A little bigotry, for a treat. It’s been over ten months since I wrote about America’s vibe shift, and a great release of the regressive worm-brained hold on culture — the thought policing, the stylish self-loathing, and the relentless bigotry in service, we were told for years, of ending bigotry. At the top of 2023, emboldened by Elon Musk’s Twitter revolution, exhausted Americans rejected the historic quantities of bullshit they were made to endure throughout the 20-teens and early 2020s, and the culture war was paused. At the time, I used the word “détente.” A brief, strange quiet followed, and then there was a year of backlash.

It’s possible reaction to the One Party State’s Stasi shit was always inevitable, regardless of who owned Twitter. But what we know for sure is this: unshackled by a new, freer social media landscape (or, at least in terms of political speech), cultural reactionaries lit up in righteous fury with their former prison guards, concluding in these final weeks of 2023 with a firestorm of popular outrage surrounding “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” or DEI, the racist, sexist operating philosophy of the prior zeitgeist, which has now metastasized at every major institution in the country. Last week, following and in some sense catalyzed by the disastrous congressional hearing of Harvard’s president and unofficial DEI chief Claudine Gay, this backlash reached a fever pitch, at which point Elon entered the chat. “DEI must DIE,” he posted on Twitter to his 166.8 million followers. “The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different discrimination.” The sentiment, already popular and widely shared among prominent figures throughout the technology industry, the government, and even certain corners of our media, is now ubiquitous. Still, can DEI truly be stopped, or have the apostles of this twisted faith already won?

Let’s start with a steelman. What is DEI? Proponents argue America’s outcomes, roughly defined in terms of income and positions held at high-status companies and institutions, reveal a bias against women and a handful of struggling racial minority groups. Given no explicitly bigoted laws or policies exist, this “white supremacist” bias is determined implicit, and faced with so frightening and formidable a specter as this invisible, all-powerful white supremacy, a blunt, essential course of action has been prescribed in boardrooms across the country. Our medicine: a brute force rearrangement of income and demographic outcomes to be more reflective of the broader national population, regardless of merit, background, or even the demographic breakdown of men and women applying for any given role. The philosophy of DEI is considered new, but it’s existed for many decades, in one form or another. Long ago, you were probably introduced to it by its birth name: “Affirmative Action.”

In practice, DEI means mandatory training seminars for abstract, highly-politicized concepts like “implicit bias” (you don’t think you’re racist, but really you are), and — most importantly — racial and gender-based quotas, be they in hiring or admissions. From its inception, details have skewed to the cartoonishly outrageous, from Coca-Cola training employees to “be less white,” and the argument on campuses across the nation that punctuality is racially insensitive, to the Pentagon’s recent request to mainstream such critical training in the military with $100 million in new DEI funding. But that’s just pennies to the $3.8 billion committed to DEI by tech giants throughout America’s Covid years.

How was that money spent? Why, on a sprawling new cottage industry of cultural revolutionaries dressed as “educators,” and the innovation of a somehow even less useful version of the HR executive, of course. But in the early 2020s, there were many fascinating innovations in the booming corporate space of racism.

IBM recently attracted tremendous controversy following the unearthing of a 2021 video clip in which CEO Arvind Krishna revealed he awarded and withheld bonuses based on the number of preferred racial minorities and women his executives hired (Asians, he laughed, obviously didn’t count). In the same clip, Red Hat’s Paul Cormier revealed he actually fired executives for failing to successfully hire along specific racial criteria. But the ensuing outrage with IBM indicated much more about America’s seismic cultural shift than its history. After all, by 2021 this outrageous example of explicit racism was utterly common.

Throughout the country, from Airbnb and Uber to McDonald’s, executive pay has been tied to “diversity goals” for years. A report from the Business Journals indicates as many as 27% of Fortune 500 companies tie executive pay, in some way, to racist hiring practices (which the writer here does not consider racist, I should note, and naturally argues do not go far enough). Then, there’s the interview process.

A few years back, in a friendlier media environment for DEI, Lyft happily declared allegiance to the “Rooney Rule” (see page 17 of their 2019 diversity report). The policy, named after Dan Rooney of the National Football League, where the rule is also happily in place, means the company won’t offer a job to any prospective employee until recruiters have also interviewed at least one candidate from their pre-approved list of favored minorities for the same role. As early as 2015, the Rooney Rule was implemented at Facebook, Pinterest, and, according to the Obama Administration (hinting once again at the era-defining, bizarrely close relationship between our industry and state), Amazon, Box, Microsoft, and Xerox. A reader recently alerted me to the practice at Airbnb, which I’ve not been able to independently verify. Just a few years ago, he alleged, after completing several interviews, he was told he was a perfect fit for the role. But his recruiter revealed the company couldn’t hire him until they’d found a more “diverse” candidate with whom to speak (gay and Jewish didn’t count, he sadly learned). Months later, a more “diverse” candidate was discovered and hired. I take some small solace in my certainty, however, that she deserved the role.

How many meetings in HR offices across the country have devolved into disagreement over whether a talented Iranian refugee too lightly pigmented is “diverse” (spoiler alert: he isn’t)? Can this truly be considered progress? How much money has been awarded for explicitly racist and sexist hiring achievements? These past few years, how many candidates have been turned down solely for the color of their skin? Throughout the major tech layoffs that began in 2020, how many great employees were let go not because they’d done a poor job, but because the company wanted to preserve their feel-good, publicly facing, relentlessly-covered “diversity” numbers?

