OK, it seems that you three gentlemen – Niall Ferguson, Bill Ackman and Elon Musk – have taken it upon yourselves to tear down diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) measures on behalf of the conservative Elites as a part of this broad ‘anti-woke’ agenda so I will take it upon myself to respond to your faulty criticisms.
It is a task that is not especially intellectually challenging.
Now I do not suggest any of you lack the intelligence to figure these things out for yourselves, though I did enjoy the late, great Charlie Munger’s assessment of at least some of you as consistently over-estimating your IQ and/or value to society.
That many intelligent human beings could hold such flawed opinions against DEI and feel the need to viscerally voice harsh and aggressive retorts against measures to achieve – for the first time in human history – inclusive and sustainable societies naturally opens questions that will be answered over the decades and centuries ahead.
This essay will stand, amongst many other sources, as a line in history which aids in indicating how extreme right has become the politics of our so-called Western capitalistic democracies.
Before I begin I will also state that I have no intention of promoting your techno-fiefdom, Mr. Musk. This conversation, or my part of it, will only happen on LinkedIn and my blogsite MacroEdgo.
Dichotomous Decision Division Trees
It may be my training as a biological scientist, but this discussion will in many ways resemble a dichotomous key. It might also read as a type of decision tree. It will emphasise the logic behind the arguments in contrast with conservatives’ emotive and illogical viewpoints.
I understand conservatives’ main objection with DEI to be that it embeds systemic racism against, especially, Caucasians or ‘white’ people leading to the conclusion that it creates division within society.
Messrs. Musk and Ackman, you have both been most explicit as exemplified by these quotes:
Musk: “‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ are propaganda words for racism, sexism and other -isms. This is just as morally wrong as any other racism and sexism. Changing the target doesn’t make it right!”
Ackman: “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).”
Professor Ferguson you described DEI as an ‘ideology’ which demostrated your scepticism of it following your long criticism of “the politicization of American universities by an illiberal coalition of ‘woke’ progressives, adherents of ‘critical race theory’, and apologists for Islamist extremism” where you compared in laborious detail the rise of ‘wokeism’ with Nazism.
It is a fine example of the polarisation of our society when essentially the same incendiary article could be written with just a few labels and names changed, i.e. from ‘left’ to ‘right’ and inclusion of the name Donald Trump and ‘copycats’, and a large slice of the population would agree with the polar opposite position.* That is mainly because for emotional effect you mostly talked about Nazism which we all agree is abhorrent. But let’s move on.
To hold a view that DEI is divisive one must believe either: 1) that society is united or cohesive and that there are not already deeply entrenched divisions between Caucasians and ‘others’ in our societies; or 2) that if divisions exist already, then DEI measures will exacerbate them.
The first is clearly a ridiculous proposition which is easily countered by an enormous amount of data and analysis in historical context and modern socioeconomics including studies on inequality. Since I just happened by chance to read it in my email feed during a break from writing, I will include this excellent article as an example of this, but literally millions of articles could be consulted.
Anybody who fails at this level to agree can be considered to be so blinded by their bias as to be considered racist, regardless of whether they acknowledge it even to themselves or not.
Now I don’t say that as lightly or as flippantly as the reader might assume. If you are familiar with my extensive writing on this topic at all then you will be aware that I have discussed how I was raised to be racist within a deeply conservative family within a deeply conservative region of Australia, and many who were previously important to my sense of place within society are racist. I have seen all my life people say deeply racist things and then immediately deny being racist.
So I do know how bias and racism works within cultures, how much division it creates, and how blinded to their own racism are the majority of racists.
As personal examples, I was teased for several years by male mentors for sitting next to a First Nations girl in my year 2 school photograph when we were just 6 years of age, and the enduring consequence of that was that I was leery of developing connections with people of colour for fear of ridicule by the white majority. In that school ground we all said rhymes that included the ‘N’ word which divided the white children from those of colour. And when I moved away to university at 17, to the shock of other young students I repeated some vilely racist statements relating to genocide of First Nations Australians that I had witnessed all of my life being spoken by my male mentors within our conservative society without challenge.
Of course I do not suggest that everyone is racist, but I do know that very many are, and I know that it is the dominant majority within society that truly knows the breadth if not necessarily the depth of prejudice and racism even though most will never acknowledge it. Moreover, I am unafraid to state it as a matter of fact.
This point is not up for negotiation or debate as it would be equivalent to arguing with a toddler that black is white, just as I said years ago in my writing that racism is wrong. Many conservatives might like to open all of this up for debate, but that is clearly a waste of everyone’s time as that was settled centuries ago.
So then we arrive at the second point, that DEI worsens divisions that already exist.
Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right
This clearly harks back to a piece of morality taught to every toddler, of anglo-saxon background at least, that two wrongs don’t make a right. It follows the view that even if we accept that there are divisions in society caused by racism and bias it is not appropriate to introduce another bias into the system because that will exacerbate the pre-existing division.
