From Day One of his second administration, President Donald Trump made it clear that divisive diversity, equity, and inclusion policies throughout the government would be slashed. Many of the loudest voices you’ll hear on TV say this approach is a threat to people of color. To be clear, DEI is not Civil Rights 2.0. It is a Trojan horse strategy, using the plight of black people to advance a socialist agenda.
Ironically, when polled, black people were in favor of the Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate racial preferences for college admissions. By a wide margin, they believe the federal government should incentivize two-parent families instead of single-parent homes. And lastly, black people are a demographic that widely supports school choice options due to poor-performing and violent public schools.
Why the disconnect between activists for DEI in the media and the grassroots? That’s because the activists are paid to advance an agenda, and the grassroots are eager to restore the black community to some form of normalcy.
For years, institutions across the country have abandoned merit-based evaluations in favor of diversity-driven policies. Whether it’s state bar exams, medical school admissions, or standardized testing in general, the push to lower academic and professional thresholds is being justified as a way to promote equity. But the real question is: At what cost, and is DEI a viable solution to the real problem?
Black people will never reach a proportional level of professionalism in any field if we are not graduating high school students at proportional levels to their population (we are not), not to mention high school graduates who read at a sixth-grade level.
Instead of addressing the root causes of educational disparities, such as poor schooling, lack of parental involvement, and K-12 teachers more focused on politics than education, institutions are taking the easy way out by simply changing the rules.
We’re seeing this mentality, one that we at Take Charge call the promotion of victimhood, take root in key industries around the nation. California and Delaware recently approved lowering the bar exam threshold to increase racial diversity among attorneys. In medical schools, approximately 40 institutions have either dropped or made standardized tests optional in the name of diversity. While the intent may be to diversify the legal field, it raises a critical question: Are we ensuring a competent legal workforce or merely inflating numbers for the sake of optics?
Lowering admission standards in such critical fields is not just misguided. It’s dangerous.
Despite arguments from DEI advocates, there is clear evidence that lowering standards does, in fact, reduce overall competence. Take the discussion between commentator Don Lemon and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in which Musk countered Lemon’s claim that diversity policies do not lead to a decline in quality by pointing to data that say otherwise. Companies and institutions that prioritize DEI over merit-based hiring often struggle with efficiency and effectiveness. The data support what many people already know intuitively: When you remove objective benchmarks, performance suffers.
If our goal as a nation is to ensure that more people of color succeed, the answer is not to make standards more lenient but instead to ensure that all students are equipped to meet them. The real solution lies in improving education at its foundation. Expanding access to high-quality schooling, providing choice in education, and investing in programs that provide opportunity to children in minority communities not only allow parents to choose the best learning environment for their children but also provide each child with the tools he or she needs to succeed from the start.
If we take this approach, the majority of black Americans will support it. Unfortunately, these people are never interviewed by the legacy media.
SUPREME COURT HEARS REVERSE DISCRIMINATION CASE WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR DEI
When students have access to better schools and high expectations, they thrive. This has been proven time and again in states that have embraced school choice policies. In Florida, for example, minority students enrolled in school choice programs have consistently outperformed their peers in traditional public schools. If we change the way we view education from the traditional system that has failed black children for generations, we can see that students from all backgrounds can meet, and exceed, rigorous academic standards in the right setting.
Instead of diverting resources toward DEI initiatives that lower expectations, we must show our leaders the value of investing in a new way of teaching our children, not beholden to unions more interested in politics, to set students up for long-term success. Education is the great equalizer, but only if we maintain rigorous standards and demand excellence. Equity should never come at the cost of competence. If we truly want to create a more just society, we must focus on fixing the pipeline, not weakening the final test.
Kendall Qualls is the founder and president of TakeCharge, an organization devoted to uniting Americans of all backgrounds around a shared history and common set of beliefs.