I Am a Black Man. DEI Is The New Racism

When I was a child, the people of Mvog-Ada, the slum in Yaoundé, Cameroon, where I grew up, had limited interactions with the government.

There was school. Schools were public, which meant that most Cameroonians, including the poor could send their children there. Tuition fees were 200 local CFA francs at the time. The fees gradually increased, but school was still affordable.

There was the local market. The local authorities used the police to force the merchants and street vendors to set up in abandoned and empty stands. Our local market was a real mess. Makeshift stalls were set up anywhere. Garbage was piled up everywhere. The road had become non-existent, occupied by street vendors. It was difficult to move around, even on foot. The police would help in clearing the way, but they were not welcome.

There were ID checks. We were confronted with them, especially when we left Yaoundé to go to the village. The women were subjected to them regularly, especially those who went to buy food in the countryside to come back and sell it at the local market.

There were also unexpected ID checks: a team of police officers would arrive and inspect the paperwork of everyone who wanted to enter or leave the neighborhood. Anyone who did not have an identity card was arrested, put into a police vehicle (most often a truck) and then taken to a cell in a nearby police station. We children were spared. The adults said that you had to “choko” (bribe) to avoid being arrested or to be released from the police station.

There were very few civil servants in our neighborhood. To become one, you had to pass a national test. But, according to the rumor mill, one had to bribe or be well-connected to be accepted in public service. As a result, my people didn’t even try to apply. The government was corrupt anyway, went the saying in my neighborhood.

There was no social safety net. There was no Medicare or Medicaid. There was simply no national health insurance system. For us, it was every man for themselves. People expected nothing from the government. It was as if the government did not exist. At the same time, we had made the government the cause of all our problems. The epithets used to describe the government were summed up in a single adjective: corrupt.

This contempt for the government was palpable. It wasn’t just in my neighborhood. From what the adults said, all the working-class neighborhoods had the same aversion for the government. Some saw it as an opportunity: a business opportunity, an opportunity to raise their profile, an opportunity to sell newspapers, an opportunity to gain fame. A multitude of newspapers had sprung up, for example. Their front pages were sensationalistic, filled with outlandish claims and anathemas. They accused members of the government of being corrupt without any evidence to back up the claims. Any announcement by the CEO of a state-owned company or a government official was met with the word corrupt. There was never any evidence. There were never any reliable sources to back up the claims. The sources were The Rumor Mill. I know this because the men in Songo’o, a traditional game that men play to kill time and boredom, regularly consumed these so-called exposés of the government’s crimes, without reliable sources. Corruption was a fact that “was well known.”

But facts didn’t matter. For the adults of my childhood, the accusations were true and accurate. They had a popular exclamation after passing the newspapers around: “Tous pourris!” — “They’re all corrupt!” When there was a government reshuffle, the names of the new cabinet members were greeted with the certainty of being corrupt. The same happened for the elected officials. It was reassuring for us, inhabitants of poor neighborhoods, to think that we were poor because some of our countrymen had gone over to the dark side. We had morality on our side, they had dishonor. We were pure: they were well-off but amoral, while we were poor but had integrity.

The winners were the owners of the newspapers who reported about the government without evidence to back it up. They got rich and set themselves apart, because they held, according to the poor people, those in power accountable. If, as a journalist, I had written 0.1% of what those newspapers published, I would have ruined my employers. We would have been found guilty in libel lawsuits without a doubt. I am not saying that a large number of the government officials were not corrupt. It is just that the newspapers back then (and the practice continues until today) published rumors without reliable sources. They did not cross-check and fact-check their information. They knew that the poor people, frustrated as they were, needed something to explain their financial struggles. And they gave it to them. It did not matter if it was true or not. The people were ready to welcome with open arms and accept anyone who could corroborate what they were already convinced of: the government was corrupt and all those who represented it were corrupt too. The people wanted someone to blame for their turpitudes and frustrations.

In addition to being very popular, the newspaper owners of my childhood were viewed as heroes. They were the new apostles of “The Truth.” They knew that the subjects of their stories would not sue them because that would have validated their claims. Suspicion of corruption against the government was widespread. There is no smoke without fire, went the popular adage. So, it was a win-win situation for the newspapers and their owners.

Decades later, I find myself in an identical situation, except that the poor neighborhoods of my childhood have been replaced by the American working class and middle class. DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) or Woke have replaced the “corrupt” narrative. As for the new apostles of “The Truth,” who describe themselves as those who dare to say things as they see them, those who won’t bow to political correctness, the defenders of equality or the new vigilantes, they reside on social media, where they call the shots. They decide for example who is qualified for a job, who is incompetent and who is worth of an opportunity based on two criteria:

 If you are Black or Latino, you are not qualified for your job unless, of course, you are a blue-collar worker. If not, you are a DEI hire because society has succumbed to the woke ideology.

 If you are a woman in a position of authority you are also a DEI hire.

The DEI anathema (because they have managed to turn something that was meant to be positive into something negative) is mainly thrown at people of color, women and minority groups.

And to top it all off, they add that DEI is a threat to society because the acronym encourages, they argue, the promotion of mediocrity to the detriment of excellence. Mediocrity is associated, in their discourse, with people of color. Excellence is the attribute of White men, who owe their place in society to their hard work, they argue. Blacks, Latinos and minority groups are, according to them, incapable of excellence. They need social crutches. Without these crutches, or DEI, we people of color and minority groups cannot, the new vigilantes say, achieve anything socially. People of color have no merit, they conclude. So, they exclaim “Enough! We are fed up!” This is how one can understand the now famous “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs” phrases uttered by former President Donald Trump during a debate with President Joe Biden on June 27.

