On January 20, 2025, newly inaugurated President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14151, Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, which Trump said “demonstrated immense public waste and shameful discrimination.”
Trump ordered the coordination for the termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.
On January 23, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education joined in to “eliminate harmful Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, including references to them in public-facing communication channels and its associated workforce,” in line with President Trump’s ongoing commitment to end illegal discrimination and wasteful spending across the federal government and in schools.
“They are the first steps in reorienting the agency toward prioritizing meaningful learning ahead of divisive ideology in our schools.”
But not in California. Or rather, California’s governor, Democrats, and leftist public schools are choosing to ignore these important orders.
A California student, who is a freshman at Orange Coast Community College in Costa Mesa, just received the first assignment in a mandatory Ethnic Studies class.
The student has to read and report on an article written in 1989 about “White Privilege.” The student will be graded on the report.
What is an 18 year old college student, who wants to get good grades, do? Does the student write something they don’t believe in order to get the grade, or do they dare to write their opinion of White Privilege? For most young college students, it’s a lose-lose proposition.
Here is the article:
White-Privilege_McIntosh-1989The fallacy of this garbage is summed up in this statement, as if it is fact, and not feelings:
“I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege.”
And her erroneous conclusion is this:
“After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive.”
It is indefensible that Orange Coast Community College and other colleges and universities in California force students to read and write about this drivel, other than to critique it.
And it is equally indefensible that Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta endlessly sue the Trump Administration to keep this immense public waste and shameful discrimination in our schools.
We’ve all been there, faced with a flawed and discriminatory assignment to write a paper for a grade – agree with the professor, or get an F.
This goes back many years, maybe even centuries, that students are faced with risking a grade to prove a point to a biased professor, or blow smoke up the profs skirt and get an A. I attended college in the early 1980’s and had the opportunity to use the same paper for two very different courses – one was taught by a fabulous non-partisan professor, and the other was taught by a partisan hack who would run for President every four years on the Peace and Freedom ticket.
I received an A- from one professor, and a F from the other. Armed with the two papers and grade evidence, I naively met with my advisor. While he appreciated my plight, it wasn’t going to get the Peace and Freedom Professor to reverse the F grade.
I assume that Socrates’ students even felt the same on occasion. But at least they were allowed debate. California students are rarely afforded the opportunity for Socratic debate.
This is why DEI must be abolished permanently. DEI only illegally furthers affirmative action by imposing race, gender, sexuality et al, over meritocratic – ability and talent – requirements in education and employment.
“DEI is an ideology or a protocol that supersedes disinterested evaluation,” Victor Davis Hanson explains. “The advocates of DEI rarely confess that meritocratic criteria have been superseded by considerations of diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
“DEI is also incoherent. It is essentially a reversion to tribalism in which solidarity is predicated on shared race, sex, or sexual orientation, not through individual background, particular economic status, or one’s unique character.”
We should all have had Victor Davis Hanson as a college professor.