September 16, 2024

The Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision can reasonably stand as the beginning of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (Justice). The path winds through the Civil Rights Movement and Affirmative Action to the election of an African American President of the United States and today’s formal DEI programs at many public and private institutions. The question for us today is where does the road end? What conditions must be met before we declare victory and go home? It is my contention that our failure to ask that question three decades ago has amplified a backlash that could wipe away most of the gains that have been made. 

I think it is fair to say that no reasonable and knowledgeable person believes that DEI(J) is a threat to any group or individual. But just as the word “equality” was once considered a dire threat to white supremacy and male supremacy from the 50s through 80s, “equity” and especially “justice” sound very ominous to those who, consciously or not, hear them as an attack on the unearned privileges they enjoy. In the famous “blue eyes, brown eyes” exercise depicted in A Class Divided, teacher Jane Elliott divides her class by eye color and gives the blue eyed children special privileges and puts collars around the necks of brown eyed children. A few hours later, she asks “who goes first to lunch,” and the whole class can say in unison, “blue eyes.” After only one morning of division by eye color, everyone understands that, if a privilege is granted, it will always go to people with blue eyes. The most fascinating aspect of this video to me is the expectation that authorities (the teachers in this case) would protect these new privileges: one student suggests that the teacher keep the yardstick by her desk, “in case the brown eyed kids get out of hand.” The threat of physical violence transforms into actual violence on the playground shortly thereafter. When Ms. Elliott inquires as to the cause, we learn that eye color is the issue. “He called me names so I hit him,” the student says. “What did he call you?” she asks. “Brown eyes,” the child responds. A second child echos, “they always call us that.” Another speaks up, “that’s just like calling a black person nigger.” Amazingly, one blue eyed student, Brian, places the source of the conflict on his teacher saying, “…since you put these collars on our necks.” Note he says “our necks,” not their necks, refusing to accept the separation and the privileges the collars are designed to create.

In just a few hours, a teacher was able to create the conditions that allowed her students to understand racism. Not just prejudice, but a system that pits people who are otherwise equal against each other as they scrabble for status for the benefit of those in authority. Sadly, Ms. Elliott is able to reverse the process the next day with brown eyed children on top and with the same results. The appeal of being in the privileged group proves almost impossible to resist. This was an essential component so that we could see that the system works the same way in reverse and for children who visited pain upon their classmates to feel the sting before the teacher called a halt to the exercise, after which they could all agree that a system that distributes privileges unfairly is wrong.

What can we learn from this? There are those who argue that Affirmative Action and DEI(J) is simply a reversal of the existing system. Clearly, this is not true. A simple glance at elected officials, corporate boards and officers, and the ranks of billionaires disproves any kind of reversal, but the notion of reversal is not entirely untrue. Affirmative Action, DEI(J) and rational self-interest in hiring the best people has increased the social status of historically disparaged people. Sports is a great example. My father was a two sport star athlete (baseball and basketball) and he was the valedictorian of his class, but in the South in his day, college was out of reach and Jackie Robinson had only recently broken the color barrier, so professional sports were no closer. At the time I was ready to start college, the discussion of the day was about whether or not blacks possessed the intelligence to be quarterbacks. It was more than a decade later that Public Enemy celebrated in song the presence of a black quarterback in the NFL. Today, the race or ethnicity of the athlete is irrelevant. Next came the question of the lack of black managers and head coaches in college and professional sports. I remember with great clarity John Madden saying that Art Shell, former offensive lineman and at the time a coach for the Raiders, would be a great head coach some day. But Al Campanis, an LA Dodgers’ executive, spoke clearly for sports in general when he said Blacks “lack the necessities” for these positions. Now, people of color and women are on the sidelines or in the dugout and on the field as refs, and most importantly, in front offices. So what’s left…Billionaires and board rooms. Will Affirmative Action or DEI(J) have any impact here? Not likely.

Status is not a finite quantity, but is actually a relative position. As equity is, indeed, a stated goal, those who occupy historically privileged positions automatically lose status as the relative position moves closer. Unlike with the blue eyed students’ loss of status, those losing status today cannot be considered responsible for the system that we’ve all inherited. Moreover, the beneficiaries of this improved status may sometimes visit pain upon their more privileged associates as if those privileges were personally assumed which, of course, they weren’t. Just like Ms. Elliott and her classroom, the status between historically privileged groups and others was assigned by others (in the case of racism) or developed through social pressures (in the case of sexism).

Ursula LeGuin, in her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, posited that the road from something is the road to it. In this case, anti-racism would simply lead to racism where the privileged group(s) are different. This is not such a far-fetched idea: Africa has seen nations where European minorities dominated African majorities and the undoing of these systems have produced severe repercussions (post-colonial Rhodesia, for instance). The more likely scenario is the pendulum swing. The response to the women’s movement of the 1970s was a severe backlash in the 1980s that some could argue has moved the country back to the 1960s. There have already been public calls for the Supreme Court to take race relations back to the 1950s or further by undoing Brown. We have to ask ourselves if we are served by DEI(J). I would argue that the eagerness of opponents to misrepresent, and the ease with which they can do so, signals danger. Comedian Ricky Gervais, in his recently released Netflix special, stated as fact that Critical Race Theory is taught in [K-12] schools and that students are told that “all white people are racist.” This is mostly false, but there is just enough truth to it we should be very afraid that our time to address these issues is growing short.

