In this episode, Part 2 of our three part series on DEI, Tom interviews Tim about DEI in the college environment. We go further into the specific origins of DEI, what “diversity, equity and inclusion” really means in how it manifests itself on college campuses, and how the DEI ideology has spread significantly in recent years.

Here are links to some Black authors we mention in this episode who have argued against the singular perspective of the DEI bureaucracy:

• Candace Owens, “Blackout”—In this book, Owens, a Black woman who grew up in poverty, argues with evidence how the liberal policies intended to help Black Americans actually works against them, how the left ignores the importance of faith in the Black community, and how fathers in the home is the key to Black Americans rising out of the cycle of poverty.

• Former President Barak Obama also stressed the importance of fatherhood in the Black community, that racial differences cannot be attributed entirely to flawed notions of ‘white privilege.’ As he noted in a 2008 Father’s Day speech to the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago: “We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled — doubled — since we were children. We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.”

• Carol Swain, “The Adversity of Diversity” — Swain is a prominent Black political science professor, recently retired (and plagiarized by Harvard President Claudine Gay), who speaks against the billion dollar DEI industry that, in her words, “has become an aggressive force that takes organizations away from their core missions and often transforms them into divisive and disruptive institutions that openly violate the rights of members of disfavored groups.” Swain's recommended solution of Real Unity Training Solutions entails a return to core American principles that embrace nondiscrimination and equal opportunity in a meritocratic system that recognizes individual effort rather than group rights.

• Thomas Sowell, “Social Justice Fallacies” — The prolific Black Stanford Professor and economist’s most recent book points to the fact that “many things that are thought to be true simply cannot stand up to documented facts, which are often the opposite of what is widely believed. However attractive the social justice vision , the crucial question is whether the social justice agenda will get us to the fulfillment of that vision. History shows that the social justice agenda has often led in the opposite direction, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.”

• John McWhorter’s book “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America” "details how 'claims' to “dismantle racist structures” is actually harming his fellow Black Americans by infantilizing Black people, setting Black students up for failure, and passing policies that disproportionately damage Black communities. What is called antiracism actually features a racial essentialism that’s barely distinguishable from racist arguments of the past.”

• Shelby Steele, a Black New York Times columnist, argues in his book “The Content of Our Character” (invoking MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech) that our culture has been trapped in putting color before character, or considering only racial categories and not individual attributes.

• Robert Woodson, a contemporary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, founded the Woodson Center to help underserved communities fight crime and violence and restore families by applying the principles of market economy, faith, and personal responsibility.

*********Pomp & Circumstance, Courtesy 316_Music