December 26, 2023

The medical staff at our community hospital in Jasper, Indiana, a small, generally conservative burg in the middle of fields of corn and soy, received an email from hospital administration indicating that they would begin implementing DEI training. I couldn’t remain silent and, instead, pushed back.

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As the world knows, DEI refers to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This concept, like many seemingly innocuous-sounding slogans or acronyms, carries with it aspects quite sinister. It is a phrase that has swept the nation and all our major institutions, including our universities and schools. DEI has become the new mantra, indeed, a booming industry and ethos, dominating our culture. But contained within it are concepts that are alien and antithetical to the Christian mission of our hospital, which is “being for others.” It is also hostile to the founding principles of the nation.

DEI is a hyperaggressive and politicized quota system, a radicalized version of affirmative action for certain so-called “marginalized” people. It divides society into “groups” based on race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, and so on. It gives preference to certain favored groups, which include, in descending order: Muslims, transgenders, gays, blacks, Hispanics, and women. It discriminates against other groups currently out of favor, chiefly whites, males, heterosexuals, and Christians. Alas, of late, another group has joined the list of the despised, and is now, perhaps, the chief target of DEI hatred: The Jews.

Image: Multiracial medical staff by senivpetro.

Apart from being intensely divisive, DEI reflects a world view that is not compatible with our biblical tradition. That tradition holds that each person is an individual uniquely made in the image of God. This transcendent concept is peculiar to the West and accounts for its extraordinary success, chiefly here in the US, the greatest embodiment of Western thought and accomplishment. (Although today, certain alien ideologies, of which DEI is one, threaten it.)

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Our emphasis on the individual, protecting individual rights and liberties, has made Western nations, in general, and America, in particular, so desirable and this is why all the world seeks to come here. Our concept of individual worth explains our economic growth, standard of living, and extraordinary cultural and technological achievements. It is based ultimately on the freedoms and protections of the individual, precisely because of our belief in the sanctity of each person.

DEI rejects that. It is an identarian ideology, a “caste” system, so to speak, that divides society into intersectional groups based on perceived wrongs committed by alleged dominant power centers in society, which it perceives as intrinsically racist or sexist or homophobic, and so on. Within the DEI calculus, there are oppressors and oppressed, victimizers and victims, and, as noted above, so-called “marginalized people.”

This divisive, hierarchical worldview emerges from standard Marxist ideology, except its centered on culture or race rather than class, as originally conceived, hence the term “cultural Marxism.” DEI is an extension of cultural Marxism, part of the “intersectional” hierarchy of “oppression” that divides society into odd categories. Thus, it places the groups allegedly most “oppressed” at the pinnacle of the pyramid (e.g., blacks, women, or transgenders) and those designated most guilty of “oppression” at the bottom (e.g., whites, males, Christians, Jews).

Bari Weiss sums it up this way:

[The new ideology] replaced basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad). It replaced lots of things. Colorblindness with race-obsession. Ideas with identity. Debate with denunciation. Persuasion with public shaming. The rule of law with the fury of the mob.

Rejecting the individual, DEI reduces American society into a collection of groups or tribes, hence the “tribalization“ of society. This tribalization (racialization) is based on certain immutable, physical traits such as skin color and sex. This, by the way, has been the norm for all of human history and throughout the world. America was unique in that it rejected tribalization, group characteristics, and superficial appearance, and elevated the individual, which accounted for its historic success, and the reason so many sought to live here.