Diversity, Equity, Inclusion—and the Elimination of Jews

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by PJ Media on December 9, 2023 and is cross-posted here with permission.

All of our institutions—government, education, media, professions, and industry—are formally and fully committed to “social justice,” the explicit specifics of which are diversity, equity, and inclusion, with the quiet part being the elimination of Jews.

The quiet part is not often said explicitly, except during the infamous “Israel Apartheid Week” celebrations at our universities. But after Hamas’s sadistic atrocities against Israelis on 7 October, the widespread and enthusiastic celebrations on American campuses and in our streets shouted out the quiet part.

“From the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free [of Jews].” Hamas, the heroes of the day for “social justice” warriors, states explicitly in its founding charter that not only would it destroy the State of Israel, but that it would kill all Jews, not only in Israel but around the world!

How is it that all of our institutions have signed up for genocidal antisemitism? The “social justice” political analysis is founded on the Marxist conviction that society is divided into two classes: oppressors and victims. The corresponding “social justice” ethic is that victims must be raised up and celebrated and that oppressors must be suppressed and eliminated.

We can thank feminists for initiating this Marxist reinterpretation of our society with their reduction of social life to the class conflict between the “patriarchy” and all females. Race activists followed with blacks vs. whites, and homosexuals followed with gays vs. straights. The plea was for “equality,” but the true goal was to flip the classes, with the currently oppressed becoming the privileged dominant classes.

How the “social justice” categories are defined is by now familiar to all of us: whites, males, heterosexuals, the able-bodied, the well-to-do, Christians, Jews, and Asians are oppressors, while BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color [except Asians], females, LGBTQ2S++, the otherwise abled, the poor [except poor whites, Christians, Asians, and Jews], and Muslims are oppressed.

In the intersectional calculous, the more victim categories a person can claim, the more oppressed they are deemed to be. Famously, the most esteemed is the disabled black lesbian. On the other side, the more oppressor categories a person can be identified with, the more “privileged” he/she/it/they are deemed. “Privilege” is, in all cases, assessed as unearned.

The justification for this imposed division is the supposed import of statistical disparities in success in education, occupation, income, and office. Members of some categories do better on average than members of some other categories. “Social justice” warriors, including the government and most institutions, claim that the only possible explanation for disparities is race, gender, sexuality, and ethnic prejudice and active discrimination. This explanation is assumed, not demonstrated with evidence, and alternative explanations for statistical differences are rejected a priori without consideration.

Among alternative explanations of disparities of achievement well documented by sociologists are four major ones: One is the number of parents in the home. Children in two-parent households do much better than those in single-parent households. Particularly, boys without fathers in their households do more poorly in school and are more likely to engage in crime. Second, the level of crime in the community impacts its children, with children engaging in crime more likely to end up incarcerated. Third, the community culture’s evaluation of education and employment impacts the attitudes and performance of its children and its adult population. Fourth, the number of hours, days, weeks, and months a year of working for pay impacts income.

Ignoring these explanations of disparities, “social justice” remedies for alleged but unproven discrimination are remedial measures to equalize the statistical performances of the different categories. These measures include favoritism for members of categories with weak performances, such as preference in admissions, funding, and hiring, and/or removing tests or programs in which members of some categories perform better than others. The removal of performance standards guarantees the reduction in statistical disparities of achievement while at the same time lowering the overall standards and undermining the functioning of the institutions involved. “Social justice” officials and advocates disparage ideas of achievement, performance, and merit as racist “white supremacist” dog whistles.

In practice, what these “social justice” measures mean is reverse racism, reverse sexism, reverse sexual prejudice and discrimination, reverse ethnic prejudice, reverse classism, and reverse ableism. In the “social justice” view, only members of oppressed categories should be respected, admitted, hired, funded, and celebrated. “Social justice” means that the so-called “privileged” should be marginalized, excluded, and punished. The front line of “social justice” warriors consists of the many, well-paid “diversity and inclusion” officers who serve as political commissars to indoctrinate and enforce the “social justice” truths.

