Brief: The Culture Warrior to Wellness Pipeline (w/Dax-Devlon Ross)
Wellness influencers are quite capable of inventing and spreading health misinformation. When it comes to culture war issues, however, they're incapable of generating original thoughts. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that they simply parrot talking points created by the likes of Chris Rufo and Bari Weiss, especially when it comes to their uninformed critiques of DEI and CRT efforts.
Author, lawyer, and social impact consultant Dax-Devlon Ross takes Derek on a journey through the life of a DEI facilitator—and corrects the bias and misinformation pundits like Rufo and Weiss spread as gospel.
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Wellness influencers are quite capable of inventing and spreading health misinformation on their own.
Quite often, this comes from unscientific hot takes about the body that are steeped in metaphysical hunches.
But at least they've developed a language around their intuitions.
Of course, this is confusing to people actually seeking help, which sometimes results in them spending way too much time and money investing in useless products and services.
When it comes to culture war issues, though, wellness influencers are incapable of generating original thoughts, given that they have no political knowledge.
I mean, I'm talking about the people who think of politics as a dirty word distracting them from transcending the earthly domain, which really actually gives you insight into their level of privilege.
Well, then they have to turn to culture warriors as adept with topics like race and gender as they are about supplements and vaccines.
And that pipeline often leads to people like Chris Ruffo and Barry Weiss.
I'm Derek Barris, and this is a Conspiratuality Brief on anti-diversity culture warriors.
If you appreciate the work we do on this podcast, you can support us on Patreon and get all of our episodes ad-free, as well as our Monday bonus episodes.
You can also subscribe to those via Apple Podcasts.
Today I'm joined by author, lawyer, and social impact consultant Dax Devlon Ross, who spends part of his time running leadership retreats focused on social and racial equity.
He's the author of six books, including his latest, Letters to My White Male Friends.
And I am among those friends mentioned in that book, as Dax is my best friend of over 30 years.
We ran an independent publishing company together for a decade and we've traveled extensively around the world.
A lot of my own understanding of race and equity have developed through his work and through our relationship.
I wanted to invite Dax back onto the podcast after the recent ousting of Claudine Gay from the Harvard presidency, especially in light of Chris Ruffo's victory lap after it happened.
And yes, I know there was plagiarism involved, but Ruffo and his allies admit that it was about much more than that.
Their focus is the literal end of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in America, as well as critical race theory.
And it's all being couched under the provably false notion that everyone starts with the same opportunities in this country.
Barry Weiss, who we're also going to discuss in our conversation, takes a similar simplistic notion of race.
And it does connect with the wellness world, as these are among the figures that conspiritualists steal their rhetoric from.
And they also connect in the false notion of utopia, the idea that if everyone just lived up to certain standards, the world would be an ideal place.
Of course, Utopia literally translates as Nowhere Place, because Sir Thomas More knew perfection could only exist in our mind and not reality, and he wrote the book back in 1516.
Now, this isn't to say that the world hasn't improved over the centuries.
But it is to say that the sophomoric essays that pass for actual thinking, written by people like Rufo and Weiss, then shared in conspiritualist social networks, tells us everything about their lack of intellectual and emotional rigor, and almost nothing about what diversity, equity, and inclusion really entails.
And it also doesn't inform us of what the activists on the ground doing this work every day really go through.
And that's what I wanted to bring to light today.
So let's turn to one of them to find out what this work really entails.
Dax Devil and Ross, welcome back to the podcast.
Yeah, man.
I thought y'all were done with me.
I thought you didn't want to have me back.
I can't get rid of you.
I was like, was it that bad the last time that you just don't want to ever bring me back?
No, I don't think we'll ever be able to get rid of you, thankfully.
Yeah, yeah.
You were in Montgomery, Alabama this week running a leadership retreat, and obviously this city has a lot of history, and it's completely appropriate for our conversation today.
Now, you've worked leading DEI initiatives for a long time, and we're going to spend most of our time today discussing this topic in terms of all the rhetoric coming from the right about how terrible DEI and critical race theory are.
But I would like to start with you explaining what your work actually entails.
First of all, thanks again, Dee, the whole team, for inviting me to be back and just to connect with the audience.
What's up, audience?
Good to hear.
You know, be with y'all.
This question of what entails is a really, really important one because I think what I often encounter when I hear people write about it is that these aren't folks who've got deep engagement with the work.
