Topic: DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion)
“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”
I’m curious how words merely existing are depriving Americans of their First Amendment Rights, and how deleting those words from government regulations/legislation is going to restore those rights. If anything, removing those words arbitrarily is a violation of 1A – it’s literally censorship by the government. Again, lots of cognitive dissonance here, and he’s unclear on what removing these words actually hopes to accomplish, other than effectively legalizing discrimination against anyone who fits into any of those phrases. Seriously? The phrase “reproductive health” is woke? Insanity.
Full contextual analysis of foreword here.
“Eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff.”
“Rather than continuing to buttress a higher education establishment captured by woke “diversicrats” and a de facto monopoly enforced by the federal accreditation cartel, federal postsecondary education policy should prepare students for jobs in the dynamic economy, nurture institutional diversity, and expose schools to greater market forces.”
There’s a bit of unpacking to do on this one. By “diversicrats”, she’s implying that higher education has been “captured” by administrators who promote diversity, inclusion, and progressive social values (which she refers to as “woke.”) Claiming that the federal accreditation system is a “cartel” suggests that it has a monopoly on what qualifies as quality higher education, which, yes. That’s literally its whole intended purpose. Ensuring quality in an education you’re paying good money for is not a negative thing. Many jobs will not hire you if you didn’t go to an accredited school, because the quality of education you received may not have actually included what you need to know in order to perform that job. Would you see a surgeon who went to a non-accredited school for his training? Is she suggesting that sham universities (like Trump University) should be treated equally with accredited institutions? (Trump University famously bilked people out of their money and taught them nothing useful.)
There’s nothing inherently wrong with bolstering trade schools and focusing on job readiness, but the absolute disdain Burke has for quality standards and modern values is incredibly off-putting.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.2: Department of Education here.
“Currently the Department of Education relies on graduation rates and average earnings as proxies for educational quality. Both of those outcomes, however, are highly dependent upon a student’s socioeconomic background, sex, family status, and other factors.”
I only include this to point out the utter hypocrisy. She’s admitting here that socioeconomic background, sex, and other factors DO affect children’s educational outcomes, hence the need for DEI and other programs that she is steadfastly against. She wants to pretend that everyone is equal when it comes time to legalize bigotry and cut funding for children, but she’ll admit that there is a systemic issue if it helps her make a point that it’s difficult to actually gauge educational quality. I see you, Ms. Burke.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.2: Department of Education here.
“One egregious example of this is the extent to which accreditors have forced colleges and universities, many of them faith-based institutions, to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that conflict with federal civil rights laws, state laws, and the institutional mission and culture of the schools.”
It’s a little funny to me here that she’s suggesting that the missions of faith-based colleges are fundamentally at odds with the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. That’s…quite an admission. She goes on to mandate that higher education institutions should still be allowed to be accredited even if they blatantly discriminate on the basis of race or gender. Then she doubles down on the idea that being forced to treat everyone equally is *really* offensive to religious institutions. Christians, are you hearing this? Does this represent your beliefs? I find it alarming that she’s couching all religious institutions (and religious people, as it follows), as bigots (or at least protecting their right to be bigots, if they want to be).
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.2: Department of Education here.
“Under President Biden, the mission has shifted to “promoting equity in everything we do” for the sake of “populations sharing a particular characteristic” including race, sexuality, gender identification, ethnicity, and a host of other categories.”
In this context, “equity” means ensuring fair access to health care and social services for underserved populations. This was the goal of the Biden Administration’s efforts, which appears to offend Severino. The focus on equity aims to reduce disparities in health outcomes based on factors such as race, gender, income, and geographic location. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the administration emphasized equitable vaccine distribution to communities of color and rural areas that were disproportionately affected.
By “populations sharing a particular characteristic”, he’s talking about the focus on specific populations that have historically faced disparities in health outcomes, including racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and others. The goal is to address these issues by improving access to care, combating discrimination in healthcare settings, and ensuring that public health initiatives are inclusive of all communities. This approach includes efforts to improve maternal health for women of color, address mental health and provide addiction services in underserved areas, and support LGBTQ+ health initiatives.
The phrase “for the sake of” implies that equity efforts are purely political or symbolic, rather than addressing real and documented health disparities. However, there is significant evidence that certain groups – such as racial minorities and LGBTQ+ individuals – face worse health outcomes50 due to factors like discrimination, lower access to healthcare, and higher rates of chronic conditions.
So, we can conclude here that Severino is completely ignoring the facts in favor of an ineffectual “colorblind” strategy that does nothing to reduce bad health outcomes for minorities.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.5: Department of Health and Human Services here.
“The Civil Rights Division should spend its first year under the next Administration using the full force of federal prosecutorial resources to investigate and prosecute all state and local governments, institutions of higher education, corporations, and any other private employers who are engaged in discrimination in violation of constitutional and legal requirements.”
This one is insidiously awful. Out of context, he appears to be combating discrimination, which is something we can all get behind. IN context, however, he has argued that DEI and anti-discrimination policies are actually discriminatory to “non-woke” people, and he’s promising to weaponize the DOJ against states who actually have real anti-discrimination laws in place. He does not detail what those prosecutions would look like. His vague language is intentional.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.8: Department of Justice here.
“And under the Biden Administration, that administrative state has imposed the most assertive left-wing social-engineering agenda in the agencies’ history and ratcheted up regulatory costs on small businesses and other productive industry. The agencies’ authorities have been abused by the Left to favor human resources bureaucracies, climate-change activists, and union bosses—all against the interest of American workers.”
He’s actually arguing here that unionizing hurts American workers, when the exact opposite is true. By “ideological social engineering”, he means DEI initiatives, climate action, or labor-friendly regulations, seeing them as politically driven rather than neutral or beneficial to all.
Berry clearly believes that climate and safety regulations, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and the existence of unions impose too much on businesses, but he’s claiming that these things are bad for workers. This is a spectacular bit of gaslighting.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.9: Department of Labor and Related Agencies here.
“Reverse the DEI Revolution in Labor Policy. Under the Obama and Biden Administrations, labor policy was yet another target of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) revolution. Under this managerialist left-wing race and gender ideology, every aspect of labor policy became a vehicle with which to advance race, sex, and other classifications and discriminate against conservative and religious viewpoints on these subjects and others, including pro-life views. The next Administration should eliminate every one of these wrongful and burdensome ideological projects.”
Yes, because requiring businesses to treat everyone equally is a horrible burden that must be reversed! Making me treat people with respect is a violation of my God-given right to discriminate! Seriously, this is just so much garbage. I’d be curious how he thinks being forced to treat people equally under the law as a business violates his “religious, pro-life” views. Normally, religion doesn’t come up a lot in the workplace.
He also points out that “Title VII flatly prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, and national origin”, and that should be plenty. So, that’s pretty anti-LGBTQ+, and he also goes on to “eliminate racial classifications” and prohibit any “critical race theory trainings.” So, if not discriminating being the law should be enough, but you don’t teach people how to guard against discrimination, and you still allow discrimination against people for non-racial intersections, what’s the end result? Discrimination.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.9: Department of Labor and Related Agencies here.
“Under the Biden Administration, the Treasury Department has appointed a Counselor for Racial Equity, established an Advisory Committee on Racial Equity, and created an office for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility. All these should be eliminated.”
In context, he’s arguing that equity is racist, and recommends firing any government employee of the Department of the Treasury who participated in any of these initiatives. This mischaracterizes what equity is, as usual. See the FAQ.
Full contextual analysis of Section 4.2: Department of the Treasury here.