Now that’s a fairly comfortable position for those on the side that perpetrated the wrong on the others, not so much for those who have suffered centuries of wrong against them and their ancestors and carry all of the intergenerational trauma and socioeconomic consequences from it.
Privilege certainly does equate to not being burdened with these consequences.
This, however, loses sight of the fact that DEI measures are not adding a second wrong, but are done to ‘right’ that wrong by countering racism’s consequences.
If you do not deeply connect with the truth of the consequences of racist bias at the social and systemic level, then it will be difficult to see this as righting a wrong instead of compounding the wrong, which you only superficially accept as being wrong in any case, with another one which you definitively and deeply consider wrong because DEI measures reduce opportunities for the historically dominant group.
Explaining this is best done by analogy. If you have ever watched a car wheel/tyre being balanced then you will have seen it being placed horizontally on a spinner which diagnoses the bias and tells the operator where and how much weight must be tacked to the rim to counter that bias for the optimal and efficient use of the tyres.
That is precisely what DEI is doing – countering the imbalance – the bias – that already exists and is factually and obviously apparent within society.
For a while we acted like that bias and racism could be just clamped down upon by making racism illegal as a basis for decision-making when it comes to a host of policy areas. But what was learned, not unexpectedly to anyone who truly understands how pervasive and pernicious racism is in societies, is that this is akin to clamping down on a section of a long sausage balloon where the air bubble just moves around but never shrinks.
This is essentially equivalent to the backlash against ‘political correctness’ where people object even to society exerting on them a morality of not being offensive to others, which nowadays has been subsumed into the anti-woke agenda.
The better analogy is actually one of a wire with retained shape memory so that when a bend is pressed upon the bulge simply shifts along the wire. If a straight piece of wire is needed it must be repeatedly and enduringly bent back in the opposite direction or regular kinks must be put in the wire to correct for that memory to achieve the optimal outcome. The defect, the deviation from optimal, always was the bend and the kinks were corrective because they would not have been necessary had the wire been straight.
Bias from racism, or any of the other ‘isms’, is that defect.
DEI measures are a critical part of the process necessary to correct those biases that already exist, and have existed for centuries in many cases, as a result of deeply ingrained and systemic racism.
Bias is a consequence of racism.
Countering that bias is not racism, it is simply decent and moral.
And it truly is remarkable that this even needs to be pointed out!
Now I realise that conservatives, once they lose the argument over the need for DEI measures, as eventually they must because the lack of logic behind their position eventually will make it untenable, will move on to arguing about the specifics of DEI measures.
As I have explained previously in detail, I favour quotas as a critical DEI measure but many approaches must be considered and enacted.
DEI measures will need to be continually assessed, fine-tuned, and ultimately phased out as biases are gradually eliminated from society, but given that these biases have built up over centuries, we should expect that DEI measures will be necessary for several generations. This is where much of the great unacknowledged anxiety resides.
The Underlying Fear Of An Actual Second Wrong
I have written extensively on my view that one of the great weaknesses of humanity has been an inability to recognise that our progress resembles the path of a swinging pendulum bob where the pivot point is on a gradual incline. Even though standing back we can appreciate that over long periods we have progressed – and obviously it is a very strong drive amongst human society to achieve progress – our experience is that there are periods where we perceive that our progress has stalled or even gone backwards. That seems to me to be what Prof. Ferguson is expressing in his essay “The Treason Of The Intellectuals”.
This is due to the wide, sometimes wild, swing of the pendulum and because humanity has generally failed to recognise when a ‘sweet spot’ has been reached so that we might stop the pendulum from swinging or at least dampen its swing so that it oscillates around the optimal or relatively stable and sustainable state. For this reason we swing to and from extremes. It is my belief that if we can manage to dampen the pendulum’s oscillations then we will speed our ascent, or our rate of progress, but note that I am talking in a broad sense and certainly not just about economics.
The reason why humanity fails to recognise that sweet spot is because it is the politically astute individuals amongst us that vie to lead in those Resets, or course corrections in the swing of the pendulum, and as they achieve that success they either lack intellectual ability or morality to shift their position to a more moderate stance that is required to settle the swing of the pendulum. Just as the pendulum has maximum energy when it reaches the point at which it would rest if only under the force of gravity, i.e. hanging straight down, political operatives who have had success are captivated by the power that they have achieved from it and instead of seeking a steady state for the good of people they use that momentum in their own political power to acquire more privilege and influence. I have written about this in relation to conservative views over the past half century surrounding the teachings of Milton Friedman.
Moreover, I believe that this is something that most human beings understand intuitively even if they are not necessarily consciously aware of it.
In Australia we often talk about a societal characteristic which we refer to as ‘the tall poppy syndrome’ meaning that just as someone is becoming confident in their social standing and status, historically we Australians have ‘cut them down’ like a tall poppy standing out above the rest. It occurs essentially because we become subconsciously irked by them getting ‘too big for their own boots’.
So what does this have to do with racism and DEI?