The work takes on many different forms and is different levels and different phases in which people are fundamentally going to be depending on where they are organizationally.
I will use as an example what I just did.
So you just named that I was in Montgomery, Alabama.
I was with the leadership team, about 25 folks in an organization that operates in this sort of social justice progressive space.
And they wanted to have an experience where they were going to go to Montgomery and really experience the history, the civil rights history that sort of exists all over that city.
And not only that, there's a Confederate history that exists there as well.
So in as much as there's the Dexter Avenue Church, which is where Dr. King began his career, and there's his parsonage where he lived his life, the house that was attacked when he wasn't there with his, you know, his wife and children were attacked.
There's the Rosa Parks story.
There's the Freedom Riders story.
There's the Southern Poverty Law Center has its headquarters there, and they have their own museum there.
And Bryan Stevenson has his museum there.
And he also has the Freedom and Justice Memorial, the lynching memorial, I call it.
All of this is true.
And still, when you stand on the Capitol, the steps of the Capitol, there's a statue of Jefferson Davis that overlooks the entire city.
There's a world in which Montgomery has said, we're going to embrace our history in its totality, but the one history is harmful to people.
It is actually harmful to people to have to encounter this.
Like, you have to walk past that statue on a daily basis.
Like, what does that do to people?
What are you, what message are you communicating?
That's not the same message that Dr. King was communicating.
That's not the same message and that's a false equivalency.
And yet I think it's very connected to the challenge that we're experiencing today and our ability to have some synthesis around what's going on.
So the work I was doing with the team was, In many regards, helping them process the experience of being in this city, many people had not been to the South.
To live, to go into these museums, into this history around, specifically Brian Stevens' work, really tracking from slavery all the way through mass incarceration, it's very, it can be very triggering, traumatic, it can be very painful.
You're seeing these very specific images of bodies being not just harmed, but like mutilated.
And they needed space to process that.
So as a DEI practitioner, I am there to help them Negotiate, what was that like?
How did you deal with that?
And then the next day, my work with them was to really connect that to their work, to their leadership, to what they are as a culture, to their values.
And in many ways, helping them think about like, what does leadership mean for them?
And how are they going to exercise that as a community, given what, not just what they experienced yesterday, but their overall mission.
They're trying to change the world.
So it's symbolic for them to be in Montgomery.
It's symbolic to have to pass through that history.
And it's so alive in that city.
And then to help them think about what does it mean for what we do and how we move forward, that gives me joy as a practitioner, because it's unlocking things for people.
It's helping them process trauma.
It's helping them think about what they want to take from the past and what they want to build into the future.
And no part of that is about The things that I hear people claim DEI is, and it's so strange to me.
I'm like, these are folks trying to do transformational work and change young people's lives.
Like, what is wrong with that?
Why do you hold this belief that it is so antithetical to American values?
This is our story, y'all!
We are in it in a tactical level.
My work shows up as a DEI practitioner.
Yes, it can be in a training space, but that's actually probably 15% of the work that I do, like a training.
The rest of it is, you know, it's there's strategy work that is a big part of my job and a big part of what I'm up to in the world.
And strategy work is the work of trying to help organizations define who they want to be and where they're trying to go, doing that with a lens of equity.
Doing it with a lens around inclusion and how are you going to build the thing you're trying to become, centering that history that we come from.
That looks like looking at people's policies in a deep way, looking at your sort of cycles of employment, like how is it you bring people in?
How do you recruit people?
How do you socialize them to the culture?
How do you make sure that they have equal equitable opportunities to elevate and be successful in your organization?
How do you ensure leaders are able to have awareness around who they are working with
and the histories that they're bringing into the work?
How are you able to like think about compensation in a way that really addresses
the sort of paradigm of disparity that we think is okay in our culture
and brings more alignment so that people's compensation is actually connected
to their value and what they do.
And then even like how you think about transitioning people out of the organization.
Like the ways organizations that let people go can be really harmful, can be really mean.
Every part of the employee life cycle is a feature of my work.
and there's strategy work that's about who you want to be externally in the world.
That's substantively what I'm up to.
And my heart is connected to like helping people do their work and better and to do their work, not trying to impose my ideas on them.
I'm not trying to come in and say it needs to be this.
And I think that's what there's a notion of what DEI work is.
It's like indoctrination.
I'm like, it's the farthest thing that people are, I am up to.
