NC pastor: What it means to be opposed to DEI | Opinion

Last week the Lowe’s Corporation, headquartered in Mooresville, announced it cut its diversity initiatives. Robby Starbuck, a self-identified anti-woke activist, claimed Lowe’s shift was in response to his threat to “expose” the company’s DEI policies, boasting on X that he had forced many other corporations, including Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley-Davidson and the makers of Jack Daniel’s whiskey to scrap their DEI policies as well.

Lowe’s is responding to pressure from activists like Starbuck, but a memo to employees announcing the changes also cited as a reason the June 2023 Supreme Court decision that race-based college admissions are unconstitutional. Lowe’s began reviewing programs and policies after that decision, the memo explained.

Over the summer, UNC Charlotte dissolved its three DEI related offices. In May the UNC Board of Governors repealed and replaced all policies on diversity and inclusion with “neutrality-focused” policies, so DEI programs had to go. Unfortunately, whenever I hear the word neutrality, I think of the words of Bishop Desmond Tutu: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

As I’ve watched these shifts, I’ve wondered what it means to be opposed to diversity, equity and inclusion. I wondered if DEI initiatives would be replaced by SIE (segregation, inequality and exclusion) policies, but the word neutral is more palatable.

MIT, Tufts and Amherst, the first of the so-called elite universities to release admission statistics, are reporting a sharp fall in admissions from members of historically underrepresented racial groups. Matthew McGann, Dean of Admissions at Amherst, which reported a three-fourths drop in the number of Black students from 11% to 3%, explained that “as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision, the incoming class is not as racially diverse as recent classes have been.”

Whether you see that as victory or defeat depends on how you understand fairness. The folks who celebrate DEI initiatives and those who celebrate their demise all want the same thing. We all want people to be hired and admitted based on their skills and aptitude. We all want applicants not to be disqualified because of race. We all want things to be fair.

The difference comes in how we make sense of the stark disparities between Black and white Americans. Some of us look at majority white schools and institutions and think the hiring and admission systems worked and selected the most qualified. And some of us look at the same spaces and think the systems worked to exclude Black and brown people. But if you believe that people who are admitted or hired in compliance with DEI initiatives are inherently unqualified and incapable, then what you are revealing is your own unconscious bias that white people are intrinsically more gifted and capable. That is the textbook definition of white supremacy.

The hard truth is that given the history of white supremacy in this country, there is no such thing as race-neutral policy. We think making standards like “any student who scores at least a 1400 on the SAT will be admitted’ is race neutral. But if, hypothetically, 90% of students who score about a 1300 received expensive private tutoring that boosted their score an average of 300 points, then all of a sudden the SAT isn’t measuring aptitude as much as it is measuring economics.

Consider another neutral policy like “any student with 4 or more AP classes will be given priority admission.” At first glance, this seems to be a neutral policy which will identify students of all races who work hard and excel in challenging classes. But students enrolled in Title 1 schools have far fewer chances to take AP classes. A race-neutral policy based on the number of AP classes isn’t so race-neutral after all.

DEI initiatives and programs don’t exist to discriminate against white people. They exist to provide access for people from historically marginalized groups who are disadvantaged by race-neutral policies. They exist to provide opportunities for people whose talents and aptitude would otherwise be missed.

I preached about the tower of Babel this week in worship. It’s a story of how people with a common language, culture and fear developed technology to build a city where they could stay together, make a name for themselves and build a literal stairway to heaven. But the efficient, segregated future they desired was not a path to salvation. So God intervened, giving them new languages, dispersing them among other peoples and other places. God saved them by introducing diversity into their community.

DEI programs and policies will change North Carolina and our country by reforming our schools and businesses and communities to make them more equitable and inclusive. That’s not a punishment or a threat. It’s a gift.

Kate Murphy is pastor at The Grove Presbyterian Church in Charlotte.