Diversity, equity and inclusion. The three moral pillars of the first half of this decade mean nothing, and they never have. These are values inherent to any functioning society; they could be applied to literally anything. That being said they are ideals, which no civilization has managed to achieve on a large scale.
Following the political “reckoning” we all watched on our screens in 2020, DEI policies have come to stand as a levee against the tidal wave of injustices propping up our institutions and we’re beginning to see the levee break, but was it ever secure? I mean, can you name one organization successfully straddling the balance between satisfying the needs of a diverse population and ensuring the well-being of each individual, all while maintaining the institutional power necessary to do any of this?
America as a nation was founded on an ethos of achievement and excellence. With just a little, we can do a whole lot, and do it still tied to our bootstraps. We value work, but more than that, we value suffering. We love being the underdog and take pride in having toiled for our freedoms.
So what we were really asking each other to do when we started pushing DEI, was repress our American spirit.
I’d argue that by the time we started labeling corrections to inequitable systems as DEI policies and education surrounding these systems as “Critical Race Theory,” the sentiment was tired.
President Biden signed Executive Order 13985 on his first day in office. The order for “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government” established that “affirmatively advancing equity, civil rights, racial justice and equal opportunity is the responsibility of the whole of our Government.”
Five years prior, on New Year’s Day in 2015, one of the largest American consulting firms — known for their work with Purdue Pharma and the Saudi Arabian government — McKinsey & Company, released a report titled “Why diversity matters.”
This report states that, “We know intuitively that diversity matters. It’s also increasingly clear that it makes sense in purely business terms. Our latest research finds that companies in the top quartile for gender or racial and ethnic diversity are more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians.”
Plainly stated, DEI policies were simply a market trend. Now that we’re headed for a recession, the budget is too tight to keep pretending we care about equity. It’s time to focus on our own.
This is reflected by the return to Americana aesthetics in popular culture, Beyoncè’s country album should have come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to the subcultural trends of the 2010s.
Lana Del Rey is one of the most obvious and recent examples of a subcultural icon adopted by the mainstream. Her infamous “Question for the culture” Instagram post in 2020 claimed there wasn’t a place in feminism for delicate women like her. I’d say the popularity of Nara Smith rectifies this statement.
Moreover, the existence of Elon Musk demonstrates exactly what Americans want most, to have so much money that they can’t be held accountable — freedom.
To say Elon Musk is weird is an understatement. He’s a manchild who expects to face no consequences for what he says and does, going so far as to refuse the D.C. dress code.
While some people may recognize this kind of behavior as petty clout flexing, most Americans don’t stop to wonder why the wealthiest man on the planet feels the need to do anything besides count his stacks on an island somewhere. Instead, they wish they were wealthy enough to buy a social media company they can use slurs on, as opposed to losing their job for doing the same.
2020 served as an awakening. It lets every voter who doesn’t value the collective action necessary to promote DEI — which, let’s face it, is most of us — know exactly what was on the ballot, and now we’re reaping the effects.
So go ahead and do what you want, there’s not enough funding to stop you.
