The implementation of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) measures is based on the premise that black people are innately incapable of the same achievement as other races, Kevin McGary, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation of California and co-founder of Every Black Life Matters, said on an episode of EpochTV’s “Bay Area Innovators.”
McGary sat down with host Steve Ispas to discuss the origin and development of DEI and its impact on the future.
He noted that in academics, due to the influence of DEI, some teachers and professors have decided to make the curriculum less rigorous because they’re not getting enough participation and achievement from black and brown people.
“They’re easing the excellence within these very complicated subjects to make them cater to those, who in their mind, are innately at a disadvantage,” he said, adding that the thought in and of itself is racist.
“How could you determine who are innately incapable of accomplishing whatever subject?” McGary asked. “We’re all human beings, everybody has equal opportunity to learn.”
He said whether students excel or not depends on the personal rigor they apply to a subject.
“You don’t bend it down so everybody just achieves a certain grade and can be accounted as excellent when, indeed, they’re not,” he said.
McGary noted that Harvard, Yale, and other large Ivy League institutions have lowered their standards to try to accommodate black and brown people and other ethnicities so they can achieve more.
“This is a disadvantage, not an advantage,” he said.
He said it was Charles Darwin’s works that generated the idea that black people are incapable, noting “On the Origin of Species,” subtitled “The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life,” and “The Descent of Man.”
“For a renowned scientist to say something about races being favored, that was new thinking. There was no thought that races are favored or disfavored prior to Darwin making this audacious proclamation.”
McGary said Darwin’s evolutionary theory is based on a belief that various ethnicities evolved over time at various rates and stages, with white people evolving first.
He said that Darwin’s work depicted black people as subhuman, synonymous with gorillas and savages.
“So there was this obvious distinction between whites, other ethnicities, and then even with the other ethnicities compared to blacks,” he said. “So this is where this first thinking comes in.”
With Darwin’s ideas of race permeating society, he said, it became acceptable to think of black people as incapable, and unequal treatment became the norm even after the Reconstruction era.
He said the civil rights movement and the Rev. Martin Luther King helped accelerate black progress tremendously but that proponents of DEI say black people are still underrepresented in corporate arenas, and that must be remedied.
Adopting DEI led some corporations to put black and brown people in leadership positions whether or not they were competent, doing away with meritocracy, he said. But the promotions were still based on the historically ingrained falsehood that they were innately incapable.
McGary said doing away with meritocracy stems from Karl Marx’s idea of collective action. He said Marx’s collective action is meant to create chaos and collapse a society so that communist utopia can be ushered in. So rather than lifting people up, McGary said, it will bring everybody down.
That’s the level of social conditioning that’s going on right now with DEI, he noted.
“This is not America, this is not an American notion, this is not about competency, skill set, or meritocracy that we’ve been built on,” he said. “This is now about equal outcomes ... and this is where the danger is.”
Kevin McGary's book traces the history of diversity, equity, and inclusion to expose its weaknesses.
In McGary’s book “DEI in 3D,” he notes that two black former Marxists said the communist mindset seeks to manipulate and agitate black people to carry out communist goals.
He said the idea was to use black people’s anger and frustration to start riots.
McGary said black people can bring about change as they did with civil rights marches and that the communists want to take advantage of that.
“It was all about manipulation and it was a racist mindset because ... Marx was a horrible racist,” he said. “It wasn’t about, we want to help empower blacks or we want to make sure that they’re given true equal opportunity.”
McGary said that blacks, even to this day, are being used as pawns for communists.
“Socialism and communism is not sincere when it comes to the black community,” he said, “If they can use us to help us to get enough cultural agitation and societal breakdown, they'll do that.”
He said one of the biggest problems is DEI professionals’ partnership with Planned Parenthood, which was founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger with the goal of eliminating what was then called the Negro population.
McGary said 80 percent of Planned Parenthood sites across the country are within walking distance of black and brown communities, targeting them with abortion.
“You would think that they would see this as crazy, that you’re purposely targeting blacks because you have a racial agenda to exterminate them,” he said, noting that at the very least, the DEI professionals should be standing for blacks being born at the same rate as everyone else because that would be a true goal of maximum diversity.
“How do you have equal outcomes when you advocate partnering with Planned Parenthood, as their primary goal is to have unequal outcomes, right?” he said.
He also lamented that DEI executives are predominantly against school choice, since homeschooling, charter schools, and private and parochial schools are needed so that parents can determine where their children will flourish, he said.
“Because every child is different,” he said.
McGary said that when we keep students tethered to public school systems without a way out, and when many of the public schools are failing, especially in urban areas, it does not allow an equal opportunity for them to graduate.
How can you expect inner city schools in Detroit, for example, to teach what is needed to go to Yale and become a top-notch engineer, he asked.
McGary said that even if the curve is lowered to boost college admissions, “a lot of these kids, they’re at such a gross disadvantage because they’ve never really learned how to study with that kind of rigor to be able to master the subject long enough to hang in there and graduate.”
So we see a disproportionate number of black and brown people that go to college but do not finish, he said.
“If we just had the opportunity, there’s nothing that black or browns cannot do as it relates to meeting any academic standards,” he said, “I’m absolutely convinced.”