I don't know what other people are up to, but I know I'm not up to that.
One tactic that the right uses, and they're very effective at this, is finding, for example,
a TikTok person with 20 followers who has blue hair and is far left and then clipping
it and then making them seem as if they are exemplary of what the entire movement is about.
They do this with transgender issues.
They do this with critical race theory.
They do this with DEI.
One thing they've done with DEI is a Coca-Cola employee found a link in some training manual
that led them to LinkedIn and down on some page there was something that seemed more
of what you were just referencing.
Like it was a little more demanding and then they blew that up as if that were this is Chris Rufo specifically.
And so what they're saying is, what the point they try to make over and over is that most people don't want to be in these trainings, they're ineffective, they're anti-American.
And I know that you individualize your trainings depending on the spaces you're moving in.
So we started with Montgomery, which From what you just said, you seem to be a very receptive audience, and I'm wondering, what are some of the challenges you have as a facilitator?
Like, when you go into some, do you have any sort of conflict, and how do you work to resolve that?
That's a great question.
In answering that question, I want to sort of address the notion of effectiveness that you started with.
There's a premise under which their work is effective.
I think what they're effective in doing is leveraging what are already latent racist ideas
or latent prejudicial ideas.
They're not doing anything new.
They're like, the doing that they have to do is very limited because they're able to tap into these
ideas, these stereotypes that already exist broadly in our culture
that I almost feel like give people a dopamine rush to be able to really get, to like see
and to like confirm their beliefs.
And while they might not be explicit about what they perceive, but we know, we've learned a lot about implicit bias and we've learned a lot about how folks seek out information that confirms and conforms to their worldview.
And I believe that quite frequently, that's what they're able to leverage.
It's not so much that they're doing something profound and they know that, but they know it's just very easy.
There's a lot less reflective thinking about one's thinking that would allow people to stop and pause and ask, where did this information come from?
What is the broader context in which this sits?
Who gave this to me?
The kinds of questions that would start to peel away at the flimsiness of the content that they're presenting to you.
People don't do enough of that.
And I just think that's a real loss.
But this question around like effective and ineffective, I'm the first to tell you that I think a lot of implicit bias training is not incredibly effective.
I think implicit bias knowledge, like learning it is effective, but the training mechanisms used for it aren't super effective.
And I would say that part of the problem with people is, there's also, there's multiple things happening within that context as well.
It's like, what is the mindset you're going in with?
And let's check on that.
If you're already going into an experience with the mindset of this is not going to be effective, I think this is, if you're going in with that judgment frame, Then you're already then you're already priming yourself to have that kind of experience.
And if you're not aware that you're doing that, then I'm going to say that you need to check yourself the next time that happens.
Like, what's the attitude I'm bringing to this?
One of the things I ask people to do at the end of the session with me is always do some people always want to do feedback.
I want to have feedback.
I'm like, I'm down with feedback, but feedback should be bi-directional.
And it should be self-reflective.
So don't just evaluate me.
Don't just say, was that a good or bad training?
Ask, how did I show up?
In what ways did I participate?
Where did I lean back?
Like, that's the thing, because people come into these spaces already with a critical hat on, and they don't even give it an opportunity to hit them in any meaningful way.
So that's part of it.
As a practitioner, it is on me to have basic understanding around teaching and learning.
Like, how do people learn?
And how people learn isn't just drilling them with a bunch of information all the time.
How people learn isn't telling them right and wrong all the time, right?
People need to be led to things and being offered an opportunity to bring a critical lens to things.
So my orientation around learning is that I try to present information that allows you to do some grappling with in your own right.
And it's not about me providing you with the answer all the time.
I have things I believe.
And I actually believe my beliefs are strong enough that I don't need to impose them on you.
I believe that the worldview that I hold and the evidence that I use and will present to you is strong enough that I do not have to use some other mechanism.
I don't have to use, I don't have to fulminate.
I don't have to argue with you.
I don't have to try to present it to you as if it's the only viewpoint in the world.
And I know that the work always isn't executed in the best way.
I think DEI work, it is a practice.
It is a craft.
It is something that people should take very seriously if they're going to do, and have awareness of broader cultural influences.
And they should really ensure, we should really ensure, that we're up on the most recent dialogues, we're reading, we're up on the recent data, we're looking at evidence, we're contending with those ideas that are challenging our own.
Is implicit bias training working?
If I'm not having a conversation with myself about that, I'm operating in bad faith.
