Recent disappointing comments from WNBA superstar Caitlin Clark provide yet more evidence—as if any were needed—of the malignant effect of DEI efforts.
In her interview with Time Magazine conducted in conjunction with her being named Time Magazine’s Athlete of the Year, Clark revealed that she has appropriated more ideologically from DEI wokesters than she has from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
While acknowledging that she deserves the accolades she has garnered, she expressed her fervent desire that greater emphasis be placed on skin color:
A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been black players. This league has kind of been built on them. The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it’s very important. I have to continue to try to change that. The more we can elevate black women, that’s going to be a beautiful thing.
Contra Clark, many Americans of diverse colors believe that continually highlighting, talking about, and elevating skin color will only foment division in an already fragmented and fractious country. Evidence from a recent Rutgers University study confirms that belief.
Manhattan Institute’s Senior Fellow Christopher Rufo seeks to undo the cultural damage done by leftist academics and their DEI/CRT disciples, including Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Rufo points to three executive orders issued by Obama and Biden as critical in fomenting America’s leftist-constructed neo-racism by seeding leftist DEI dogma throughout the federal government.
First was Obama’s 2011 Executive Order 13583, which established “a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce.” No study was conducted proving that these leftist “diversity and inclusion” efforts “to recruit, hire, promote, retain, develop, and train” government personnel based on skin color, genitalia, erotic predilections, or “gender” identification strengthen America, promote unity, improve government efficiency, or enhance the well-being of “deplorable,” “garbage” Americans.
No matter to leftists. The public weal is subordinated to ideological control and political power.
Biden—or the hidden puppeteers who have been jangling Biden to and fro—doubled down by signing Executive Order 13985 which proclaimed that “Our Nation deserves an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda.” Therefore, “The Federal Government should … allocate resources to address the historic failure to invest sufficiently, justly, and equally in underserved communities,” which include “ Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons.”
It would surprise our Founding Fathers to learn that the federal government has a positive obligation to invest in individuals based on their erotic desires.
But that wasn’t enough, oh no, not nearly enough kowtowing to leftists. So, six months later, Biden issued another executive DEI edict: 14035, “Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce.” Biden declared that “As the Nation’s largest employer, the Federal Government must be a model for diversity, equity, inclusion.”
In this executive order, Biden mentions another pernicious executive order issued three months earlier that may surprise many Americans.
Biden’s Executive Order 14020 established a “White House Gender Policy Council” to, among other things, “support gender equity and combat gender stereotypes in education” and “promote sexual and reproductive health and rights.”
All these executive orders mandate the creation of committees, councils, initiatives, strategic plans, frameworks, research, assessments ad nauseum, for which we the people pay through our noses.
While the bureaucratic behemoth gorges at the public trough, profiteers whose pockets are lined with way more than their fair shares luxuriate in their mansions, on private jets, and with their equally wealthy friends.
On Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2024, City Journal published an open letter from Rufo to President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet urging them to take immediate steps to dismantle the federally subsidized DEI infrastructure.
Rufo is also a trustee at New College of Florida, which “became the first institution in America to abolish the DEI department.” He bases his recommendations to the Trump Cabinet on successful actions taken at New College. Rufo outlined three steps Trump’s Cabinet should take:
- “Cabinet officials must work with President Trump to rescind President Obama and President Biden’s executive orders. In their place, the 47th president should sign an order advancing the principle of colorblind equality, stating that the government shall treat all individuals equally according to their merit, rather than unequally according to their ancestry.
- “swiftly … shut down all DEI programs and … terminate the employment of all policy officials responsible for those programs, effective immediately. … Cabinet secretaries should task their aides with creating a list of all DEI programs, departments, and policies, and, if the president issues an order along the lines I’ve outlined, terminate them within hours of the decision.”
- “The third step is to win the fight in the press. Here again, our policy at the New College of Florida is instructive. Progressive media outlets tried to turn our elimination of DEI into a negative news cycle, but we outwitted them by speed and substitution. Because we worked so quickly, we ensured that the stories about our policy were part of a single, rather than an ongoing, news cycle. We also paired our abolition of DEI with a replacement policy, which advanced the principle of colorblind equality.”
As we have witnessed over the past four decades when leaders in government and academia self-censored out of fear of persecution for standing for truth, cowardice breeds cowardice. Conversely, courage breeds courage. The courage of President Trump and a growing number of other political and cultural leaders—including Chris Rufo—proves that courage is contagious as well. But courageous leaders can’t and shouldn’t be expected to do all the heavy lifting. Americans of every color should join the effort to bequeath to our children a freer, fairer, more virtuous country than we presently have.