ABC’s Good Morning America aired Monday possibly the most deceitful and glossy depiction of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs as “merit-based,” a continuation of the civil rights movement “levelling the playing field,” and creating “equitable outcomes.” DEI does not, they insisted, have anything to do with hurting one group of people or giving prominence to those undeserving.
As the great Christopher Rufo posted January 12 on X, the reality is “[m]eritocracy and DEI are fundamentally incompatible” with the former “judg[ing] individuals based on their accomplishments, while a DEI-based system judges individuals based on their ancestry.”
Nonetheless, co-host Robin Roberts — who reportedly makes in the ballpark of $20 million — huffed that “federal agencies are banning any celebrations of” Black History Month and used that as a jumping off point to decry President Trump “curtailing” DEI.
This gave way to 20/20 co-host Deborah Roberts — wife of NBC’s Today co-host Al Roker and no relation to Robin — who started with this lament in a report that offered zero soundbites who oppose DEI:
Hard to believe a small acronym has sparked such a fierce debate. DEI began during the civil rights movement, a way of levelling the playing field, creating equality in power structures. But somehow, the message has been lost, with some now seeing DEI as a symbol for unfair practices. Now, with the government taking that same stand, there’s some big efforts now to push back.
Ah, so DEI — cultural communism — is actually about furthering equality. But notice how ABC and wokesters writ large often use equity and equality synonymously when it’s likely even many of them know the former is flattening outcomes while the latter offers — pun intended — a ladder to climb toward endless possibilities.
Deborah Roberts had the gall to trumpet liberal boycotts, saying “[t]he sweeping rollback of DEI policies striking a nerve with consumers online” with “[s]ome expressing outrage that major retailers” like Target “are retreating from” DEI when its goals are just “helping highlight and strengthen minority groups by addressing long standing issues like the gender pay gap and expanding recruitment of candidates historically overlooked.”
DEI expert Daniel Oppong lamented in a soundbite that it’s viewed as “polarizing,” but it was still true “that different people experience the world in different ways depending on the identities they hold” and thus DEI is necessary “to drive equitable outcomes.”
She followed with this disingenuous swatting away of DEI’s pitfalls in which race is put at the center, not merit: “The impact of DEI stretching wide, from enrollment in higher education to hiring practices and while critics claim DEI includes a racial bias, pitting less qualified candidates against those more deserving, some business experts insist that’s not the case.”
Oppong followed with the kicker about DEI being “merit-based” and then an older, white, female liberal who actually compared DEI opponents to those against desegregating the American education system:
OPPONG: In my mind, the idea that DE&I isn’t merit based or is anti-meritocracy, is fundamentally flawed.
VALLOTKARP CONSULTING’s ANGELA VALLOT: America has been on a very, very long journey of trying to fulfill, you know, its ideals and it’s been a rocky road. We see the landmark Brown v. Board of education which ended legal segregation at public schools. So, this isn’t new. We’ve seen this throughout history, we make progress then there’s backlash.
Deborah Roberts tried to end on a hopeful note for fellow corporate liberals, noting “big corporations like Delta Airlines, Apple, Costco, and Goldman Sachs...say they will continue to pursue [DEI] policies.”
Prompted by Robin Roberts, Deborah said she saw “a woman wearing a shirt that said ‘earned not given’ which once again plays into that argument that these are given to people. It’s really about opportunities, not about giving.”
Robin replied that viewers “have to remember” a world built with DEI is “still..merit-based” and thanked Deborah for “having people have a better understanding” as though this were a brainwashing.
Our friends at The Federalist took a 20,000-foot view of DEI in February 2023, lambasting the left’s insidious strategy of being “intentionally vague” when their real goal is “sanctioned favoritism in the name of social justice” (click “expand’):
Seemingly in unison, and with almost no debate, nearly every major American institution — including federal, state, and local governments, universities and public schools, hospitals, insurance, media and technology companies, and major retail brands — has agreed that the DEI infrastructure is essential to the nation’s proper functioning.
(....)
Diversity, equity, and inclusion is an intentionally vague term used to describe sanctioned favoritism in the name of social justice. Its Wikipedia entry indicates a lack of agreement on the definition, while Merriam-Webster.com and the Associated Press online style guide have no entry (the AP offers guidance on related terms).
Yet however defined, it’s clear DEI is now much more than an academic craze or corporate affectation.
“It’s an industry in every sense of the word,” says Peter Schuck, professor emeritus of law at Yale. “My suspicion is that many of the offices don’t do what they say. But they’re hiring people, giving them titles and pretty good money. I don’t think they do nothing.”
(....)
More recently, a spate of widely publicized police killings of unarmed African Americans has galvanized a growing belief, especially among progressives and especially since Donald Trump’s election, that America is an irredeemably racist nation. In 2020, in the wake of the Floyd murder and in advance of a fraught election, a moral panic set in. Having increased their ranks, social justice entrepreneurs and bureaucrats were poised to implement an ideological agenda and compound their institutional power.
Although no hard numbers exist on the exact size of the industry, the “DEIfication” of America is clear. From Rochester, New York, to San Diego, California, cash-strapped municipalities have found the funds to staff DEI offices. Startups and small companies that once relied on their own employees to promote an inclusive culture now feel compelled to hire diversity consultants and sensitivity trainers to set them straight.
At Ohio State University, for example, the average DEI staff salary is $78,000, according to public information gathered by economist Mark J. Perry of the American Enterprise Institute — about $103,000 with fringe benefits. Not to be outdone by its Big Ten conference rival, the University of Michigan pays its diversity officers $94,000 on average — about $124,000 with benefits. Until he retired from the position last summer, Michigan’s chief diversity officer, Robert Sellers, was paid over $431,000 a year. His wife, Tabbye Chavous, now has the job, at the vice provost rank and a salary of $380,000.
For smaller organizations that cannot afford a full-time equity officer, there are other options for shoring up social justice bona fides — namely, working with any of the hundreds of DEI consulting agencies that have risen like mushrooms after a night’s rain, most of them led by “BIPOC” millennials. With some firms, the social justice goals are unmistakable. The Racial Equity Institute is “committed to the work of anti-racist transformation” and challenging “patterns of power” on behalf of big-name clients like the Harvard Business School, Ben & Jerry’s, and the American Civil Liberties Union. With others, the appeal has less to do with social change than exploring marketing opportunities and creating a “with-it” company culture, where progressive politics complement the office foosball tables and kombucha on tap.
If it were all about endorsing “merit” as ABC claimed, then why have incidents like these popped up on a steady basis for years in which one’s First Amendment rights are trampled in the name of comfort for a few?
Rufo’s life work has been in part exposing the DEI rot in American culture. In November 2021, he summarized a “ten-part investigative series on woke capital, exposing critical race theory training programs in America's Fortune 100 companies” with a few examples.
They included AT&T teaching its employees that “racism is a uniquely white trait” and Walmart holding trainings for white employees to be told about their sins of “white supremacy thinking.”
Thankfully, Walmart ended its DEI policies in November 2024.
To see the relevant ABC transcript from February 3, click here.