So some of the rhetoric, perhaps even around white supremacy culture, got a little out of hand.
Some of the rhetoric that's rooted in what an organization needs to be and the extent to which it needs to be an extension of my personal values has gotten a little out of hand.
I think people do need to be able to draw boundaries between work And what the work is and what an organization is and what a company is and who they are and what they value.
I don't think it's a fair expectation that an organization or company should be everything for you in all contexts.
And that, I think, is a critique that needs to be infused in any kind of DEI work that's happening.
It's not like, yo, like the organization just because should become flat and it should be no hierarchy.
There's a dialogue to be had around that.
And there's a room in the left in a progressive space to say, we actually feel like hierarchy is going to work for us.
We recognize that we need to find ways for folks to participate.
And we're going to be clear about those ways.
But I don't think that the notion that Some things are just everything should just be like flat.
Nobody should have any like more make more money or make less money.
And that's not what I'm about personally.
And I think we've got to challenge some of these notions.
So I want to go back to what you started with about efficacy.
Yeah, because recently we saw Claudine Gay's ouster.
I want to spend most of the rest of our time talking about examples
from Chris Ruffo and Barry Weiss here. Sure.
And Ruffo and his colleagues admitted that the gay issue wasn't about plagiarism.
And they also claim that DEI is failing and that companies are turning away from such training.
So they're trying to make an argument that they're winning.
Now, the very same week that Rufo came out and his other two colleagues on this, I'm forgetting their names, it doesn't matter to me, but there was a report from Littler that focused on C-suites and it said, actually, 58% of companies state that interest in DEI has increased And only 6% say there's been a decrease in interest and 36% say it's remained the same.
So they're trying to say, look, it's falling apart.
Companies are turning away.
Let's move on.
But data isn't showing that.
So what have you noticed in your relationships with companies and organizations?
Are you bleeding out work right now?
You're doing okay there.
Yeah.
So I just want to keep reiterating that my work isn't only sitting in the DEI space.
I just really want people to be really, really clear about that.
A feature of my work sits squarely in DEI.
My work is, I do culture work.
I do strategy work.
I do analysis.
I'm a lawyer by trade.
I have skills that go beyond, that are inclusive of, but extend beyond that.
I'm a writer.
I'm a variety of things in the world.
You used to have a decent jump shot.
Yeah, I used to have a decent J. You know, I still got a nice little cross.
I mean, you know, I got a little something with me.
And I name that because I'm a multi-hyphenate.
When 2020 and 2021 were happening, I wasn't someone who was like, oh, I'm all in on this DEI thing now.
There have been ebbs and flows in the DEI work, and I think it's good and healthy.
Because what was happening in 2020 and 2021 was not healthy.
It was creating a hustle culture.
It was creating dynamics where folks were feeling like, I couldn't do the best work because I have so much coming at me at once.
And so much of it is superficial.
So what you have now is people who are going deeper.
And are less interested in the noise externally and are recognizing that this is actually mission critical.
It is existential.
It is not something that we can choose to do or not do.
We might need to change the way we talk about it.
We might not be on blast about it, but best believe it is happening.
And that, I think, is really what's interesting because the work still comes.
The work still arrives.
People still reach out.
People still want to do things.
Like, there are a lot of people, and it wasn't just 2020, that were already doing their work and are looking at the Chris Ruffos of the world and listening to the, looking at these articles, and they just don't pay attention to it because it's like, that's noise.
And that noise is always going to be there.
It has always been there.
It always reproduces arguments that we've already debunked.
And it uses flimsy analysis that is actually only a paper-thin deep, but it is able to activate a base.
We understand that.
We recognize that we have to tread lightly in certain spaces.
We can't operate as if these folks don't have power and can't exercise that power, which we saw in the Claudine Gay situation.
When has this not been part of the history of our struggles in this country?
We had to go through that.
We saw what happened after Reconstruction.
Martin Luther King, in his last book, Chaos or Community, where do we go from here?
Chaos or Community, he writes in 1967, after about three, after two years, three years of 1964, the Civil Rights Bill, and then 65 and the Voting Rights Bill, and by 67, he's writing in that book, I'm experiencing the backlash.
And we are experiencing the white backlash.
This pattern is part of American history.
This is what always happens.
We know that.
We're going to keep moving.
And it's messed up what's happening to her.
It's messed up that these individuals are being brought down.
