The progressive left likes to complexify all issues when it's really unnecessary. You need only one word to describe how hiring and admissions policies should be determined. "Merit."
Even economically disadvantaged students seeking admissions to the most exclusive universities should face that hurdle. Why? Because there are hundreds if not thousands of other colleges and universities in the ratings hierarchy for whom they would not need preferences to qualify for acceptance and yet still receive an excellent education.
The simple fact is that every person deserves to be judged on qualities they have spent their lives developing and perfecting. No one should receive preference over another person based on perceived disadvantages or racial characteristics. Life is hard and achievement is difficult for all people. In America with its diverse set of opportunities at every level, merit based on fairly administered testing and other objective criteria should be the only basis of selection for jobs or admissions. Let the cream rise to the top.
My great aunt was a classical violin teacher who regularly played on radio in the 1930s and 40s. She lived next door to my family in an old converted barn that had a little concert hall. She once told me that her best students in the 50s were white children; in the 60s they were mostly Jews and in the 70s they were Asians. I'm sure there were exceptions, but that was her recollection. Yes, by today's standards, she would be classified as a white, Christian nationalist and proud of it. Her father had been a member of the House of Representatives in Washington.
The point is that she knew who was aspiring for greatness and working the hardest to achieve artistic perfection. And she admired those families for it. She based her judgements on merit. As we all should.
Rich, you obviously wrote this before the events of the last two days. First, every single Democrat in the Senate voted to keep MEN in girls' locker rooms. That is the epitome of DEI. Then, every single Democrat, on national TV, could not even stand up for peace in Ukraine or a black kid with brain cancer. Utterly reprehensible.
So here is your problem (well, one of a thousand, many of which I have documented here over the past weeks in terms of MASSIVE GOP VOTER REGISTRATION SHIFTS: even as you and Ruy and a few others make common sense "reforms," the core of the party's ideology is hopelessly toxic. You literally would have to kick people such as AOC, Nancy Pelosi, Al Green and many others out of the party to have a hope in hell. Intellectually sound arguments fall on deaf ears when a vieweing people sees little children in a SOTU speech holding up signs that say "false" (I thought they meant "we are false," to which I would agree) or "pay your taxes," but did not see Al Sharptton anywhere. A picture is worth a thousand words, and a vote is worth a million columns.
You will see new polling showing the Democrats will continue to crater. I expect PA to be +R by December---January at the latest---and NC to be +R by next February. These images will continue to drive GOP voter registration growth, which, BTW, reached +100,000 since the election, net, nationwide.
This Substack piece reveals the problem sex realists face in pushing back on the excesses of trans activism.
Like me, the author is gay. Unlike me, he seems to believe that as a gay person he has a special duty to support gender identity ideology. How can he be blind to the fact that trans allies' gushing and uncritical support for "trans kids" is putting future gay men and lesbians at great risk of being turned into little girls and boys, respectively?
Unfortunately, the author does not allow subscribers to comment on his Substack essays. That is similar to trans activists' first instinct when faced with opposition, which is to censor them. Heaven forbid anyone should register their disagreement with orthodox trans-ally thought.
Here are the first paragraphs of Marc Solomon's March 4 Bulwark Substack piece "Stand with Trans Americans."
You don’t have to understand everything about the transgender experience to know that Trump’s acts of humiliation and dehumanization are unjust and dangerous.
DONALD TRUMP AND HIS ADMINISTRATION’S dehumanization of transgender people—literally denying their existence—is deeply harmful to a small group of Americans who face discrimination already. As someone who helped lead the fight to win marriage for same-sex couples, I’m familiar with the playbook of sowing fear, though I have never seen it carried out as viciously as the Trump administration is now doing. The question for all of us is whether we go along with it or, instead, question it, listen to the stories of transgender people and their families, and see if we can connect, empathize, welcome, and push back.
