Discrimination, Exclusion, Indoctrination: The Psychopathology of DEI
Today you are de facto a racist for simply being born white.
- By Jon Mills
Harry Frankfurt, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Princeton University, wrote a bestselling booklet called On Bullshit. The premise is that if you can be persuaded to accept a point of view without having to think about its truth, factuality, or validity, then you have become gullible to bullshit logic. In philosophy we call this a non sequitur: you simply make a statement that is taken at face value to be true when you provide no arguments or justifications to support the conclusion that is already presupposed.
The new bullshit is that everyone who is white is a white supremacist. How progressives and ideologues could pull this off by revamping the social construction of definitions appears beyond comprehension. Today you are de facto a racist for simply being born white. How is that possible let alone logical?
The myth that society is governed by white supremacy is simply a lie. There is no empirical proof that such a state of affairs exists; yet it has become increasingly fashionable to parrot this progressive ideology, which provokes cancel culture and is a motivating force behind the whole diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement. It is a regressive and destructive ideology that not only works against the very principles of inclusion DEI claims it wants to achieve, but it is a retrograde form of gaslighting the public that continues to fuel psychopathology in popular culture.
Diversity no longer means increasing a pool of applicants in educational or workforce settings from different multicultural backgrounds, especially those who come from disadvantage. Now it means increased visible representation of those who are not Caucasian, Jewish, or from European ancestry, and those who are not heterosexual. Rather, diversity signifies skin color, different sexualities, disabled persons, and those who live alternative lifestyles outside of traditional normative social roles and expectations. Despite the fact that societies tolerate—if not accept—differences of all kinds, “diversity” has now become code for antiwhite heteronormative prejudice that discriminates against people (in attitudes, beliefs, and behavior) who would typically be viewed as average citizens who comprise a certain degree and percentage of members of social collectives across the modern western world. Diversity now means equal representation of different races, ethnicities, and sexualities that are disproportionate to the actual members of a given society.
Equity no longer means increasing or augmenting opportunities for all groups to have equal access to prospects, chances, benefits, and achievements, especially those facing disadvantage, underrepresentation, or hardship based on unfair, compromised, or curtailed gateways that would otherwise benefit others disproportionally. Equity now means equal outcome for all people regardless of merit, background, worth, or reason. As a political social doctrine, equity is meant to level out the access, production, and distribution of capital and its fruits so everyone is more or less the same regardless of labor, skill, aptitude, value, and accomplishment that would otherwise give one advantage, assets, and define human activity based on capability, quality, distinction, and the pursuit of excellence. In other words, outcome is no longer deserved or earned based on what one does, but rather on one’s existence alone. When there is no longer a standard for being in the world where everyone is treated the same without expectations and given equal privileges without merit, it does not take a rocket scientist to wonder about the meaning and value of equity for all. But merit is also affected by access to opportunity in order to achieve; disparities of opportunity will have substantial correlations with disparities in outcome, so this is not a simple matter. Yet when wokeism seeks to eliminate merit as a criterion for outcome, rather than improve upon the distribution of opportunity and remove barriers toward procuring success—actions which would lead to more equitable outcomes, it is no surprise that people would be up in arms.
Inclusion now means everyone except for the white heterosexual majority. The notion of inclusion is not a universal acceptance of difference as it once signified, but rather is based on negation, alienation, and exclusion that marginalizes a large swath of citizens from western societies, particularly in the US, UK, and Canada. We may further observe this phenomenon gain increasing ideological encroachment in Europe fueled by the global south that enthusiastically demonizes Israel over a war started by a terrorist government for which the global north is supposedly responsible for yet also paradoxically condemns. Here we may witness the slow creep of critical social justice (CSJ) ideology that reinforces a scapegoat complex projected onto the colonial Big Other as a new form of indoctrination legitimizing a cult of victimization that desperately needs a whipping boy to blame for all suffering and adversity in the world in order to give it any semblance of legitimacy. By identifying, naming, and condemning western white races for all the woes inflicted on humanity, which is tantamount to the internalized oppressor within that needs to be regurgitated, white-hatred becomes a justified moral expression of resistance, liberation, and transcendence over a fantasied tyranny derived from contextualized past history but has no appearance in its modern-day form. Here, the modern-day equivalence of a lynching is to whip and shame generic “whitey” in the public square motivated by cathartic revenge.
“Race experts” take sadistic enjoyment in blaming whites for their so-called privilege, who are in need of ridicule and renunciation by DEI consultants who are more than happy to educate them about their supremacist attitudes as oppressors. This so-called corrective education typically consists of patronizing whites by claiming they are racist for simply being white and who must be publicly exposed and cleansed of their original sin.
Anyone forced to attend a DEI training seminar due to work or school requirements must painfully sit through inane and condescending exercises where co-workers and peers are turned against one another based on racial differences alone, and where whites are deemed to be “colonizers” of all other races. Sometimes whites and Jews are told to sit in the back of the room while their minority counterparts sit in the front row so they purportedly “know how its feels” to sit at the back of the bus, as if our modern societies are like the Jim Crow south. Other times they are called upon to stand up and explain to the group why they have privilege. Still, at other times, they are humiliated by compulsory confessionals or through performative displays of self-flagellation as they are coerced to get down on one knee in subservience.
DEI workshops embrace CSJ activist propaganda based in critical race theory (CRT) that is decontextualized and generalized across the board identifying whites as perpetrators of dominance over non-white groups, such as those identified as black, indigenous, and/or persons of color (BIPOC), a most condescending acronym that collapses all diverse peoples into a basket category—as if they are all the same—when they are quite heterogeneous and qualitatively different from one another as individuals. The typical structure to a DEI seminar goes something like this:
(1) Establish the premise that we live in a white supremacist society responsible for systemic racism and oppression of all non-white victims.