It's awful.
It's evil.
It's wrong.
It's mean, fundamentally.
It's mean.
It's very mean.
These people need to understand.
You are a mean person.
Your righteous cause, whatever you might believe it to be, underneath that, because meanness is at the core of that, it means that there cannot be righteousness there as well.
It could be self-righteousness, but it is not righteous.
It is the same thing when I'm in Montgomery and people are still clinging to the notion of some glorious past in a war they were cheated out of, in a country they were cheated out of, and will not let go of that history because they believe that it's noble.
It's not a noble history.
The oppression of other people is not something to be proud of in any context.
You mentioned paper-thin analysis, and I want to talk about Barry Weiss.
Yeah.
Because she wrote a piece in Tablet in November.
It's called End DEI.
I want to quote part of it.
Yeah.
I had sent it to you in advance, and then I want to hear your response.
So here's what she writes.
Yeah.
But DEI is not about the words it uses as camouflage.
DEI is about arrogating power.
And the movement that is gathering all this power does not like America or liberalism.
It does not believe that America is a good country, at least no better than China or Iran.
It calls itself progressive, but it does not believe in progress.
It is explicitly anti-growth.
It claims to promote equity, but its answer to the challenge of teaching math or reading to disadvantaged children is to eliminate math and reading tests.
It demonizes hard work, merit, family, and the dignity of the individual.
Sounds like something Joe McCarthy could have written back in 1953.
Very fulminating, rhetorical, doesn't back itself up with any analysis, uses very extreme case scenarios to paint a broad stroke picture.
articulates a viewpoint that's just what I experience is a weaponization of latent racism, but also a strain of American consciousness that has always been very prone to and responsive to hysterias that are stoked by possibility of some kind of extremist viewpoint taking over the American Republic.
It's of a history.
It's not in any way disconnected from what I read and I'm doing a lot of deep research and studying around the Red Scare for this new book I'm working on.
You know, J. Edgar Hoover giving a speech in 1946 before the American Legion, you know, when he's talking about, you know, communism as a malignancy, you know, and he's talking to a bunch of veterans about it.
Of course, we're going to be completely hostile.
He's, you know, heroized.
He's he's valorized for this.
It's I think people I just wish they would they would allow themselves to see that, see themselves in the historical context and recognize how those viewpoints are viewed today.
Like, how do you think that that headline like NDEI is going to read 50 years from now?
Like, ask yourself.
It's not going to age well.
Progress will happen.
And I think what I struggle with, you know, I've read a bit of Barry Weiss's work over the years.
I know she left the New York Times in the midst of the sort of 2020 period, the era of uprising and upheaval, left in protest.
I don't know her personality, so I'm not going to like make an ad hominem argument about or attack on her, but it's in keeping with the public persona that I have perceived, which is very much in the realm of contrarianism.
I don't really know what you believe.
I know what you don't believe, but to me it's a lot of contrarianism that frames itself as liberalism, but doesn't really define what liberalism even means.
Who gets to define this?
Who is progressive in your context?
It feels like a moving target because you're using this definition of progressive over here and that, and actually within progressive spaces, they don't even talk about them the same.
So it's like you're jumbling things together.
And that's what I identify in those arguments and in Christopher Rufo's piece in the New York Times that we were going to talk about.
It's that actually your arguments aren't very strong.
From an analytical lens, you're not making strong argument.
You're presenting rhetoric, but you're not actually going through a basic analysis that justifies what it is, the conclusion you're drawing.
It's like you're starting with a conclusion and using the whole article to justify the conclusion versus explain why you've arrived at this conclusion.
And to me, as I read that, I'm like, you're a good writer.
You know how to turn a phrase.
It's actually really not quality thinking.
And so when she starts to talk about merit, I'm like, listen, the word merit is one that we adopted from a book that was written not even meant to actually elevate the idea of meritocracy, but to critique the idea of meritocracy.
And we know meritocracy is a moving target.
It's a moving target.
It's dependent upon who's defining it.
It's intentionally undefinable or poorly definable.
This notion that people are anti-growth.
What folks are is they're maybe smart growth.
They're recognizing that we have a climate crisis that we have to deal with.
They're recognizing that growing inequality is a real problem because we're seeing it come back on our shores in the form of sort of immigration patterns.
We know that's what these arguments are trying to present is that we have a future that is looming.
