The legacy of hundreds of years of discrimination against minorities, women, and others manifests today in numerous ways (the racial aspect of which I explored here). Having been the preferred group for most any position for most of US history, white men continue to dominate society. While white men constitute 30-32% of the US population, they are over-represented in the ranks of the most affluent, influential jobs in the country. For example, white men hold 62% of all elected offices in the US (as of 2021). While CEOs of Fortune 500 companies have become slightly more reflective of American demographics in the last quarter-century, as of 2020, these powerful captains of industry are 85.8% white men (down from 96.4% in 2020).
Infamously, of the 116 justices ever to sit on the Supreme Court bench in 236 years, a grand total of 6 have been women (Associate Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown-Jackson). Only 3 have been Black Americans (Associate Justices Thurgood Marshall, Clarence Thomas, and Brown-Jackson, herself the sole Black woman to sit on the court), and only 1 a Latina (Sotomayor). That leaves 110 seats filled by men, 108 of them white men.
For white men to be so over-represented in these jobs, assuming the truth of meritocracy, one would have to accept that members of other groups simply don't have the capacity and capability to fill these critical leadership roles in society. In just the Supreme Court setting, we now have 40+ years of evidence that this is not true. And, of course, there are many thousands of counter-examples in government and the private sector more broadly. Thankfully, only a small minority of those on the right wing would actually express this sentiment out loud; unfortunately, they are represented in the current administration (the latter link is to remarks by current Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, bravely addressing this situation...by abruptly ending the press conference when asked specifically about Acting Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, Darren Beattie).
While some of the President's picks for leadership positions are qualified (if, still, poor choices), a quick survey of the appointees for some of the most important roles in the current administration puts the lie to the right wing's insistence on colorblind meritocracy:
Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth
While Hegseth served (admirably and with distinction) in the armed forces, he left service as a junior officer, never having led a force larger than a platoon (up to, say, 50 soldiers)
Zero experience managing large organizations
Zero experience in public policy
Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Close to zero experience in health (or other human) services
Zero experience managing large organizations
Zero experience formulating and implementing public policy
Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard (a woman of Samoan and European descent, yay diversity!)
Zero experience in the intelligence realm
Zero experience managing large organizations
Attorney General, Matt Gaetz (who, mercifully, withdrew from consideration)
Zero experience in government law (as either a prosecutor or defender)
Zero experience managing large (or any) organizations
The principal qualification these appointees possess is a demonstrated willingness to firmly affix their lips to the President's buttocks. Nothing but the best. If this is what the conservative version of "meritocracy" produces, our country is in dire need of more DEIA programs. Far from being discriminatory, DEIA programs maximize the chance that the greatest number of truly qualified candidates are considered for a position.
There are, of course, many more virtues and benefits of DEIA programs, and more opposition to them, than i can address in this post. To remedy some small part of that exclusion, Part II(b) (I know, it's getting a tad ridiculous...) of this series will examine how a focus on DEIA manifests in K-12 education, and why the right wing is so opposed to it.