This article originally appeared on National Review
For starters, I’m not sure we really have to replace DEI with anything. As Ward Connerly once observed, when a surgeon removes a cancer, we don’t insist that it be replaced with something. Still, it seems to be a fact that many people, especially politicians, don’t want to be just against something: They want to be for something, too. And perhaps it’s useful and clarifying for those of us who oppose Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to describe our own, contrasting vision — especially on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Very well: We want not DEI but MNO — that is, Merit, Nondiscrimination, and Openness.
It seems obvious that our institutions should strive for merit rather than a predetermined demographic mix of any sort (the Left’s definition of “diversity”). And it can be added that, if you don’t think that the current standards result in the best-qualified individuals being selected, then by all means improve them. So if it really doesn’t make sense to require a college diploma for this job, or if the legacy preference at that school is a bad idea, or if physical fitness can be better measured this way rather than that way, fine. Let’s have an honest discussion.
“Equity,” of course, is notorious for being precisely about getting to that predetermined demographic mix — for guaranteeing PC results rather than straightforward opportunity. And it is all about using discrimination to do so, mandating racial preferences and aggressive use of the “disparate impact” approach, reversing King’s dream and ensuring that people get judged by color of skin rather than content of character. What our side wants instead is simply nondiscrimination. We want, that is, not to treat individuals differently because of race, ethnicity, or sex: no PC discrimination of the (relatively) new sort, as well as none of the bad old discrimination that preceded it.
Finally, there is openness — for the selection process to be accessible and for recruiters to cast a wide net, to use not just an elitist old-boy network but to let everyone know that an opportunity is available. Advertise and recruit broadly and creatively, through old media and on new media, on classical and country and rap and Latino radio stations, and so forth. And we like transparency, especially since DEI bureaucrats lie so frequently about what it is they are really doing. Sunlight is indeed a fine disinfectant. (And it also gets rid of, by the way, uncompetitive government contracting awards and bribing one’s way into college.)