White men, no matter how individually disadvantaged economically or educationally, are deemed privileged and excluded. Asians, who have sinned by high performance, are regarded not as members of the BIPOC community, but as “white adjacent” and must be, to a degree, excluded. Jews, labeled by some as “hyper white”—only designated “white” once it became a bad thing—are regarded as “not diverse,” also because of “malicious” high achievement. It turns out that throughout the land, DEI, advertised as “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” is, in practice, “division, inequality, and exclusion.”

In both the U.S. and Canada, the “social justice” justification of assigning collective guilt and applying overt discrimination is, from the highest level of government, that the country is “systemically racist,” explained in the above-mentioned terms of disparities resulting from prejudice and discrimination. Almost every government and military agency, university, academic and disciplinary association, funding agency, media organization, business, and professional organization of doctors and lawyers declared that they were “systemically racist” and had to reform radically to implement “social justice.”

Despite the near-universal invocation of “systemic racism,” no serious effort was ever made to substantiate and document the claim of “systemic racism,” beyond the citation of statistical disparities. A revolutionary movement aimed at transforming fundamental American and Canadian principles and rules of social life and carried forward in new official declarations and laws never provided any serious evidence to support the claim or considered any of the obvious evidence against the claim. For example, blacks statistically dominate prestigious and highly lucrative sports professions, but no one has ever claimed that they were “privileged” or that they came to that dominating position through discriminating against other races. So, too, the most academically and economically successful large minority in the U.S. is Asian Americans, a category of people who until recently suffered under legal and social prejudice and discrimination. How could these happen under a regime of “systemic racism”?

Jews are a small minority in both the U.S. and Canada. Statistically, they are above average in academic, professional, and economic success. Is this because they benefitted from special treatment at the expense of other groups? On the contrary, there is a long and well-documented history in North America of prejudice and discrimination against Jews, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. and Canada offered Jews protection and opportunity far greater than they enjoyed during their 2000 years of discrimination, expulsions, and pogroms in the European-Asian-African diaspora. Jews in North America were nonetheless subject to exclusion in educational institutions, housing, businesses, and recreational organizations and venues. Their success was never due to any discrimination on their behalf but due to their family and community culture, just as was the case with Asian Americans.

“Social justice” has brought new challenges to the Jewish and Asian American communities. As high-performing and successful individuals, they are classified as “oppressors” and believed to stand in the way of justice for BIPOC. Ways were found in university bureaucracies to downplay and degrade Asian Americans so as to benefit BIPOC and other allegedly “marginalized” minorities. Asian Americans sued, and the U.S. Supreme Court declared for them on the grounds that racial discrimination is unconstitutional. Jews, too, have been sidelined by universities and other organizations because they are not “diverse” and are thus “oppressors.”

On North American campuses, Jews are targeted by Islamists and pro-Palestinian pro-Hamas activists, as well as Marxist far-left anti-Israel activists. Now given the emphasis on diversity and inclusion, you might expect diversity bureaucrats to come to the aid of afflicted Jewish students. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Jews, as “privileged oppressors,” are not only granted no consideration but are actively thwarted by diversity personnel, most of whom have been demonstrated to be anti-Israel and antisemitic.

Notwithstanding the DEI promises of acceptance and support, these are not extended to non-preferred categories of students and employees. On the contrary, rejection and condemnation are the relentless response to “privileged oppressors” such as Jews. When the opportunity arises, all minority student groups pile on against the Jews. Even the Asian Americans side with the mob, as they apparently prefer activist attention elsewhere. Since the Hamas atrocities, we have seen on our campuses outbursts of celebration for Hamas and hatred for their Jewish victims, as seen in the destruction of posters of Israeli and American hostages. “Social justice,” while claiming to improve our morality, has, in practice, degraded it.

Apparently, a required part of “social justice” is the elimination of Jews.

Photo by Uliana — Adobe Stock — Asset ID#: 665135362