Rick Morain
The terms "DEI" and "Woke" are often floated these days with little thought given to their complexity, or what they mean to people of various minority classes, and those in the majority as well. Trying to deal with their implications thoughtfully and graciously is apparently tougher than many elected government officeholders can handle.
"Woke" is defined by most dictionaries as being aware of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of rights based on sexual orientation or gender identity. That's pretty straightforward. But for many people, and many officeholders, particularly those in the social and economic majority, the term in the last decade has come to mean TOO MUCH awareness of those inequalities.
"DEI"-diversity, equity, and inclusion-offers one method of trying to deal with concerns raised today by people who are Woke. In the United States we've used DEI for at least a century: for example, the government offered preferred status in hiring and other areas to World War One veterans in the 1920s.
The term Woke in its present context is also nearly a century old. It grew out of African-American usage before World War Two, when it meant to be aware of dangers from whites who had organized society in their own favor.
Put simply, Woke is the awareness that minority groups are subject to discrimination, while DEI is an attempt to redress that situation. Both speak to the desire to eliminate discrimination in its many forms.
But for those who are anti-Woke and anti-DEI, the terms mean attempting to give minorities SPECIAL ADVANTAGES through actions that favor them over people in the majority.
Finding a satisfactory and agreeable path through that thicket these days has so far proved difficult, maybe impossible, both in the United States and in Iowa.
"Meritocracy" has become the buzzword for solving the dilemma. There are of course some advocates of Woke and DEI who wish to give minorities the nod over people in the majority in hiring, college admission, housing, and credit, regardless of whether they qualify in those categories, simply because minorities have been held down in the past.
But for most people, rewarding applicants on the standard of merit seems like a common-sense course of action. Someone whose application is superior to others would be a logical recipient of the prize. Why not?
The heart of the matter is how to find a fair and acceptable standard for making those decisions.
The governments of both Iowa and the United States, currently in Republican hands, have enacted a series of laws and rules to eliminate DEI within entities they control. They praise meritocracy as their chief goal.
But can we rely absolutely on employers, lenders, landlords, and college admissions offices to indeed rely on merit? Without DEI policies, can we trust all those who hold power to use it appropriately?
After the Civil War, the Southern states and their way of life were placed under direct federal governance, including a great deal of military control. That meant that the new constitutional amendments, ending slavery, guaranteeing citizenship to free slaves, and giving former slaves the vote, were enforced-that historical period's DEI, so to speak.
That situation lasted about a decade. Then in 1876, after a disputed election, Republicans and Democrats in Washington reached a compromise: Democrats agreed to let Rutherford B. Hayes, the GOP presidential candidate, have the White House, and Republicans agreed to terminate military control of the South.
What happened then to enforcement of African-American rights in the former Confederacy-that decade's form of DEI? It vanished into Jim Crow. Turning over control of Southern governments and society to the white majority resulted in disenfranchisement of blacks, major restrictions on their activities and economic rights, even thousands of lynchings.
With no entity to enforce minority rights, those rights disappeared.
Abandonment of DEI in today's America, and in our Iowa, of course will not create that level of trauma. But the principal problem is the same: with no regulatory efforts such as DEI in place to protect fairness for minorities from malevolent employers, universities, lenders and landlords, discrimination can take place.
Our system of justice creates a special problem for the situation. In America the accused is deemed innocent until proven guilty. The accuser bears the burden of proof. With no effort toward diversity, equity, or inclusion, who's to say someone has been treated unfairly?
In the absence of DEI, minorities have good reason to be Woke.
If everyone started life with the same advantages, then pure meritocracy would make sense. But it's obvious that's not the case. Youngsters who attend expensive prep schools, or those who go to schools in wealthy suburbs, have clear advantages over those who grow up in poverty-ridden towns with underfunded, barebones school staffs and facilities.
Those who grow up in stable homes with parents who have the time, and the interest, in helping their children learn are almost always way ahead of youngsters who grow up in homes without those advantages.
Consequently, "advantaged" kids have more success in gaining admission to college, or in securing good jobs, or in obtaining decent housing.
Meritocracy has no answer to that problem. Without some attempt to give a boost to youngsters from meager backgrounds, their likelihood of success, in college and in life, is slim.
Without some form of diversity, equity, and inclusion-DEI-what is society's response? So far no one has stepped forward with an answer.
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