FAQs
I gave a talk today at Glendale Community College about ASU’s DEI and realized I usually receive the same questions. I will start this FAQ page and add to it you have questions for me as well.
“Isn’t DEI just about including everyone and helping them reach their goals?” That is how it is presented to the public. My objection with ASU’s “inclusive communities” training is that the content goes well beyond this into claims about “whiteness,” how to teach about white privilege to poor white persons, homophobia, and more.
“Isn’t DEI just about identifying our biases? We all have biases, right?” That is how it is presented to the public. And we do have biases. Philosophy is the discipline that teaches us to lead the examined life and deal with false biases. However, DEI and the anti-racist movement specifically say that the entire system is racist (not merely biased), and that individuals with a specific skin color can’t help but be racists (not merely biased). Saying that someone has a bias is not necessarily saying that they are immoral and breaking the law. Saying that someone is a racist is to claim they are both immoral and breaking the law. You should expect to be innocent until proven guilty. Anti-racists try to get around this by claiming that asking for proof is “white fragility.” The proofs they do give have been easily debunked. What all of this implies is we need more philosophers teaching our students to lead the examined life.
“Isn’t “whiteness” more about a structure of exclusion than about skin color?” Think about it a little more: A structure of exclusion based on what? This is why they had a class on explaining white privilege to a poor white person. Even that person has “whiteness” and is part of the structural problem.
“Isn’t the goal to help students succeed and overcome obstacles that hinder education?” That’s how it is presented to the public. But we were already doing that before DEI. DEI is a narrative about why people were hindered. It teaches us that “the system” tried to keep “the other” out of education to prevent them from having access to the means of production and power. The truth is that universal education was invented by the very persons DEI blames. The goal of educating every individual is a Christian missionary goal. It involved total inclusion of everyone.
“Then how do you explain differences in education success among different groups?” Read Thomas Sowell on “Social Justice Fallacies” and “Discrimination and Disparities,” and Shelby Steele on “White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.”
“So you’re saying there has never been any oppression?” No, but I am challenging the DEI narrative about it. DEI focuses on economic disparities. There are many more important things in life than those. But this is why it is a Marxist philosophy. It relies on the oppressor/oppressed dialectic to shift blame from individual choices to the system. In doing this, it both overemphasizes the economic and also distorts economic oppression. The worst kind of oppression is what keeps you from the highest good. That oppression is not economic. You can contemplate the highest good while in prison like John Bunyan did. He had little to no education, was wrongfully imprisoned, and wrote the most influential English language book after the KJV (Pilgrim’s Progress). The real oppression we should teach students about is the oppression of ignorance and falsehoods about the highest good. The Apostle Paul (a colonized person) defined it as “slavery to sin.” Being redeemed from that oppression should be our greatest concern. Mere economic oppression is nothing by comparison. And to address this kind of oppression we must deal with ideas and their consequences. Specifically, ideas about what is eternal, about what is to be a human, and about our highest good or chief end.
“I guess you just want ASU to be a Christian institution that forces everyone to be a Christian and only teaches Christian content.” Not at all. It should return to being a classically liberal university that teaches humanities classes geared toward wisdom by knowing the true, the good, and the beautiful. “Liberal” there means “to be liberated,” that is, liberated from ignorance about our highest good. Left to ourselves without this education we will focus on the lowest urges we have such as all the ways to have sex and how we need more money to afford entertainment and drugs.
“So you’re saying you don’t want to help the marginalized?” I suspect we disagree about what it means to be marginalized. As a philosopher, my concern is those who are marginalized from leading the examined life. It is of no use to gain the entire world through advocating for deconstructing the system while losing your own soul.
“Hasn’t the United State just been about excluding everyone except “the whiteness”? Don’t you believe that should be reversed?” No, I don’t agree with that reading of the United States. It is a false narrative, not unsurprisingly, pushed by Marxists who believe the Soviets had the basics right and that the United States is the enemy.
“But isn’t the United States about Democracy? And isn’t the proof that Democracy has been hijacked by Oligarchs when only one group has access to education and the means of production to gain power?” No, it is a Republic. And in a Republic people make free choices about the kind of lives they’d like to lead. There are reasons people make those choices many of which are personal and cultural. To compare the outcome of those choices without factoring in the freedom to make choices and the values people have is meaninglessness. Marxists are social engineers that have a desired outcome (always presented as good for the people) and use a totalitarian state to force everyone into that goal.
“But doesn’t DEI have good intentions?” Good intentions pave the road to hell. Those who have, by good intentions, pushed DEI programs that bring about harm should be held accountable for those consequences just like we do in Tort law.
“Then what do you suggest we do?” Learn how to best serve each individual student’s needs to help them reach the goals they have chosen without engaging in Marxism, race blame, infinite gender psychoanalysis (disagree and you’re homophobic), the oppressor/oppressed dialectic, envy, and blame. Instead, teach people how to be free and think for themselves by being liberated from false beliefs. Teach them how to contemplate their highest good, what is eternal and lasting, what it means to be a human, how to find meaning and purpose. None of that requires DEI and DEI hinders all of that.
“Do you mean you just tell them the right answer about the good and the eternal?” No, that’s not education. To educate means you draw it out of them (paideia). Socrates used the image of a midwife: help them birth ideas. DEI tells them what to think about history and social structures. Instead, teach them to think about a meaningful human life and how that has come to different expressions in human history. Teach them about the various answers that have been given to the great questions and then teach them how to evaluate those answers for themselves so that they don’t have to rely on anyone else.
“Are you just a complainer or do you have any proposed solutions?” I’ve got solutions—stay tuned.