MSNBC Legal Analyst Makes Wildly Misleading Defense of DEI

May 29th, 2024 10:17 AM

An MSNBC legal analyst offered a wildly misleading defense of discriminatory diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. 

MSNBC Legal Analyst Charles Coleman Jr. lamented pushback against DEI in education and business during the May 26 edition of Velshi. Coleman ignored the discriminatory, racist and anti-Semitic nature of DEI and instead mourned that DEI would be replaced with equality and non-discrimination at North Carolina public universities. 

“The Republican crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion or DEI for short, continues with the latest casualty being the entire state of North Carolina's public university system,” Coleman bemoaned. “The University of North Carolina's board of governors just this week moved to eliminate DEI initiatives across all 17 of its campuses.” He then proceeded to whitewash racial discrimination in hiring and admissions. “This move follows a growing number of schools and state legislatures gutting programs intended to boost representation for historically underrepresented groups,” he added. 

This is nothing new for Coleman who has repeatedly demonstrated racist tendencies towards Caucasian men. The DEI evangelist has gone after white evangelicals, criticizing both their race and religion. Furthermore, Coleman has repeatedly posted  that America has a “[w]hite male problem” and even a “[w]hite male domestic terrorism problem.” 

During the segment, Coleman went all out to defend DEI, even referencing a debunked McKinsey study purporting to show a business case for diversity. “There is research that shows that diverse teams lead to better outcomes in a number of fields, all the way from business to healthcare,” Coleman claimed, before asking his guest, Daily Beast Contributor Ameshia Cross, “What do you think about rolling back DEI and how that affects America's overall ability to innovate? And to progress?” 

Dominik Whitehead, NAACP Vice President of Campaigns, and Cross both ignored the racism and the discriminatory nature of DEI. Cross even went so far as to flatly deny that DEI initiatives prioritized background over talent. 

That is precisely what DEI means. It is racial discrimination in hiring and admissions rather than simply choosing the most qualified candidate or applicant. Even the liberal media has occasionally acknowledged this. A report by Bloomberg News, owned by leftist billionaire Michael Bloomberg, laid out how this worked in 2021. According to the media outlet, a mere 6 percent of jobs at major companies they analyzed went to white individuals in 2021. Simultaneously, white people made up 68.5% of layoffs at studied companies that shrank in 2021. 

DEI has also been condemned as a source of anti-Semitism by a number of voices, including by a former DEI director at De Anza College, Tabia Lee. Lee said that she may have been fired for pushing back against anti-Semitism on campus and relayed this disturbing anecdote: “I was told in no uncertain terms that Jews are ‘white oppressors’ and our job as faculty and staff members was to ‘decenter whiteness.’”

During the explosion of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel campus activity, several others noted the link between this ideology’s oppressor narratives and anti-Semitism. X owner Elon Musk labeled DEI as “fundamentally anti-Semitic.” Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has publicly said that DEI teaches students to label Jews as “oppressors” and even lends itself to justifications of terrorism against Jews in Israel. 

Billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman spoke up against both anti-white and anti-Semitic sentiment on campus at Harvard, blaming the DEI ideology for both. Ackman called DEI and an “oppressor/oppressed framework” the “intellectual bulwark” behind anti-Israel and anti-Semitic protests. 

Ackman also denounced DEI as racist: “DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism, even if it is against white people (and it is remarkable that I even need to point this out). Racism against white people has become considered acceptable by many not to be racism, or alternatively, it is deemed acceptable racism. While this is, of course, absurd, it has become the prevailing view in many universities around the country.”

Conservatives are under attack! Conservatives are under attack! Contact MSNBC at (800) 952-5210 and demand they report on the dangers of leftist DEI ideology infecting American companies.