And if we don't make some changes, and we think that some of the elements and practices of DEI, some of them, because we're still figuring things out as well.
Some of them can actually help us because we're going to need more voices in the room.
We're going to need more folks who have resources so they can test things out.
We're going to need ideas to come from other parts of the world.
And if you have a problem with that, then I think that you are actually putting us on a path to extinction.
You mentioned Rufo's New York Times article.
So let's turn there because we recently had Taylor Lorenz on the podcast, and she's really critical of the New York Times.
That's her old employer as well.
Yeah.
And she's critical for a much different reason, though, because they platformed Rufo with that ridiculous op-ed about DEI being antithetical to liberal education.
That's what you referenced.
But then they recently published a piece about the dangers that people like Rufo hold But they're also responsible for mainstreaming him in the first place.
Yeah.
So, do you think the center or center-left or left media outlets platforming people like Rufo and these rhetorical arguments that don't really hold up under logic, does it make sense for them to do this anymore?
The operator's turn is, does it make sense?
We know that it makes dollars.
We know that it drives eyeballs.
We know that it drives comments.
It knows that it drives commentary.
So there's that, that it needs to be accounted for because they still operate in a market economy.
They still, they are still a revenue generating enterprise.
In the course of doing some research for this new project I'm working on, I'm doing a lot of, I'm reading a lot of New York Times newspapers from the 1940s, 1946, 1947, 1948.
And what you find in those newspapers is pretty interesting.
It's like, A, the events that happen are usually reported a day or two later, even as late as 1940.
So the idea of real-time information gathering and knowledge is just such a foreign concept, at least in this context.
But you see also how many headlines are focusing on unions and on the struggles with unions because it was such a prominent feat.
All over.
So many of the headlines, of course, are dealing with what's happening in Europe because this is still the period in the immediate wake of World War II.
But there's such little opinionating.
Opinionating is not, I'm not the first to say this, but it's become the new mechanism for driving eyeballs, interest, the chattering class.
The New York Times is in that game.
They're in the game of being in the conversation, leading the conversation, whatever that might be.
So I think there's that going on.
The other thing I think is, as they're watching other newspapers and other papers of record go under or struggle, they are increasingly becoming a more singular force in the information, you know, in sort of the free world information enterprise universe.
And I do feel like there's a heavy responsibility in that space, and they're not going to always get it right.
But I think they are trying to be responsive to what does it mean to be a surviving and central entity for the gathering of different points of view that can help be a part of whatever you might call the fourth estate, but also a unifying space, and even marginally so.
And that's not easy.
And so I have some sympathy for what they're up to and trying to figure that out.
Now, I will say the article that they posted by Rufo, again, I think it was just not a well-written article.
I just think it was a poorly written article.
And I think the very approach to writing as if he was a somewhat disinterested party, even though he tried to name his interests, was really problematic.
I can't believe anything you have to say because you have too much of a vested stake in what you are saying.
You have not demonstrated to me why you are a credible source.
So I think if there's anything that the New York Times did wrong in platforming him, was that they would not platform someone else holding a point of view from the opposite side of the spectrum who doesn't bring a strong analysis and bring a real strong point of view that is not just grounded in a sort of set of facts that are only favorable to their side.
The basic assumption that he's starting with is that the university was founded as this bastion for free ideas to be exchanged.
Bro, come on, man.
Like, you lost me already.
So if that's where you're starting, then we already have a challenge here.
And the challenge and the problem is the New York Times should be able to put the funnel, like, hey, I understand your opinion piece, but again, that's not even good.
That's not even good thinking.
That's just not true.
And for you to allow that to just be produced and reproduced, that's the problem.
So give him a platform, but make sure he has to be who he is when he writes in these other newspapers and these other outlets.
Be who you are in City Journal.
Be who you are in those other places.
Don't try to come here and present yourself as some quasi-neutral player or someone who has an academic pedigree that is presenting some research-based analysis, because that's not.
You're still a shill.
It's kind of amazing.
When we wrote the piece for Time last year, They drilled down on every single sentence that we wrote.
Right?
I'm sure they did!
Right now, I'm writing a piece for Mother Jones, and my first draft had 48 edits, and then a rewrite.
Which is part of the editorial process!
Like, that's actually healthy as a writer.
That's what I'm saying!
And you and I know this because we've gone through this process.
I know what it takes to get something published in that newspaper.
I know what it takes to get something published.
You have to go.