Trump is a master scapegoater. He scapegoats to motivate voters to focus their anger on disfavored people, from falsely accusing Haitians who legally immigrated to this country of eating dogs and cats, to pledging on the campaign trail to “root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”
The first six weeks of Trump’s second administration have been marked by a relentless barrage of anti-transgender attacks, playing into people’s lack of familiarity and discomfort. Trump has directed his administration to systematically take away every aspect of what transgender people need to live their daily lives. Under the cynical guise of “defending women,” Trump now conflates those who meet the medical definition of gender dysphoria with practitioners of what he dubs “gender ideology.”
I disagree Ollie. Firstly, you being a gay man, to me, means you have accepted sin, contrary to the Bible. But, does that mean I automatically dislike you, or want to dehumanize you, of course not. It just means that you struggle with sin like every single human being whose ever walked the earth, and if I met you I would show you the same respect I show any person whom I meet and if we became friends I would love you the same. I have struggled with porn in my life, that makes me just as much a sinner as you, with one possible exception. I accept that my sin is wrong and I strive to rid myself of it through strengthening my faith (Holy Spirit). But again, this does not make me better than you, it is simply that my approach as a true believer is different than yours. What I'm trying to say is, I don't judge you for being gay, as that would be foolish, as I have a plank in my own eye.
All that to say, Trump is not judging trans people, he's calling out this dangerous confusion that has taken hold in our society, first and foremost to protect minors. He's not saying trans people are evil and need to be dehumanized, he's saying this sickness needs to be addressed, called out clearly for what it is, and countered before it ruins more people's lives. The trans issue is based on a truly evil deception. Whereas, no one denies the fact that there has been same sex attraction since the beginning (appearing in Genesis), the trans deceit is based on the lie that you can change your sex, that you can be born as the wrong sex, that it is ok to tell these lies to our most vulnerable, our children, and as a society we are obliged to affirm your fantasy.
I would argue, that what is unjust and truly dangerous is the affirmation, support and normalization attempts from the confused left, of this malady, especially with gender affirming care for minors. As wrong as it is for men to compete and occupy women's spaces or to befuddle people with the pronoun game, gender affirming care for minors is straight up evil, IMO. And one does not have to have a medical or psychological background to know this. I'll spare you all the why's as I'm sure you've heard them (immaturity, life-long pharma sentence, etc, etc). Trump is trying to end this. Because you don't agree that this is an evil deception, I would say you are the one demonizing Trump and mischaracterizing him as trying to equate trans people with criminals or bad people, he's not. He's simply trying to proclaim the truth in order to stop the destruction of this madness.
I welcome your respectful reply, for if we can't nurture respectful debate, what hope has the Republic, God bless Ollie.
Opposition to standardized testing will get you nowhere. Such tests while they have their limitations are widely popular as a proxy for merit. The reasons for disparities among ethnic groups have little to do with bias in the instrument itself and everything to do with family support and the foibles of K-12. I don't think it is colleges' job to fix those problems or whether they even can. At the K-12 level such tests are really more diagnostic than gatekeeping in nature. Thus they are one tool to help with that problem. But you have to do something with the results which K-12 is unwilling to do. Teachers complain, with justice, about a unitary focus on testing since it ignores the characteristics of the children who enter their classes. So K-12 remains paralyzed in terms of fixing their obvious problems. It is a mathematical fact that half of all teachers are below average and are probably arranged on a bell curve of effectiveness. So the goal needs to be to reward the truly excellent, eliminate the hapless and improve the mass in the middle, thus moving the curve. Fixing family performance is even more intractable. LBJ truly wrecked the black family and had lesser but still negative impacts on all families.
While I support getting rid of legacies, it may not have the effect you anticipate. In another generation those legacies will be disproportionally minorities. At any rate, this is the province of a handful of "elite" colleges.
Good comment. The legacy issue is a troubling one. They want to force good colleges with generous alumni to act against their best interests and adopt social justice warrior remedies. The sterrotype of the rich drunnken frat boy type who is an educational mediocrity and whose parents buy his way into college is just that: a sterotype. Alumni are like family who adopt colleges and pay handsomely to support them. Many of the children of alumni perform at very high levels in secondary school, but have slightly lower grade points or test scores than those who readily qualify for admission. They college should have discretion to admit them.