Like the adults of my childhood, there is no smoke without fire, they say. They weaponize the DEI argument, namely encouraging diversity in the different spheres of our society to take into account various backgrounds, socio-economic inequalities, racial and gender injustices, age etc. For them, taking such criteria into account amounts to diluting meritocracy and introducing an injustice towards those who are qualified, namely White men. DEI is therefore the enemy. It has a hidden agenda: attacking White men and handing over their power to minorities, thus destroying Western civilization.

Attacking DEI is the new business opportunity. It’s the new way to become famous. It’s the new way to make money. Just take your shot. All you have to do is call any person of color in a position of authority a DEI hire. It’s the same for women. They say that society has become woke and that woke wants to destroy society. Call out DEI and, I can assure you, you will make friends very quickly on social media. With some luck, you would get a comment or a repost from the most famous anti-woke and anti-DEI person on the planet: the billionaire and whimsical boss of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk.

• “DEI is just another word for racism,” Musk posted on X (former Twitter), the platform he has owned since October 2022, on January 3. “Shame on anyone who uses it.”

The same day, he also wrote: “DEI, because it discriminates on the basis of race, gender and many other factors, is not merely immoral, it is also illegal.”

For people of color and minorities who want to come out of anonymity in the current era or the “Me/Creator Economy,” all they have to do is to attack DEI. Once they do, they are celebrated by the new vigilantes who then present them as heroes. Their reasoning is obvious. Since you were supposed to profit from DEI, the fact that you criticize it shows we are right to attack it. It proves that we aren’t racist. It proves that we are only worried about the fact that mediocrity is now celebrated in our society. It shows that you are free spirit. You are independent and you say no to the “woke mind virus.”

• “A must watch two minutes on DEI from a former DEI staff member,” billionaire and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman posted on December 16 on X, on top of a video of an interview of a woman of color presented as a “a former DEI official in California” by the host.

Until last year, Ackman was known only on Wall Street circles. His memorable showdowns with fellow billionaire and financier Carl Icahn have captivated investors. But, Ackman’s crusade against Claudine Gay, the former president of Havard University, whom he accused of antisemitism and plagiarism, expanded his fame in 2023. (Ackman’s wife was also forced to admit that she had committed plagiarism of her own.)

Gay is a Black woman and was the first woman to become the president of Havard University.

• “It is also not good for those awarded the office of president who find themselves in a role that they would likely not have obtained were it not for a fat finger on the scale,” Ackman wrote in a long tweet last December, claiming Gay got the position because she was a woman of color.

He saw himself as a white knight: “I have been called brave for my tweets over the last few weeks.”

What is true is that his anti-DEI crusade has helped him grow a large following on X, where he has 1.4 million followers as of time of writing.

A few days ago, I was accosted by a neighbor while I was watching an amateur soccer game in Manhattan, New York. I was expecting some soccer chit-chat and was surprised when my neighbor immediately started telling me that the media was woke and had done everything to block the presidential bid of Robert F Kennedy Jr., known as RFK Jr. When I pointed out that RFK Jr.’s political views and his anti-vaccine statements could also be the cause of his failed bid, my neighbor seemed to see a way out.

• “Kamala [Harris] is like Hillary [Clinton] I can’t stand them. They’re not qualified to be president. They’re the same,” he pivoted without a warning.
• “Who is qualified then, if they are not,” I asked him.
• “Hillary was just about her name. She thought that that was enough to be president. Kamala is a DEI hire. She sucks. She’s not qualified. There are women more qualified than her.”
• “If Hillary and Kamala are not qualified, give me names of women you consider qualified,” I asked him.

Silence, hesitation.

• “Condoleezza Rice,” he finally replied.
• “What about Nikki Haley?” I suggested.

He dismissed her with a head nod.

• “Is J.D. Vance [the running mate of Donald Trump] qualified?” I asked him.
• “Yes, he is qualified. But I don’t like everything he says,” he replied.
• “Basically, a former Secretary of State is not qualified. A Vice President is not qualified. A former U.S. ambassador to the UN is not qualified. But a 40-year-old guy who has been a senator for less than 2 years is qualified?”
• “Yes, but before becoming a senator, J.D. [Vance]was a successful businessman,” he interjected.
• “To be accurate, he got help all the way from billionaire Peter Thiel,” I corrected. “Had he been a Black man, you would say that he is not qualified because he’s been helped throughout his career by billionaires.”

He protested, interrupting me to assert that J.D. Vance was competent and that my statement was inaccurate.

• “Kamala wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for woke and DEI. I don’t want a DEI president. Can you imagine a DEI president?” he rhetorically asked me.
• “I will not vote for her because, she is not qualified,” he concluded.

He saw himself as the resistance; one of those who dare to oppose the DEI ideology that Harris, according to him, epitomizes. It never occurs to him that his biases were dictating his approach of who is qualified and who is not. It was clear that, regardless of what Harris has accomplished, she would always be incompetent in his eyes. Listening to him, I wondered if the “DEI slur” has not become the new mask for modern racism?

In July 2023, while I was driving with a dear friend in Tampa, Florida, he told me of a discussion he had with a White female friend of his. The conversation was about the end of affirmative action in higher education by the Supreme Court. His friend thought it was a good decision, because affirmative action had deprived, she said, her son of the opportunity to join a great college. My friend, who is White, was stunned because her son never showed the necessary aptitude for an Ivy League school. Instead of accepting that her son couldn’t get in because he was simply not good enough, she constructed an alternative reality and blamed it on affirmative action. It served her well. It was a better explanation for family dinners and social gatherings.

This is what DEI does. It makes White people feel victimized. And it gives them an opportunity to express their veiled prejudices against minorities without having to suffer the consequences. It is as simple as that.