DEI By Any Other Name is Still Just as Sinister

As the New York Times finally begins to question whether progressives went “too far” with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), it is worth reiterating that DEI policies are based on false and destructive premises, and for that reason they should be abandoned altogether. Rather than debating whether DEI has gone “too far,” we should continue to oppose this sinister ideology in its entirety.

In 2024 a number of states banned DEI in publicly-funded universities, leading many Republicans to celebrate the end of DEI. The celebrations ramped up in January 2025 when President Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.” This EO ordered federal government agencies to,

. . .terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and “environmental justice” offices and positions (including but not limited to “Chief Diversity Officer” positions); all “equity action plans,” “equity” actions, initiatives, or programs, “equity-related” grants or contracts; and all DEI or DEIA performance requirements for employees, contractors, or grantees.

At the time, I observed that this ban was unlikely to be effective, as it targeted the terminology customarily invoked by institutions to describe their DEI schemes. By avoiding the specific words mentioned in the ban—particularly the toxic word “equity”—and by using acceptable words like “opportunity,” the show could and did remain firmly on the road. DEI did not die.

Recent news reports substantiate this observation. In June 2026, Forbes ran an article titled “Is DEI Dead? Not According to New Catalyst Data on Workplace Inclusion.” This article reported that:

Most employers have not succumbed to the Trump Administration’s pressure to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Despite the hostile political and regulatory climate, 80% of employees and business leaders still say their organizations remain committed to DEI and continue to support workplace inclusion efforts.

In Alabama, one of the states where DEI in public institutions is banned by legislation, it has been reported that the University of Alabama renamed their DEI office “Opportunities, Connections, and Success.” After a few more nomenclatural iterations, it was transformed into the Office of Community Impact (OCI). It is described, as would be expected, in language carefully tailored to avoid mention of any “divisive concepts.” After all, President Trump banned hiring “Chief Diversity Officers” but he said nothing against hiring a “Vice President of Community Impact.”

The new VP of Community Impact has the requisite training for the role, including a PhD on “the challenges that black women face on college campuses.” In her thesis, she explicates the very same “divisive concepts” that the ban on DEI was intended to address:

“The gender and race barriers that were created by powerful white men are a part of the America’s fabric. Lingering effects of slavery, segregation and the oppression of women have influenced the current experiences of African American women within the academy because they have been nurtured and sustained since the creation of the academy,” McDonald wrote in a lengthy section on “Black feminist thought.”

“Racism and sexism, as well as the assumptions associated with both of them, are a part of America’s history and its foundations,” McDonald stated in a section on Critical Race Theory.

“Intersectionality combined with Black Feminist Thought and Critical Race Theory highlights the challenges unique to women of color and how those challenges are viewed in the academy,” she wrote in her conclusion.

As discussed earlier, in relation to attempts to ban critical race theory in universities, these types of socialistic theories cannot simply be banned. All that is achieved by the ban, as recent examples show, is for the opinions to be reframed in different terminology. NYT offers a suggestion that we should distinguish between good and bad types of “equity”—only the bad equity is toxic, they assure us. They believe we should continue to enforce good equity. As observed in Is DEI Dead?

“Despite a high-risk legal environment, our research shows that DEI is not dying—it is evolving,” said Joy Ohm, vice president at Catalyst, in a May 12, 2026 press release. “Even in the face of a concerted assault on the values of inclusion and fairness, many organizations remain deeply committed to this work.”

It must be remembered that many socialists are “true believers” who really are “deeply committed” to DEI. They are not simply trying to play whac-a-mole or dance rings around the hapless Trump administration—they actually believe they are doing the right thing, difficult as that may be to imagine. They are proud of their DEI schemes, for reasons described by Thomas Sowell in his book The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. 

Their vision of DEI schemes is a world where everyone’s life experiences are equal. They teach that some bad actors—the “powerful white men” referred to by the new VP of Community Impact—have prevented other people from enjoying the same opportunities and achieving the same outcomes as they enjoy. DEI true believers are convinced that had it not been for these “powerful white men” skewing everything, everyone would be equal.

This is the essence of the socialistic mindset. As Ludwig von Mises explained in The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, socialists believe that “the poor are needy only because unjust people have deprived them of their birthright.”

The same reasoning that rationalized the discredited class war has now been extended to identity wars—the sex wars, gender wars, religious wars, and race wars that dominate public discourse. Those who see their group as victims of oppression remain convinced that none of the disadvantages they experience in life are their fault, nor even the result of mere circumstance or misfortune. Rather, a bad group of people did this to them, and they can improve their own situation by waging a bitter war against their chosen scapegoat.

DEI true believers very clearly understand that blaming society’s ills on any group of people based on race, sex, or religion is wrong—they certainly believe it would be very wrong for anyone to do that to them—but they do not see that it is still wrong even if the group under attack happens to be what they like to call “powerful white men.”

DEI is unprincipled and its true believers are impervious to reason. Theirs is a sinister ideology, by whatever name called, and its effect on society will inevitably be destructive.