(2) Whites in the audience are to be identified as the imperial ruling class who have privilege, power, and domination over all non-whites, and who are, above all else, a fortiori responsible for their suffering.
(3) Once targeted, whites are vilified, shamed, and subsequently alienated for their so-called unearned privilege with the social expectation that they sit passively in silence, listen with humility, and experience guilt and disgrace in front of their peers and co-workers.
(4) Those who attempt to defend themselves from such false allegations are scorned further by the self-anointed diversity czars, if not publicly pilloried as racist for simply questioning the premises of the instructors, only to be additionally emasculated by a few hecklers in attendance. And if any gestures of apology or atonement are shown, they are often rebuked as lacking sincerity or outright rejected based on collective historical white crime that remains unforgivable in principle.
(5) Through guilt inducement whites are forced to admit their racism and privilege and submit to a corrective moral re-education that miraculously “trains” them to be less racist, sexist, and discriminatory toward minority groups. Through their domestication and newfound knowledge, self-revelation, and amelioration of their prejudices they can now become “allies” in a shared evangelical quest for justice and parity in promoting a more equitable learning environment, workplace, and ethical world.
As any reasonable person would conclude, this style of pedagogy creates unnecessary conflict between people that usually did not exist before. Being harangued in such disdainful fashions by these so-called equity experts generates immediate anxiety, defensiveness, embarrassment, and ostracism in a work or school environment that pits whites against their non-white counterparts. There is no empirical evidence that these DEI trainings actually accomplish any positive change in attitudes. On the contrary, they do more harm than good. The only measurable outcome is that they succeed in making people feel bad. They may even reinforce pre-existing prejudices. When people of diversity or minority representation cheer, laugh, and ridicule their white colleagues who are scapegoated as their tormentors, negative emotions and social divisions become quickly heated and imposed, hence leaving deep seated resentment and hostility for being falsely accused of transgressions they did not commit. If racism did not exist prior to such DEI workshops, it is likely to be kindled if one manages not to get up and walk out.
DEI initiatives following similar protocols are taking place in all branches of society within private, corporate, and public sectors to civic, state, and federal institutions, and western countries in general where it has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. When forced to attend these pointless and infantilizing displays of stupidity, most people see through the identity politics at play and find the whole experience to be fake, disingenuous, and simply designed to placate diversity optics and company pressures to appear “antiracist,” usually superimposed arbitrarily by higher management, administration, Human Resources (HR), legal departments, or employment standards. Most people go through the motions to satisfy such silly requirements knowing full-well it is all for show based on some pro forma bureaucratic boloney where the employer gets to wave a virtue flag that is meaningless, offensive, divisive, and pragmatically and economically a waste of everyone’s time, yet good for corporate capital in the age of woke.
Such exercises in futility serve no palpable end other than to make participants feel dehumanized through guilt inducement and shunning while giving organizations reprieve from the pressure to do something about prejudice in society and their workforce. When whites sit in silence or fail to participate in exercises, let alone affirm or regurgitate the nonsense that is being shoved down their throats, passive aggression and impassive silence may sometimes agitate the group presenters who then project and displace their own racism and animosity onto the audience. Direct challenges to antiracist rhetoric usually end in accusations of racism directed toward whites. And this has become a standard phenomenon in the culture wars. When minority races or ethnicities are questioned on their views by others, an ad hominem rebuttal calling someone a bigot is enough to stifle any serious discussion. Hasty false generalizations and appeal to emotional hysterics with no respect for context, nuance, or substance typically contaminate any rational discourse let alone foster intellectual debate. DEI bullying has even tragically led to suicide.
A downward spiral appears throughout all topics in the culture wars. When questioning a member of the LGBTQ+ community on their views, you are either slandered a cis heteronormative white colonial oppressor, misogynistic, homophobic, or deemed a transphobe. When gender-critical feminists challenge the transgender narrative that there is no such thing as differences in biological sex, they are sent to the gallows pole. Dare question human rights atrocities in the Middle East, including fanatical religious and governmental regimes responsible for state-sponsored terror, you are accused of Islamophobia; and if you question Zionism or the political policies of Israel, an antisemite. The tacit ideology at play here is the unspoken assumption that no one has the right to challenge the beliefs and epistemology of alterity if you are of another skin color, culture, religion, or gendered-sexual identity even if they are questionable, blatantly false, or morally reprehensible. What would typically lead to a failing grade in an introductory philosophy class in critical thinking is now considered sacrosanct.
A flourishing environment for DEI ideology is on university campuses where academics are held emotional hostage by students, staff, faculty, and administrators alike. When identity politics and racial essentializing are used as weapons to demonize difference and cry fowl due to supposed power imbalances, this stokes conflict, resentment, and antipathy for the other. This further alienates groups and peoples from different cultures, ethnicities, genders, and sexualities that live and participate in the same communities—all whom want basic respect for universal egalitarian ideals. Hammering away on the notion that all white people are white supremacists who have unearned privilege over all other people of a different hue is an insidious form of racism imposed on alterity in the past. This hatred has no chance of cultivating emotional connection and solidarity between different groups, races, and sexualities. It will predictably lead to more segregation, discrimination, and repugnance simply based on difference alone. Although these are sensitive and nuanced issues, the cult of victimization and binary logic does not promote peaceful relations or bring anyone to the table, let alone break bread.
Conclusion: Discrimination, Exclusion, and Indoctrination should be put out to pasture.
Jon Mills is a Canadian philosopher, psychoanalyst, and psychologist. He is an honorary professor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex and teaches at The Open Therapy Institute in New York City. He is the author of over 35 books in philosophy, psychoanalysis, psychology, and cultural studies, including most recently, End of the World: Civilization and its Fate. Follow him on X @ProfJonMills
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