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FWIW I tend to agree with you in practice. DEI attached to an ideology that merit doesn’t matter or even in a more toxic form, that measures of merit are relics of white supremacy and patriarchy are pretty obviously ridiculous, and a road to ruin for any organization or institution that gets infected by this.
But I think you can also steelman the DEI ethos and get at some core realities underlying it.
Namely, there’s all sorts of implicit biases and lived experiences that might make it likely that for example, a black president/VP combo would prioritize issues that affect black communities and leave white guys feeling somewhat unrepresented, whether for legitimate reasons or even just illegitimate vibes based reasons.
This obviously is a framing that I set up to convey to white guys such as myself some of the gut level reactions that people who historically were never really represented in the way that us white guys have experienced as the norm.
Once you flip that, I think even conservatives would start to understand some typically progressive language, such as the importance of having diverse voices at the table, the dynamics of inclusion vs marginalization, equity for different groups when in comes to what decisions are made by the power structure, etc.
These terms have all become sort of strawmen and the well has become poisoned by all the crazy excesses that have gone on.
But at the core, IMO these are fundamental concepts of any race or cultural relations in a society and the typically dominant group would very quickly find themselves having to wrangle with similarly coded language if suddenly they were excluded.
So I could foresee a future in which conservative white guys see a need to argue for inclusion, I think it’s just a part of being in any multicultural society that representation at the seats at the table of power is going to be one of the primary sources of resentment.
And going all the way with this, it can even make sense why in some cases the inclusion of different groups at the table in some cases supercedes pure meritocracy in a democracy.
This is essentially why we aim to have representatives from all districts of a state. Say there’s a state with a blue tech hub but also an underdeveloped and neglected red district with some Appalachia or Deep South type issues regarding education, infrastructure, health, addiction, etc.
We should have some representatives from that community even if they aren’t at the top of the meritocracy.
That way they have a seat at the table and can at least provide a voice for that communities needs. Otherwise it’s just the tech hub guys and the backwoods are out of sight out of mind.
But there’s this delicate balancing act where meritocracy still has to form a fundamental pillar. Part of what I see the left wrangling with is trying to arrive at the synthesis of how to balance tribal desires for inclusion especially in a system where bias exists with meritocracy and the consequences of not giving it its due.
I think that flipping the frame to consider other examples helps think through the problem better. For example, how do we increase the representation of conservatives in academia? Should we? Is it pure meritocracy or are there a bunch of subtle factors and biases that led to the current state of affairs? Wading into the weeds of all this helps illuminate the culture war better IMO.
Flipping the frame does not work because the frame is held on by power.
You're not going to get academia to not be racist against whites because they don't hold these ideas for scientific reasons. You can't debate with power.
And attempting to dislodge power by remaining in its frame is a fool's errand.
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