In my small college it's not unusual to see three generations of students from the same family. I do not benefit from the practice myself, but I have friends whose children emulated their parents and applied to the school their parents attended. I think legacy admissions should be left alone and colleges should not be subjected to the whims of social justice warriors.
I see the argument against legacy admissions. They are, after all, a form of preference, but one that frequently strengthens the school. I think the claims of the value of diversity are hugely exaggerated and were used as an excuse to impose rough equality on the nation. We are the most diverse nation on earth. We live diversity every day. it surrounds us. It shouldn't be legally imposed on us.
Having attended both public and private schools that were variously “very good” and “prestigious,” I recognize that the more prestigious ones in particular act with their alumni as mutual adulation societies similar to cartels. The success of graduates (or at least the publicly perceived success) reinforces the perceived ability of the school to insure such success, while also increasing the social status and economic power of the graduates. This encourages graduates to donate money to their “alma maters,” especially with the prospect of enabling their children to continue the cycle of interdependence. I think that private schools in particular have as much right to do that as I do to point out the nature of the “game” that they are all playing.
This proposal seems an attempt to modify DEI to a more palatable form by reworking and renaming the variables. The express purpose is to institute a gatekeeping mechanism by establishing a formal state of disadvantage and then bestowing favors upon those deemed helpless victims. Our elites will then have legal tools to manipulate and force the behaviors of voting citizens to favor their preferred world view. Same old repression but with a new makeover.
I have personally witnessed a cult like aspect of DEI. I have spoken at length with friends who work in progressive settings including schools and mental health recovery programs. In some places its literally like a cult and very hard to deal with. For example, young teachers in Waldorf schools need continuing education and on going teacher training. ( Its hard work to be a good teacher!). Instead the schools take up their precious time ( and use limited financial resources) to pay for DEI trainings addressing "white supremacy" in the curriculum or implicit bias. Everyone is too afraid to complain, even though they admit the trainings are a total waste of time. Waldorf schools have always been extremely progressive; they used to be almost 100% democrat voters and have had a commitment to diversity in hiring and in curriculum for 30 years. So DEI trainings are a ridiculous waste of money. I am guessing the same goes on in public schools.
Well, I hope we are smart enough to do this, and not dig in and continue to defend the unpopular and indefensible. I have some comments on framing. FIrst I think it is critical that we not look at increasing accessibility for economically disadvantaged simply as a way to increase racial diversity. I know that you are not arguing this, but I am seeing a little bit of that argument floating around. The growth in economic inequality over the last several decades is truly tragic, as is the growth in political and ideological polarization between those who pursue postsecondary education and those who do not. We have to try to stop this. And the goal here should not simply be to convert rural white folks into leftie college grads. The goal should be to fuck up the sorting that has happened over the last few decades AND promote greater economic opportunity. The second is about “merit”. We all tend to think about college or post college admission as a “reward” for achievements, and this is problematic on many levels. First, given the crazy application numbers to selective schools, plenty of high-achieving, “deserving” applicants, of every variety, do not get admitted. The merit and reward framing plays into the idea that “deserving” people are denied offers so “undeserving” people who check the right boxes can be admitted. And the “deserving” designation is often based on a single metric or two. If one or two numeric metrics are the basis of decisions, you don’t need an admissions office, you just need an Excel spreadsheet sheet. You could admit an entire class of white and Asian female violinist premeds and a few male chess player econ majors from the suburbs if you are just picking the top 2000 GPAs and test scores. You need some horn players and lacrosse players and people who were just writers and not editors at the school paper, and people who are going to major in English. So, no matter what formula you use, many, many “deserving” applicants will get rejected from the most selective schools. But schools should not admit students who are not prepared to succeed, including with resources that the school provides to promote success. That is harder to assess, but it is essential to do so. It is not in the interest of the school or the students to admit people who are not prepared to succeed. This isn’t about merit and reward, this is about investment. So yes, plenty of meritorious applicants with potential to succeed will be rejected from highly rejective schools (but they will get in to very good schools-this is a fact!), but no one unprepared to succeed, with or without the resources and services that the school can realistically provide should be offered admission. And then we should focus on better distribution of preparation in K-12, focus on identifying low performing schools and resourcing them better. It’s an entirely different equation. How do we do this? I don’t know but patting ourselves on the back for having an ethnically “diverse” student body of moderately to highly advantaged students isn’t it.
