Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. These three words have been given new meanings and have become weaponized. Once we understand what’s driving the DEI movement, we will want to raise awareness, push back, and resist it. But it won’t be easy. This ideology has become deeply entrenched in academia, government, Hollywood, the media, and the corporate world, for starters.
Too many people have been hoodwinked. Americans are generally respectful, kind, tolerant, and generous. Despite real issues and tensions, racial and otherwise, most U.S. citizens are family-oriented, hard-working, and colorblind. This country is blessed to be a multicultural haven for people of every ethnicity, nationality, culture, race, and religion.
We have allowed other languages, religions, and traditions to be practiced. And yet, the left has programmed generations to think America was built on discrimination, is hopelessly evil, systemically racist, anti-immigrant, greedy, capitalistic, anti-gay, and anti-woman, for starters.
This is their narrative. These are their talking points. It is another manufactured crisis. Their solution?
In the United States in 2020, over $8 billion has been spent on Diversity training alone. This is a huge business. DEI ideology has firmly planted itself in major institutions. Practically every Fortune 100 company has adopted “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programming and has created an executive position for its implementation.
An expert on Marxism, Dr. James Lindsay, said DEI is a vehicle to move communism into the corporate world. Too many of us have little idea how serious this is and how long it has been percolating. DEI has paved the way for the radical left in the U.S. and their cult of “woke.”
The godless and their useful idiots have been using DEI to mask tyranny in order to perpetrate this religious cult of diversity, equity, and inclusion. University and corporate offices have become weapons to intimidate and limit speech. It has become a totalitarian movement.
If DEI is so dangerous, wouldn’t it have been exposed and shut down years ago? Writer Christopher Rufo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, states that the left has for years insulated the DEI bureaucracy from criticism, “creating the false impression that these programs were nonideological, nonpartisan, and noncontroversial.” They’ve had the protection of school administrators, faculty, and the leftist media.
A recent example, now famous for plagiarism, is Claudine Gay, Harvard University’s entitled president that finally resigned due to public pressure. She had quietly built “diversity” ideology into every facet of campus life and blames racism for her exit.
Most of us are familiar with the issues caused by progressive power and ruling elites at Ivy League schools, but the cancer of DEI has metastasized to astounding levels. Let’s look at a handful of examples in “higher” education.
According to the College Fix,
The University of Michigan continues to exponentially grow the number of staffers dedicated to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion, with at least 241 paid employees now focused on DEI and payroll costs exceeding $30 million annually. The payroll costs are $23.24 million for salaries and $7.44 million for benefits, or $30.68 million, an amount that would cover in-state tuition and fees for 1,781 undergraduate students.
Thirteen DEI staff members earn more than $200,000 and 66 earn more than $100,000 when factoring in benefits. The number of positions at Michigan’s flagship university advancing DEI exceeds more than 500 when including those who work full-time or part-time on DEI and factoring in open and unfilled positions.
What are the qualifications for one of these positions and would a white Christian heterosexual male, for example, be considered a candidate for hire? I think you know the answer to this simple question.
The average DEI salary at UM is $96,400; factoring in fringe benefits, 144 DEI employees receive more than $100,000 a year.
Not far behind is Ohio State University (OSU), who employs 189 diversity-related staffers and costs Ohio taxpayers $20.38 million a year. That’s right, over twenty million dollars! OSU has more than doubled its diversity staff in just five years, hiring more than 100 new DEI-related employees between 2018 and 2023, swelling the headcount from 88 to 189.
In 2018, they employed 88 diversity-related staffers at a cost of a mere $7.3 million annually, so you can see how the bureaucracy is ballooning.
Chris Rufo explains how the University of Florida (UF) was also captured by DEI. He says it follows “racial and political preferences in faculty hiring, encourages white employees to engage with a twelve-step program called Racists Anonymous, and maintains racially segregated scholarship programs that violate federal civil rights law.”
UF hosts 31 DEI initiatives at a cost of $5 million per year. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is not a series of standalone programs but an ideology that has been embedded in virtually every department on campus. UF has created over a thousand (1,018) separate DEI initiatives, and among these:
· 73 percent “have a DEI committee” and “DEI officer”;
· 70 percent “espoused commitment to DEI”;
· 53 percent “have a DEI strategic plan”; and
· 30 percent have “DEI in annual reports” and use “DEI in performance review.”