Even by the standards of the most obsessive DEI activists, such policies have failed to achieve their goals of ending racism and sexism. Activists tend to come at this from a slightly different place than I do, as they believe no corporate behavior, no matter how self-destructive or unfair, can ever be enough. But my sense is these policies have actually made things worse. Even were the unfounded premise of implicit bias based in reality, and even if the dual positions “we have a pipeline problem” and “anything short of perfect gender parity indicates corporate sexism” compatible, punishing male, white, and Asian candidates was doomed to counterproductivity. These policies imply — have always insanely, and cruelly implied — that favored racial minorities and women are not capable of excellent work without the support of unfair assistance. This is just not, and has never been true. Nonetheless, thanks to the purported champions of racial minorities and women, this is now what most people believe.

Separate from the unintended consequences of crazy people (DEI executives) doing crazy shit (DEI), there is also the glaringly obvious moral question: is it in any way defensible to exclude people from opportunities based on the color of their skin, or their genitalia? A controversial opinion perhaps, but I’ve always thought no.

Just as one does not “defend democracy” by abolishing the concept, one does not combat “systemic sexism and racism” by erecting an actual system of sexism and racism. That is neither helpful nor just. It is a despicable moral inversion, and it should be resisted at every possible turn. While a Google search on Gallup data surrounding American support for DEI initiatives only turns up 20 articles or so on how to better embrace and implement DEI policies, my sense is most Americans agree: this is obviously wrong. Do you know who else agrees? Lawyers. Or, enough of them.

On the heels of 2022’s state court ruling that California’s board diversity mandates violated the constitution, 2023 provoked a national conversation on the issue, which concluded with the Supreme Court’s ruling Harvard University’s “racially conscious” admissions policies were unconstitutional. On campus, students somberly lamented this decision, as if abolishing systemic racism were akin to reinstating the institution of slavery. But no amount of radical left-wing tears could turn the legal tide back in their insidious favor. By the end of the summer, everything was changed.

Today, while corporations slash DEI-focused positions, and “DEI leaders are burning out from diversity fatigue,” Meta, Comcast, Amazon, and Starbucks are all being sued for DEI-based racial discrimination. The media, which could once be counted on to passionately defend every psychotic DEI initiative spotted, has been oddly silent on the issue these past few months. One narrow example: I couldn’t help but notice the Information is late with its annual practice of reducing venture capitalists to their skin color and chosen gender. The press has, however, taken to publishing breathless reports from Stasi HR officials now worried they’re running afoul of the law (because they obviously are (clink, clink Becky)), for which Harvard has helpfully outlined best practices to avoid litigation while quietly carrying on with racist hiring and bonus practices. DEI, the Guardian quotes one worried executive, will “come under full-out attack in 2024.”

Interesting times, and positive signs of change. But as I sit here watching Claudine Gay’s plagiarism scandal evolve, it once again occurs to me the official rules have always mattered less for some (the “privileged,” let’s call them) than others. The only true law is power, and power in America really seems to want a race war.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision against Harvard, president Biden not only implored colleges to carry on in their racist efforts, but outlined a workable strategy on their behalf: “What I propose for consideration is a new standard, where colleges take into account the adversity a student has overcome when selecting among qualified applicants.” In this way, prospective students of color are encouraged, by the President of the United States, to aggressively center their race, as a selling point, in the admissions process. From here, college administrators can unofficially notice the race of various candidates, and carry on with their illegal racist admissions practices. But while the Harvard Business Review has implored companies to follow along, the calculus is different for any institution with a duty to shareholders, and no insulation of the kind afforded by, for example, Harvard’s $50 billion tax-free endowment.

It’s still not clear how larger companies will rework their racist policies over the year to come. It’s also not clear that Twitter maps to reality, an adjacent but important topic, which is to say there is some risk, here, we have all confused talk for meaningful change. To some degree, this is understandable. After all, permission to honestly talk about issues like DEI is itself a major, meaningful change. But, as far as we know, nearly all of the corporate policies outlined in this piece are still in place throughout the industry. The Stasi mall cops are unpopular, and maybe bracing for the horrific and unthinkable — a zealously litigious white boy #metoo — but they are still in charge.

Fortunately, the ability to communicate a problem, while not itself a solution, is the first, critical step to progress. Keep talking, and never apologize. The establishment of America’s first real systemic racism in sixty years, all in the name of dismantling a “systemic racism” that doesn’t exist, is abhorrent. Then, keep in mind that journalists who cheerfully email you with demands you color count your employees have thus reduced your employees to their skin color — these people are racist, and we should call them racist. If you are a young founder, reject these racist policies for as long as the law permits, ignore these racist journalists, and refuse to hire anyone beholden to this philosophy. If you are working at a company that has demanded you enact racist policies in service of your work, or in order to secure a bonus, I urge a little more caution. Kindly request they tell you what they want in writing, and tuck the note away. If you’re fired for failure to meet their racist, sexist policies, you have options.

Merry Christmas, DEI is over if you want it.

-SOLANA