I read earlier today that the Thanksgiving post is not about Thanksgiving. It’s “a hook for the hack to hang a grievance on, and you can make a home bingo game of it.” And so with that, I’m going to write a “Thanksgiving post” and talk about what has been on my mind lately, which happens to be what I’m most grateful for: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion or “DEI”.

Imagine going to work and seeing the image from the top of this post plastered on the Xitter account of your employer’s board chair. It’s clear to me that the sort of person who complains about DEI doesn’t know what it actually means, so I think it’s time we explained it to them.

I Am a Product of DEI

Close your eyes and picture in your minds your first mental image of a beneficiary of DEI. Now open them. Did they look like this picture?

Ok, what about this guy?

Ok, now what about this one?

What? That’s not your mental image of someone who benefits from DEI? Well prepare your collective minds to be blown. When I was 17 years old, I was a poor white kid in a rural Arkansas high school. At that point, I assumed I would be spending my next years at an Arkansas college or university. That in itself is a form of privilege, but it didn’t compare to what was to come. That summer, I received a packet in the mail from Yale University tell me that “you, too, can go to Yale University!” which I found mildly amusing. I had good test scores (33 ACT) and good grades (top 10% of my class) but I wasn’t the most brilliant student in the world. I hadn’t won any competitions, although I did place 2nd in the Northeast Arkansas regional math contest. I wasn’t valedictorian or even salutatorian. The point is, I was good but not “generational talent” amazing, and it never even crossed my mind to try for an Ivy League college. Thinking nothing of it, I figured “why not?” and mailed my application. To my amazement, I received a congratulatory letter in December announcing that I had received an offer of admission. I decided I wanted to go, found out that the financial aid packages were actually quite generous, and started making plans to move to New Haven, CT, a place I had never seen before setting foot on campus in September of 1991. I learned later on that the admissions rates for someone like me – poor and rural – were a lot higher than kids from wealthier suburbs and urban areas.

I have to admit that I have wrestled with this over the years. Did I take someone else’s more deserving spot? Someone who had better test scores, better grades, and possibly better tutors? I recently found my college essay and had a good chuckle. The prompt was to write about something I was passionate about, and I chose to write about pop music and how modern music didn’t compare well to earlier eras (ha! I was a curmudgeon even then!) Did that separate me? Did I really get in only based on my identity, a poor, southern white kid from the rural Mississippi Delta region? Over the years, I’ve managed to quiet those doubts, but they still linger.

My point is that no one looks at me and screams, “DEI!” When anyone says they want to “end DEI” and “DEI is dead!” I highly doubt they have my image in mind. Why is that? I think we know, but we just don’t want to say it outloud. The fact is, nobody is demanding I give up my DEI card because I am a white, heterosexual, cis-gendered man. In their view, I deserve what I got because of whiteness of it all. They’re perfectly fine with someone like me benefiting from quotas and set-asides, as long as those privileges are not extended to Other people. I don’t have to explain who the others are, right?

It’s impossible to know exactly how I would have turned out if not for my Yale degree – I suspect I would have been fine. But I have no doubts that my Yale education changed my life’s trajectory and was an inflection point. I have no doubt that it opened doors that would have otherwise been closed. I benefited immensely from this experience in so many ways – academically of course, but also culturally. It’s important to reiterate this point: I, a white person, benefited from a DEI program.

DEI Critics Are Lying, Hypocritical Bastards

How is it that those most vociferously opposed to DEI – the ones who scream “DEI!” like some kind of epithet – are simultaneously the most incompetent and least qualified people we’ve ever seen? It’s almost like opposing DEI isn’t at all about finding the most qualified people – perhaps it’s because they don’t want to compete against competent, qualified people. Because when I think about diversity, equity, and inclusion, I think about ways to ensure that the most qualified people are taken into consideration, when they otherwise would be passed over. So next time you find yourself questioning why we need DEI, you may want to ask yourself why you feel that way. And then ask yourself about my story: did I deserve my place? Why or why not?