The diversity mania is in retreat. Its ridiculous assumptions and despicable tactics have awakened many Americans to the threat it poses to our education system.

In today’s Martin Center article, Professor Thomas Powers applauds the advances against DEI, but adds a note of caution: Let’s not embrace the Left’s bad philosophy.

He writes, “We are witnessing a sea change around DEI, ‘wokeness,’ political correctness, and the like. For now, the anti-woke and anti-DEI forces have the upper hand. A big question looms in these hopeful signs, however. In attacking DEI, conservatives appear to be tempted simply to embrace wokeness’s power so they can turn it against the Left.”

Powers surveys the landscape and identifies quite a few lines of attack against the way “progressives” have abused the law to favor certain groups at the expense of others and sees merit in all of them. He continues, however, with this warning:

Above all, this new tack suggests that the civil-rights mindset is now our only star and compass when it comes to thinking about group politics. There are good reasons to wonder whether that is a good thing. We are the heirs of an older view of how inter-group (and interpersonal) relations ought to be governed, derived from our liberal-democratic constitutional tradition. For some time now, we have been in the process of trading a politics of freedom, individualism, toleration, and faction-taming for a new politics of identity, group-grievance, demands of “respect,” and allies against perpetrators. Should we rejoice at this prospect all the more now that conservatives are seeing ways for “majority groups” to get in on the action?

No, we shouldn’t. If and when people on the right start to use the law as a sword for group gain, we must oppose them.