Even after Affirmative Action was ended in California by the disingenuously named California Civil Rights Initiative, white students were afraid to put their race down on student interest cards for college for fear that they would be excluded. What looks like small incremental change toward equity, appears to some as a tectonic shift.

Regardless of the truth of the matter, if people think the world has turned on its axis, they will react as if it has. The backlash to an imagined reversal of fortune will be just as great, whatever the actual circumstance. Thus, I think we need to find a different road immediately. Consider MLK’s dream that “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” Can DEI(J) get us there? Will it even get us any closer than we are now? Is it possible that DEI(J) is moving us in the opposite direction? Consider that, in explaining why non-violence was an essential component to the success of the Civil Rights Movement, King acknowledged the Old Testament’s approach to justice being “an eye for an eye,” but pointed out that down that path lay blindness for all. Instead, he focused on correcting that which was wrong on the way toward equal justice for all; essentially DEI(J) in spirit. But does our current implementation move us forward toward that goal? Gordon Allport, the preeminent authority on prejudice, describes intropunitive and extrapunitive reactions to prejudice where (in very basic terms) the former is harmful to oneself or group and the latter is reactive and harmful to those who harm you. This is vaguely analogous to Ursula LeGuin’s road or even DEI(J) as practiced. Jesus offered something rarely considered, the impunitive response, i.e. turn the other cheek. Simply treating others as we would have them treat us would help us understand why talking about how “white men” did this or that might make some who fit that demographic, especially young people, feel alienated. I cite Jesus not as an authority, but as a philosopher worth considering. The parable of the sower is about how his followers should not pursue those they considered heretics, but it is potentially useful here, as too often I have heard and read heated arguments among those who generally agree but are falling out over an abstract point or ill chosen word. We have to find a way off of this road.

My suggestion is that DEI(J) transform in both name and content to a focus on prejudice. Prejudice is a neutral subject as it is inherent in every human being and affects every human being. Race could be a topic in biology as old junk science. Race could also be a topic in history in describing how 17th century plantation managers were able to divide and control their workforce by granting special privileges to white workers, much like Ms. Eliot did with blue eyed students, and racism was the result. This should be the only time that word is used, as few who use it understand the broad implication and defining it and debating its finer points is irrelevant. As Key and Peele stated on their show, “racist is the n-word for white people.” There may be more than a little truth to this, in which case, calling someone racist makes them, in Allport’s view, the target of an expression of prejudice, or in more modern parlance, the victim of hate speech. 

We have to get away from labels, especially those that few understand and come with such heavy connotations. At the college level, we should make history be inclusive so that we let go of Ethnic Studies. There was once a need for Ethnic Studies as the only place where a more complete history could be found. It also provided jobs in academia for people of color who were shut out of the academy, but this is no longer the case. By having segregated history, we actually limit the number of people who are exposed to vital knowledge. History, literature and art encompass all peoples and it is past time that we desegregate knowledge. It will be uncomfortable for some, but it must happen if we are to find a future as one diverse species.

I’m sure some will read this and think of it as a capitulation to bigotry. Indeed, some of these suggestions have been on the bigot wish list since the attacks on multiculturalism in the 1990s. I would agree that it is capitulation if the goal is to gain an edge as victim and rub racism in the face of white people. It should be remembered, however, that the only people who will tolerate this are those already on your side, and they won’t tolerate it forever. But, if the goal is to find a future as one diverse species, we may have to accept that our history created inequality, and that none of us are responsible. Miss Elliott granted privileges, but the students fought each other as if the blue or the brown eyed student chose that path. We have to be Brian. We have to reject the urge to seek status as superior from birth or as a victim. Hurling insults or even just talking about issues may simply have the effect of enlarging an existing wound. What we need is time to heal. Indeed, Allport tells us that directly addressing social conflict directly may be ineffective, and “may lead to frustration or even antagonism.” The most effective way to bring people together is to put them on the same side. In his 2000 book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, sociologist Robert Putnam persuasively posits that the decline of integrated social clubs, bowling clubs, and community activities where folks from various groups worked together to achieve a common end helped speed the decline of real conversation and community. Putnam suggests that reviving, or creating, opportunities for communal actions may help to rebuild the social fabric a functional society requires. Perhaps we need to talk less and play more. Under such circumstances, when issues do come up, the people engaged already have a relationship, and perhaps view a tense discussion with some empathy and see the other through the eyes of their better angels. I propose that schools, with the support of DEI(J) faculty and staff, promote teams of all kinds (sports, academic) and focused group endeavors as a not only uncontroversial, but an imputative (or dare I say Christian) way of moving us toward justice.

Note that I have barely addressed sexism. Like racism, it is a word that few who use it understand. Unlike racism, however, sexism isn’t just classism covered in a winter coat. There is no origin point for sexism and the impact and implications for society are vast. If we are to solve any of our critical problems, it will involve, if not start with, drastically reducing the impact of sexism. Treating it as just another prejudice might work, but I will leave that to smarter, wiser people than I.