"Whereas 'diversity' highlights differences across racial lines, 'integration' emphasizes commonality." -- Richard D. Kahlenberg
In the author's perfect world, perhaps, but merely changing words and initials hardly changes the discriminatory mischief of a by now entrenched racial spoils, as measured by thr multitude of DEI offices and officers now populating human resources departments.
True reform consistent with fairness and the Constitution requires a clearer-headed understanding that the term "merit" and demands measurable, definable standards of exemplary performance, experience and achievement.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a Supteme Court ruling to the effect that the only way to end discrimination by race is to stop discriminating by race. I would merely add or gender, age, national origin and other qualifiers properly outlawed. Get to work fully and satisctorily defining "merit" rather than scheming obfuscations to cover illegal and unsatisfactory DEI.
I like your ideas but will be shocked if the Democrats follow. Because DEI has put such a bad tastes in the public’s mouth and to its advocates it is a religion(because many do not have one), I think he’ll will freeze over” before they will listen and implement something strong enough that the public will believe they have changed
My consistent plea is to stop using the word liberal when you mean progressive. Progressive is illiberal and thus we have the ridiculous and unconstitutional policies and programs they support. We need to marginalize the PMS wing of the Democratic Party. (PMS = Progressivist-Marxist-Socialist). Really, the PMS wing should be booted from the Democrat's tent. The more writers misuse the word liberal when they mean progressive, the longer this problem will persist.
Also, anything not radical is moderate. Classical Liberalism is moderate, progressivism is not. Classical Liberals are almost exclusively hybrids of liberal and conservative values.
Above all though, Classical Liberals (moderates) believe in 1. Individual Liberty 2. Limited Government 3. Free Markets and 4. Rule of Law. We will continue to have revolution and counter-revolution until we ditch the PMS wing because the Paleoconservative wing (the radical right wing) is a reaction to the PMS wing.
Self-testing whether one is a Classical Liberal (moderate) or PMS is easy. So is the self-test if one is a Classical Liberal (moderate) or Paleoconservative. If you're a Democrat, do you have any Republican friends? If you're a Republican, do you have any Democrat friends? If not, and like it or not, you're radicalized.
Most other countries have a test. Simplifies things. I would think anyone in the top 10% of SAT takers should be able to do equally well at most highly selective universities. If there are more applicants than spaces institute a lottery or vastly increase the size of the University. All colleges should be at no cost like in other advanced societies.
Rid ourselves of DEI? Good luck, racial discrimination is a hard thing to stamp out, especially amongst the elites. As with everything else a few lawsuits might incentivise.
If you want to see many people on the left doubling down on the bad idea that is DEI, just read some of the comments about Mona Charen's recent podcast about DEI. What she and her guest had to say was both obvious and correct. There was nothing racist about their views. In fact, the racism emanates from DEI.
It is staggering how thoroughly programmed some of those people are. They're as bull-headed about DEI as they are on the trans problem. They will not listen to facts or ideas that offend them.
"And it would consider candidates for college using the concept of 'true merit' that measures academic achievements in light of obstacles overcome."
If this concept of "true merit" leads to promising young people being admitted to college programs that are too demanding for their objective capabilities and preparation, it will just set them up for failure. However, if assessing "true merit" shows that an individual has the aptitude and drive to succeed and has only lacked opportunities to prepare for academic success at the college level, then it can be used as a gateway to a preparatory "bridge" program that helps the individual catch up to the level necessary to succeed in college. That's far better than saying, "Hey, you're pretty smart even if you haven't got the foundational knowledge and training to do college-level work - let's put you in college anyway, because we're pretty sure you can figure it out on your own."
The progressive left likes to complexify all issues when it's really unnecessary. You need only one word to describe how hiring and admissions policies should be determined. "Merit."