Another analogy in the form of a personal anecdote. My brother is 8 years my senior and he was a bit of a bully so that I would often tell him that when I grow up I will be bigger than he and I will get him back. I did get bigger, a lot bigger, so much so that he would tell people that we were twins, but I was Arnie (Schwarzenegger) and he was Danny Devito. I didn’t follow through on my threat.
I cannot speak to the feelings of disempowerment and traumatisation of being a member of an oppressed peoples, and to attempt to would be completely inadequate and inappropriate. But I listen intently whenever I hear such people bravely speak their truth.
The consequence of intergenerational trauma and inequality at pivotal moments in American history has been displayed, as in other colonialised nations, and for me one of those moments was encapsulated by the powerful words of Kimberley Jones during riots following the murder of George Floyd.
Kimberley’s final words would have rang loud and long in the ears of many white Americans and invoked a level of fear and anxiety:
“…they are lucky that what black people are looking for is equality and not revenge!”
The same anxiety about the potential for revenge is no doubt held by many in societies where a dominant group has severely oppressed others, and that is certainly true of my country Australia and the oppression of especially Aboriginals and Torres Straight Islanders.
Given that humanity has been poor at Resetting to achieve an optimal state, besides the immediate self-interest of Caucasians not wishing to lose any privilege at being presented with opportunity within society – opportunity that has not been equally accessible to ‘others’ within the same society – subconsciously they also fear that the pendulum might swing past the steady state and momentum builds such that circumstances become extreme in the opposite direction and the historically oppressed become the oppressor in vengeance.
And realistically you do not have to look hard to see this in the dog whistling inherent in the writing of conservatives.
For this very reason there is a limit to how much privilege many from the side of the historical oppressor will accede to being imparted to the oppressed, and often it is very little if any.
It’s Anything But The Economy, Stupid
Finally, I will state a degree of agreement against the economic justification for DEI, but not for the same reasons as conservatives.
It’s not unlike the ‘need’ to provide an economic justification for saving the planet from the fossil fuel burning-caused climate crisis. What value do we place on the health and quality of life of future generations and the natural world? Why would we even try?
As social beings we have always appreciated that some things are just right – moral – like being kind and decent to others, typified by how we teach children to play nicely together and share, and there is no need to justify it. If we do justify to our children, it is on the basis of morality and that this is how we develop a society in which we feel safe and where we belong.
This need to provide an economic justification for everything is symptomatic of our increasingly Extreme capitalism that has meant that the social aspect of socioeconomics has been almost forgotten.
Extreme capitalists’ disagreement with economic justifications for DEI relate to scepticism of the arguments or analysis, and I note that you, Mr. Musk, also linked the well-publicised engineering issues at Boeing with their DEI policies.
This effort to economically justify DEI measures is a direct consequence of Extreme capitalism’s deleterious knack of turning any thing or deed into a saleable commodity, in this case the deed of teaching corporate leaders and staff to be aware of their and others’ unconscious bias. In other words, because an industry has developed around DEI, to present a business case for a corporation to pay for such services it became necessary to put dollars and cents figures to costs and returns.
This opens up the opportunity to argue over those analyses of dollars and cents, inputs and outputs, and return on investment, which dilutes intent and threatens progress.
In reality it is simply a matter of fairness and decency, and for healthy and cohesive – sustainable – societies we must stay the course on DEI until our compassionate collective humanity makes specific measures redundant.
100+ years of White Australia Policy in Australia, and other instruments of systemic racism in other countries and regions, has left racist biases and prejudices deeply scarred into the systems that underpin our societies, and these will not be removed by chance even with time, or by the free hand of the market (which instead of being free is controlled by those with deeply entrenched privilege in this age of Extreme capitalism).
That final quote is from “Woke AI” at MacroEdgo.
* For example Prof. Ferguson, I would write this paragraph, the hook to your article:
“A century later, American academia has gone in the opposite political direction—leftward instead of rightward—but has ended up in much the same place. The question is whether we—unlike the Germans—can do something about it.”
…in this manner which I am certain would strike an accord with a very large slice of Americans, including some Republicans who fear the consequences of another Donald Trump Presidency, along with many others in western society and including European leaders:
A century later, American [society] has gone in the [same] political direction— [extreme] rightward—[and is at risk of ending] up in much the same place. The question is whether ‘we’—unlike the Germans—can do something about it.
Note: I said “at risk” because I am more measured in my analysis and words because I am sensitive to the power and the dangers of incendiary language. If actually writing that passage I would probably also make the point that this is the nation that saved the world from, and presumed to lead it away from, fascism and communism only to lose its way and lead the world back to the former as I discussed in depth in my “Reset” writings.
I would then conclude making the point that if that is to occur – the rightward slide be arrested – then the best hope lies in the progressive-minded university communities because they are the last areas of resistance in American society, and that is why they are under such vociferous attack from the conservatives where the prefix ‘ultra’ has become redundant…
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© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2024
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