DEI as a Fig Leaf and Blinder

How no amount of context can ever be enough

I think almost everyone can differentiate between a message like "People who >believe< bad things lead to bad results and should be kept out of positions of power." and "People who >are< [inherent category] lead to bad results and should be kept out of positions of power."

There are messages that can imply these things without saying them outright. Saying that every time you see a non-white person in a position of power, you're worried that they are underqualified is not specifically, technically saying "People who >are< [inherent category] lead to bad results and should be kept out of positions of power." But it contributes to a culture where suspicion of non-white people grows.

The conservative conception of DEI has given a fig leaf to this message, because they can argue that it's not inherent in the category of person they are worried about, but in the process by which that individual was promoted to their position.

Regardless of how DEI policy is actually manifest in the real world, (Certainly inconsistently and subject to the foibles that most human endeavors are.) this is the conceptual gap between my understanding of messages that I believe dehumanize groups of people, and how a conservative interprets the same words.

In a world where no DEI ever existed, saying "People who >are< [inherent category] lead to bad results and should be kept out of positions of power." could only be interpreted as the dehumanizing rhetoric that it is.

My big picture conception of DEI, Equal Opportunity, and Affirmative Action is a project designed to artificially tip the scales to advantage groups that historically have been artificially disadvantaged. It is to acknowledge that our world is not -and never has been- an even playing field where “the best of us” naturally rise to positions of power and prestige. Despite writings from virtually every historical period -from old testament prophets to our founding fathers- universally noting this fact of injustice, U.S. conservatives seem to have made the myth of meritocracy an ideological cornerstone of their worldview and politics. (It’s necessary for systems justification)

IF our systems of culture, business and politics are actually meritocratic, AND minorities are statistically underrepresented in them, then there’s really nowhere to retreat, other than to put the blame on the underrepresented. If the system is fair, then the outcomes speak for themselves, and any intervention to change the outcomes are UNfair. The way a thoughtful and compassionate conservative who resists personal racism will play this is by putting the blame not on individuals in that category, but on the culture from which they come.

Culture is the perfect victim here. It provides a nebulous, near endless field of cherry trees from which to pick. Have you heard the lyrics in rap music? Do you see the way they make their women dress? Pointing at cultural issues means not pointing at individuals, which clears the pointer from feeling like they are totalizing or dehumanizing people. And for some reason, does not prompt an equal scrutinization of one's own culture. Nor does it prompt an examination of structural disadvantage as endemic and needing compensatory intervention. Perhaps because their conception of intervention is limited to top-down control mechanisms, rather than addressing material concerns at the root of many of these disadvantages. Since governmental intervention in general (Not when it comes to ensuring the power of the business and defense sectors of course!) is perceived as necessarily foolish, evil and always backfiring, these ideas are swiftly removed by the ideological immune system.

What I’m trying to get at is that it’s difficult or impossible for a conservative person who believes our system is functionally meritocratic to see a lot of hate speech for what it is. A message confirming that their worry over minorities in power is justified is not perceived as dehumanization or racism. Instead, it’s perceived as a critique of an unjustified and unfair system (DEI) dangerously promoting unqualified individuals.

I think it’s important for those of us who see hate speech for what it is to recognize that there’s a whole apparatus of ideological and interpretive framework around a conservatives inability to see the same thing. (Just like we have our own) When they say we are not taking into account the full context of a quote, they don’t necessarily mean the paragraphs before and after, or even the whole podcast or debate. This framework of meritocracy and cultural understanding is a big part of what they mean by ‘context’. And it’s why no amount of material is going to change their understanding of a quote.