Even economically disadvantaged students seeking admissions to the most exclusive universities should face that hurdle. Why? Because there are hundreds if not thousands of other colleges and universities in the ratings hierarchy for whom they would not need preferences to qualify for acceptance and yet still receive an excellent education.
The simple fact is that every person deserves to be judged on qualities they have spent their lives developing and perfecting. No one should receive preference over another person based on perceived disadvantages or racial characteristics. Life is hard and achievement is difficult for all people. In America with its diverse set of opportunities at every level, merit based on fairly administered testing and other objective criteria should be the only basis of selection for jobs or admissions. Let the cream rise to the top.
My great aunt was a classical violin teacher who regularly played on radio in the 1930s and 40s. She lived next door to my family in an old converted barn that had a little concert hall. She once told me that her best students in the 50s were white children; in the 60s they were mostly Jews and in the 70s they were Asians. I'm sure there were exceptions, but that was her recollection. Yes, by today's standards, she would be classified as a white, Christian nationalist and proud of it. Her father had been a member of the House of Representatives in Washington.
The point is that she knew who was aspiring for greatness and working the hardest to achieve artistic perfection. And she admired those families for it. She based her judgements on merit. As we all should.
Rich, you obviously wrote this before the events of the last two days. First, every single Democrat in the Senate voted to keep MEN in girls' locker rooms. That is the epitome of DEI. Then, every single Democrat, on national TV, could not even stand up for peace in Ukraine or a black kid with brain cancer. Utterly reprehensible.
So here is your problem (well, one of a thousand, many of which I have documented here over the past weeks in terms of MASSIVE GOP VOTER REGISTRATION SHIFTS: even as you and Ruy and a few others make common sense "reforms," the core of the party's ideology is hopelessly toxic. You literally would have to kick people such as AOC, Nancy Pelosi, Al Green and many others out of the party to have a hope in hell. Intellectually sound arguments fall on deaf ears when a vieweing people sees little children in a SOTU speech holding up signs that say "false" (I thought they meant "we are false," to which I would agree) or "pay your taxes," but did not see Al Sharptton anywhere. A picture is worth a thousand words, and a vote is worth a million columns.
You will see new polling showing the Democrats will continue to crater. I expect PA to be +R by December---January at the latest---and NC to be +R by next February. These images will continue to drive GOP voter registration growth, which, BTW, reached +100,000 since the election, net, nationwide.
This Substack piece reveals the problem sex realists face in pushing back on the excesses of trans activism.
Like me, the author is gay. Unlike me, he seems to believe that as a gay person he has a special duty to support gender identity ideology. How can he be blind to the fact that trans allies' gushing and uncritical support for "trans kids" is putting future gay men and lesbians at great risk of being turned into little girls and boys, respectively?
Unfortunately, the author does not allow subscribers to comment on his Substack essays. That is similar to trans activists' first instinct when faced with opposition, which is to censor them. Heaven forbid anyone should register their disagreement with orthodox trans-ally thought.
Here are the first paragraphs of Marc Solomon's March 4 Bulwark Substack piece "Stand with Trans Americans."
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/stand-with-trans-americans-donald-trump-executive-orders-discharging-service-members
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You don’t have to understand everything about the transgender experience to know that Trump’s acts of humiliation and dehumanization are unjust and dangerous.
DONALD TRUMP AND HIS ADMINISTRATION’S dehumanization of transgender people—literally denying their existence—is deeply harmful to a small group of Americans who face discrimination already. As someone who helped lead the fight to win marriage for same-sex couples, I’m familiar with the playbook of sowing fear, though I have never seen it carried out as viciously as the Trump administration is now doing. The question for all of us is whether we go along with it or, instead, question it, listen to the stories of transgender people and their families, and see if we can connect, empathize, welcome, and push back.
