MSNBC host Joy Reid thinks that people who are opposed to the complex that is “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” are racists. In fact, she goes so far as to say that people are opposed to DEI because they “can’t stand black people.”
“At this point, it’s evident what they mean by DEI, right? It means black people,” she said on her show, The ReidOut, last week. “It’s the reason the Right complained about critical race theory. It’s not fashionable to be openly racist anymore in America, unlike what they call the good old days.”
Reid furthered her argument in a pair of odd TikToks she posted last week. In both, she argued that opposition to DEI comes from jealous white people who are upset that they are outperformed by minorities. She said: “Just a thought, maybe, maybe rather than the problem really being DEI, just a thought, maybe the problem is you. Like when your son Chad for instance doesn’t get into Harvard or Yale, maybe it’s not affirmative action. Maybe Chad’s application just kind of sucked.”
Reid has this upside down. Opposition to DEI is one and the same with opposition to racism. In fact, opposition to DEI is fervent opposition to racism. It is support for treating people as individuals rather than reducing them to their race. It is the belief that people should be hired for a job because of the skills and abilities that they possess — and not because of their race, sex, etc.
When institutions choose individuals who are less suited for a position than others simply because of their race, they commit an injustice. And, no, Joy Reid, the fact that this happens frequently in America is not theoretical. Take, for example, medical school applications. In the United States, Hispanic and black medical school applicants possess a huge advantage. The average black medical student in the United States scored at the 66th percentile in the MCAT, a test that is highly predictive of medical school success. The average Asian student, on the other hand, scored at the 88th percentile on the MCAT. This is blatant, demonstrable discrimination against Asians. This is racism.
Joy Reid doesn’t end, however, with the claim that those who are opposed to DEI are racists. No, she takes it much further than that. She thinks that white conservative Christians wish to remove people of other races from the country.
In January, she asserted that white Christians “see themselves as the rightful inheritors of this country.” Then, in February, Reid attacked Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville for commenting that the United States “needs more kids.” She postulated that this could have been motivated by a desire for a “great replacement” and that what Tuberville was really saying is he wants more white kids. It was also this belief that led Reid to assert that Nikki Haley, whose parents immigrated to the United States from India, lost the Iowa caucuses on the basis of “racism.” She claimed that white conservative Christians did not care about Nikki Haley’s “electability” because “none of that matters when you believe that God has given you this country, that everyone who is not a white conservative Christian is a fraudulent American, is a less real American.” Then, this month, Reid asserted that Republicans vote solely on “racial animus.”
Wait a second — what country does Joy Reid live in? In my experience, conservative Christians in the United States are probably among the least racist people in human history.
And all of American society was among the best in regard to racial harmony in all of human history. At least that was the case until the Black Lives Matter movement and woke progressives launched their project to inject racial awareness into every aspect of life. In 2014, 72 percent of white adults and 66 percent of black adults said that relations between white and black Americans were very or somewhat good, according to Gallup. But, by 2021, only 43 percent of white adults and 33 percent of black adults professed the same belief.
The answer for how to return to America’s previous racial harmony is simple: End DEI.
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