The problem is that these initiatives are entrenched within academia. From community colleges to major universities, the organizational aspect of the DEI agenda has been impressive. The focus is laser-like, and the message from top to bottom is clear: campus groups and departments are required to “stack the deck in favor of racial minorities.” They must use racial and sexual identity “qualifications” when it comes to hiring faculty candidates rather than experience or academic merit.
DEI is being used to discriminate, to enforce what they consider to be fairness, “ideological conformity,” and to silence dissent across America. To the left, diversity means looking different but thinking the same. Critical thinking is a thing of the past.
Two years ago, an extensive report was done by Heritage Foundation’s Jay P. Greene and education reformer, James D. Paul. They listed total DEI personnel at America’s colleges and found the average university has 45 people tasked with promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion! Some have many more.
The University of Michigan has 163 DEI personnel. Its central office had 19 people, including these job titles: “Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion & Chief Diversity Officer,” and three people who are each “Assistant Vice Provost for Equity, Inclusion & Academic Affairs.”
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) had 13.3 times as many people devoted to DEI than to providing services to people with disabilities, for example. Georgia Tech had 3.2 times as many DEI staffers than history professors. The University of Louisville’s ratio of DEI personnel to history faculty was 2:9.
The University of Virginia had 6.5 DEI staff for every 100 professors. Again, this was in 2021. According to Jay Greene and Mike Gonzales’ report, the billions spent on DEI programs fail to contribute positively to the well-being of students on campus. They suggest that,
“Rather than being an effective tool for welcoming students from different backgrounds, DEI personnel may be better understood as a signal of adherence to ideological, political, and activist goals. In light of these findings, state legislators and donors who fund these institutions may wish to examine DEI efforts more closely to ensure that university resources are used effectively.”
The government education establishment claims theywant a level playing field, but equal rights were never the ultimate goal. Under the Constitution, every citizen in the U.S. already has equal rights. Just ask the LGBTQ lobby who has capitalized on equal rights propaganda.
What is meant today by equality regarding sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), for example, is “special” rights for LGBTQ individuals. Once equal rights were demanded and achieved legislatively for sexual orientation, however, religious freedom came under assault. Now, someone else’s rights had to be infringed upon.
DEI is a clever-sounding solution to a problem created by Marxists and globalists. It is a perversion of the truth and a distortion of reality that causes tribalism. It is also revealing that promoters of DEI have summarized the definition and the goals of equity as: disrupt, dismantle, re-envision, and rebuild.
What we’re witnessing are indirect attacks on the biblical worldview and America’s founding. The radical left Democrats would rather invent or exaggerate problems than deal with mankind’s overarching problem of sin.
The ground is level at the foot of the cross, and all are welcome to believe Jesus, confess their sins, and be saved.
The Bible condemns racism, victimhood, and favoritism. The language of social justice warriors is foreign to the New Testament. Moreover, because America was established on the principles and teachings of the Bible, it compelled the push for the abolition of slavery. This nation offers more opportunities to black people and has stronger legal protections for minorities than any other society, including black nations such as Africa. But this doesn’t fit the liberal narrative.
Christians, beware of these lies and false ideologies that have crept into many churches. The Apostle Paul wrote to Christians in Rome, urging them to take note of “those who cause divisions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them” (Romans 16:17). This doesn’t mean we don’t love them. It means we elevate truth over error. We must call out radical attempts to push Marxist agendas.
When you hear words like social justice, environmental justice, racial justice, reproductive justice, restorative justice, trans justice, and more, understand these are not biblical. It is not true justice they are demanding. Be reminded again, the issue is never the issue. The issue is the revolution.
Many ideologies that attack or oppose the biblical worldview are interconnected and are used on multiple fronts in the battle for the West and for the church in America. DEI is just one of many within the playbook of the radical left falling under the umbrella of “social justice.” Cultural Marxists want to disrupt the American way of life, distort our history, disciple generations of youth, and dismantle the nation’s very foundations.
It is so very important today to define terms. One thing to remember is the fact that God is the original just and true source of love, diversity, equity, inclusion, and of course, salvation. Jesus said everyone “who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day (John 6:40).”
Finally, Revelation 7:9-10 declares God’s perspective of diversity, equity, and inclusion: “After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
To read more about the DEI movement, see chapter 12 in David’s new book, Assault on the Image of God.