Trump is a master scapegoater. He scapegoats to motivate voters to focus their anger on disfavored people, from falsely accusing Haitians who legally immigrated to this country of eating dogs and cats, to pledging on the campaign trail to “root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”
The first six weeks of Trump’s second administration have been marked by a relentless barrage of anti-transgender attacks, playing into people’s lack of familiarity and discomfort. Trump has directed his administration to systematically take away every aspect of what transgender people need to live their daily lives. Under the cynical guise of “defending women,” Trump now conflates those who meet the medical definition of gender dysphoria with practitioners of what he dubs “gender ideology.”
I disagree Ollie. Firstly, you being a gay man, to me, means you have accepted sin, contrary to the Bible. But, does that mean I automatically dislike you, or want to dehumanize you, of course not. It just means that you struggle with sin like every single human being whose ever walked the earth, and if I met you I would show you the same respect I show any person whom I meet and if we became friends I would love you the same. I have struggled with porn in my life, that makes me just as much a sinner as you, with one possible exception. I accept that my sin is wrong and I strive to rid myself of it through strengthening my faith (Holy Spirit). But again, this does not make me better than you, it is simply that my approach as a true believer is different than yours. What I'm trying to say is, I don't judge you for being gay, as that would be foolish, as I have a plank in my own eye.
All that to say, Trump is not judging trans people, he's calling out this dangerous confusion that has taken hold in our society, first and foremost to protect minors. He's not saying trans people are evil and need to be dehumanized, he's saying this sickness needs to be addressed, called out clearly for what it is, and countered before it ruins more people's lives. The trans issue is based on a truly evil deception. Whereas, no one denies the fact that there has been same sex attraction since the beginning (appearing in Genesis), the trans deceit is based on the lie that you can change your sex, that you can be born as the wrong sex, that it is ok to tell these lies to our most vulnerable, our children, and as a society we are obliged to affirm your fantasy.
I would argue, that what is unjust and truly dangerous is the affirmation, support and normalization attempts from the confused left, of this malady, especially with gender affirming care for minors. As wrong as it is for men to compete and occupy women's spaces or to befuddle people with the pronoun game, gender affirming care for minors is straight up evil, IMO. And one does not have to have a medical or psychological background to know this. I'll spare you all the why's as I'm sure you've heard them (immaturity, life-long pharma sentence, etc, etc). Trump is trying to end this. Because you don't agree that this is an evil deception, I would say you are the one demonizing Trump and mischaracterizing him as trying to equate trans people with criminals or bad people, he's not. He's simply trying to proclaim the truth in order to stop the destruction of this madness.
I welcome your respectful reply, for if we can't nurture respectful debate, what hope has the Republic, God bless Ollie.
Opposition to standardized testing will get you nowhere. Such tests while they have their limitations are widely popular as a proxy for merit. The reasons for disparities among ethnic groups have little to do with bias in the instrument itself and everything to do with family support and the foibles of K-12. I don't think it is colleges' job to fix those problems or whether they even can. At the K-12 level such tests are really more diagnostic than gatekeeping in nature. Thus they are one tool to help with that problem. But you have to do something with the results which K-12 is unwilling to do. Teachers complain, with justice, about a unitary focus on testing since it ignores the characteristics of the children who enter their classes. So K-12 remains paralyzed in terms of fixing their obvious problems. It is a mathematical fact that half of all teachers are below average and are probably arranged on a bell curve of effectiveness. So the goal needs to be to reward the truly excellent, eliminate the hapless and improve the mass in the middle, thus moving the curve. Fixing family performance is even more intractable. LBJ truly wrecked the black family and had lesser but still negative impacts on all families.
While I support getting rid of legacies, it may not have the effect you anticipate. In another generation those legacies will be disproportionally minorities. At any rate, this is the province of a handful of "elite" colleges.
Good comment. The legacy issue is a troubling one. They want to force good colleges with generous alumni to act against their best interests and adopt social justice warrior remedies. The sterrotype of the rich drunnken frat boy type who is an educational mediocrity and whose parents buy his way into college is just that: a sterotype. Alumni are like family who adopt colleges and pay handsomely to support them. Many of the children of alumni perform at very high levels in secondary school, but have slightly lower grade points or test scores than those who readily qualify for admission. They college should have discretion to admit them.
