It's Time For The Military To Provide Answers On DEI
We cannot accept the platitudes and dodges
The following piece by former Western Colorado University president and friend of CSS Greg Salsbury appeared in Real Clear Defense.
With the Pentagon requesting an additional $114m for more “diversity and inclusion activities” – the largest request of this type yet – it would seem to be a good time for greater clarity on how some of the key categories of diversity are being established.
The Steadfast Tin Soldier, Hans Christian Andersen, Vilhelm Pedersen, 1850. Wikimedia.
The great Thomas Sowell once observed that most of the arguments of the Left fall away by simply asking for definitions – which is why clever Leftists often loathe providing them. In the book that has become the bible for the Critical Race Theory movement, “How to Be an Antiracist,” author Ibram X. Kendi offers the following laughably tautological definition of racism: “Racism is a powerful collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity and are substantiated by racist ideas.” This is as illuminating as defining a tree as “one of a powerful collection of tree-like objects that have the appearance, composition, and functionality of trees, and are often surrounded by other trees.”
But Kendi is smart enough to know that virtually any objective definition of racism he provides will invariably describe some of the very behavior and actions that he supports for supposedly being “anti-racist,” (punishing some people while elevating others based on nothing more than race) and produce the deserving charges of hypocrisy. Accordingly, he simply refuses to do so, and clings to the ridiculous position of essentially contending that racism is whatever he says it is.
The Steadfast Tin Soldier, Hans Christian Andersen, Vilhelm Pedersen, 1850. Wikimedia.
Not only is Mr. Kendi unable to provide any coherent definition of racism; it appears that after receiving more than $50m in funding as head of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, he is unable to point to any completed research from the Center despite the disappearance of nearly all of that funding – which has predictably resulted in layoffs. The school seems to be scrambling to assure people there is nothing unusual about this.
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