In my small college it's not unusual to see three generations of students from the same family. I do not benefit from the practice myself, but I have friends whose children emulated their parents and applied to the school their parents attended. I think legacy admissions should be left alone and colleges should not be subjected to the whims of social justice warriors.
I see the argument against legacy admissions. They are, after all, a form of preference, but one that frequently strengthens the school. I think the claims of the value of diversity are hugely exaggerated and were used as an excuse to impose rough equality on the nation. We are the most diverse nation on earth. We live diversity every day. it surrounds us. It shouldn't be legally imposed on us.
Having attended both public and private schools that were variously “very good” and “prestigious,” I recognize that the more prestigious ones in particular act with their alumni as mutual adulation societies similar to cartels. The success of graduates (or at least the publicly perceived success) reinforces the perceived ability of the school to insure such success, while also increasing the social status and economic power of the graduates. This encourages graduates to donate money to their “alma maters,” especially with the prospect of enabling their children to continue the cycle of interdependence. I think that private schools in particular have as much right to do that as I do to point out the nature of the “game” that they are all playing.
This proposal seems an attempt to modify DEI to a more palatable form by reworking and renaming the variables. The express purpose is to institute a gatekeeping mechanism by establishing a formal state of disadvantage and then bestowing favors upon those deemed helpless victims. Our elites will then have legal tools to manipulate and force the behaviors of voting citizens to favor their preferred world view. Same old repression but with a new makeover.
I have personally witnessed a cult like aspect of DEI. I have spoken at length with friends who work in progressive settings including schools and mental health recovery programs. In some places its literally like a cult and very hard to deal with. For example, young teachers in Waldorf schools need continuing education and on going teacher training. ( Its hard work to be a good teacher!). Instead the schools take up their precious time ( and use limited financial resources) to pay for DEI trainings addressing "white supremacy" in the curriculum or implicit bias. Everyone is too afraid to complain, even though they admit the trainings are a total waste of time. Waldorf schools have always been extremely progressive; they used to be almost 100% democrat voters and have had a commitment to diversity in hiring and in curriculum for 30 years. So DEI trainings are a ridiculous waste of money. I am guessing the same goes on in public schools.
Well, I hope we are smart enough to do this, and not dig in and continue to defend the unpopular and indefensible. I have some comments on framing. FIrst I think it is critical that we not look at increasing accessibility for economically disadvantaged simply as a way to increase racial diversity. I know that you are not arguing this, but I am seeing a little bit of that argument floating around. The growth in economic inequality over the last several decades is truly tragic, as is the growth in political and ideological polarization between those who pursue postsecondary education and those who do not. We have to try to stop this. And the goal here should not simply be to convert rural white folks into leftie college grads. The goal should be to fuck up the sorting that has happened over the last few decades AND promote greater economic opportunity. The second is about “merit”. We all tend to think about college or post college admission as a “reward” for achievements, and this is problematic on many levels. First, given the crazy application numbers to selective schools, plenty of high-achieving, “deserving” applicants, of every variety, do not get admitted. The merit and reward framing plays into the idea that “deserving” people are denied offers so “undeserving” people who check the right boxes can be admitted. And the “deserving” designation is often based on a single metric or two. If one or two numeric metrics are the basis of decisions, you don’t need an admissions office, you just need an Excel spreadsheet sheet. You could admit an entire class of white and Asian female violinist premeds and a few male chess player econ majors from the suburbs if you are just picking the top 2000 GPAs and test scores. You need some horn players and lacrosse players and people who were just writers and not editors at the school paper, and people who are going to major in English. So, no matter what formula you use, many, many “deserving” applicants will get rejected from the most selective schools. But schools should not admit students who are not prepared to succeed, including with resources that the school provides to promote success. That is harder to assess, but it is essential to do so. It is not in the interest of the school or the students to admit people who are not prepared to succeed. This isn’t about merit and reward, this is about investment. So yes, plenty of meritorious applicants with potential to succeed will be rejected from highly rejective schools (but they will get in to very good schools-this is a fact!), but no one unprepared to succeed, with or without the resources and services that the school can realistically provide should be offered admission. And then we should focus on better distribution of preparation in K-12, focus on identifying low performing schools and resourcing them better. It’s an entirely different equation. How do we do this? I don’t know but patting ourselves on the back for having an ethnically “diverse” student body of moderately to highly advantaged students isn’t it.
"Whereas 'diversity' highlights differences across racial lines, 'integration' emphasizes commonality." -- Richard D. Kahlenberg
In the author's perfect world, perhaps, but merely changing words and initials hardly changes the discriminatory mischief of a by now entrenched racial spoils, as measured by thr multitude of DEI offices and officers now populating human resources departments.
True reform consistent with fairness and the Constitution requires a clearer-headed understanding that the term "merit" and demands measurable, definable standards of exemplary performance, experience and achievement.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a Supteme Court ruling to the effect that the only way to end discrimination by race is to stop discriminating by race. I would merely add or gender, age, national origin and other qualifiers properly outlawed. Get to work fully and satisctorily defining "merit" rather than scheming obfuscations to cover illegal and unsatisfactory DEI.
I like your ideas but will be shocked if the Democrats follow. Because DEI has put such a bad tastes in the public’s mouth and to its advocates it is a religion(because many do not have one), I think he’ll will freeze over” before they will listen and implement something strong enough that the public will believe they have changed
My consistent plea is to stop using the word liberal when you mean progressive. Progressive is illiberal and thus we have the ridiculous and unconstitutional policies and programs they support. We need to marginalize the PMS wing of the Democratic Party. (PMS = Progressivist-Marxist-Socialist). Really, the PMS wing should be booted from the Democrat's tent. The more writers misuse the word liberal when they mean progressive, the longer this problem will persist.
Also, anything not radical is moderate. Classical Liberalism is moderate, progressivism is not. Classical Liberals are almost exclusively hybrids of liberal and conservative values.
Above all though, Classical Liberals (moderates) believe in 1. Individual Liberty 2. Limited Government 3. Free Markets and 4. Rule of Law. We will continue to have revolution and counter-revolution until we ditch the PMS wing because the Paleoconservative wing (the radical right wing) is a reaction to the PMS wing.
Self-testing whether one is a Classical Liberal (moderate) or PMS is easy. So is the self-test if one is a Classical Liberal (moderate) or Paleoconservative. If you're a Democrat, do you have any Republican friends? If you're a Republican, do you have any Democrat friends? If not, and like it or not, you're radicalized.
Most other countries have a test. Simplifies things. I would think anyone in the top 10% of SAT takers should be able to do equally well at most highly selective universities. If there are more applicants than spaces institute a lottery or vastly increase the size of the University. All colleges should be at no cost like in other advanced societies.
Rid ourselves of DEI? Good luck, racial discrimination is a hard thing to stamp out, especially amongst the elites. As with everything else a few lawsuits might incentivise.
If you want to see many people on the left doubling down on the bad idea that is DEI, just read some of the comments about Mona Charen's recent podcast about DEI. What she and her guest had to say was both obvious and correct. There was nothing racist about their views. In fact, the racism emanates from DEI.
It is staggering how thoroughly programmed some of those people are. They're as bull-headed about DEI as they are on the trans problem. They will not listen to facts or ideas that offend them.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/examining-dei
"And it would consider candidates for college using the concept of 'true merit' that measures academic achievements in light of obstacles overcome."
If this concept of "true merit" leads to promising young people being admitted to college programs that are too demanding for their objective capabilities and preparation, it will just set them up for failure. However, if assessing "true merit" shows that an individual has the aptitude and drive to succeed and has only lacked opportunities to prepare for academic success at the college level, then it can be used as a gateway to a preparatory "bridge" program that helps the individual catch up to the level necessary to succeed in college. That's far better than saying, "Hey, you're pretty smart even if you haven't got the foundational knowledge and training to do college-level work - let's put you in college anyway, because we're pretty sure you can figure it out on your own."
End any and all DEI everywhere
Here's another proposal for benefiting all low-income Americans of every race.
https://kathleenweber.substack.com/p/how-to-fight-trump-part-one