Even if it's an opinion-based piece, you still have to be, where does this come from?
You're going to be challenged.
I don't think the editorial team challenged enough and pushed enough there.
Yeah, I agree.
Well, let's wind down with a more hopeful message, also from the New York Times.
Surprise!
I will say this, this is why a few of my friends have cancelled their subscriptions.
I will name that.
I have people who have no longer, who just won't entertain the newspaper because the both-side-ism is really, really, it's not just aggravating, it feels like it's, again, I keep using the word bad faith, it's like an expression of bad faith.
You can't just be neutral in this way in the ways that you're showing up and flip-flop on a daily basis in this way.
It feels like it's dangerous in its own way, right?
So I just wanted to name that.
I think that is where I find to be a problem in the way that they're presenting in the world right now.
This essay was written by Carolyn Elkins, Frances Frey, and Anne Morris.
It's called Critics of DEI Forget That It Works, and I think it is much more on par of what you've been saying.
It presents quite a different view from what Rufo or Weiss claim that DEI being part of this destruction of American culture, and they write, We know that historical change is like sleep.
It happens gradually, sometimes fitfully, then all at once.
We are in the fitful stage of our evolution toward truly inclusive organizations, but let us not get confused.
Inclusion is an end goal that channels universal hopes for meritocracy, reflects America at its best, and creates the foundation for an even more competitive future.
So, with that in mind, what are your hopes for this whole process, the scope of your work broadly?
And then if you want to also address what they've written, go for it.
That article was very measured.
Even the use of meritocracy, I would want to challenge the need to throw that in there.
Like, who are you trying to signal and bring along?
That's often what I see to happen, but we're constantly trying to bring people along and we're almost like screaming, hey, we're not so bad.
You know, we're not trying to like, We have to always tamp down the fears that people have.
The notion of change means exclusion.
It means some kind of retribution.
You know, there's always been this fear, I think.
I was looking at and reading Justice Sotomayor's dissenting opinion in last week, in last summer's affirmative action decision.
And she talks about the fact that President Johnson, he vetoed the civil rights legislation initially because, I forget that if it was the, I forget if it was the 14th Amendment itself or the, The civil rights bill, the civil rights legislation that passed thereafter, a year or so after.
But the point being, he vetoed it because he perceived that it was providing unfair advantages to black people.
And this is in 1867.
I mean, this is what we're talking about, right?
This is what we're dealing with.
This is fundamental fear that people have that there's going to be this disadvantaging of white people, or whether it's white people or able people or like men or white men or whoever that intersectional identity is.
It's whoever has power has this anxiety around Those who don't have what I have want it from me and want to take it from me because that's how they view the world.
So they're applying how they view the world to everybody else.
Everyone else is power hungry.
Everybody else just wants to see it.
So they want to arrogate power as Barry White points.
That's a very Hobbesian view of the world.
It's dark.
I think that what that piece is trying to articulate and what they're trying to sort of thread a very fine needle with is a more optimistic view of a future where inclusion actually drives us to inequity and drives us to a place where we all are better off.
I say this again and again and again.
I've always and always and always will want everybody to be on the journey.
I think the abundance that we can possibly we can build is for everybody and that will improve everyone's life.
I do not subscribe to the notion that there's a zero-sum game here or that there's an either-or proposition that we're presented with.
I do subscribe to the notion that this is a process.
And that it was telling to me that like Chris Rufo explains his journey is one where he has gone through being a vegetarian, I think it was, and doing, going through, and he was on the left.
I'm like, that tells me something about his, there's a fitfulness there.
There's a restlessness there.
And I think the conservative movement has provided him with some stability in a home.
And I think that that speaks to, and I don't want to psychologize him, but it speaks to the unmooring he might have felt and what he was looking for and has always been seeking.
And he's able to find a conservative movement that is about basically a calcification and the hardening and the holding in place and the locking down, because that provides him with a false sense of security about the world.
And it pays attention to him.
And it pays attention to him because his ideas are not strong enough to live on the other side.
And I do find that that's true with the right more broadly is that their intellectuals are not, to my mind at least, and maybe I have a biased view of things, they're not as rigorous.
Their arguments are not as strong.
And so the bar is a little lower.
I know that people will have a problem with me saying it, but the bar is a little lower over there and he can go over there and be a standout in a way he would never be a standout.
I think it's important because look at what Jack Prosaic just said the other day.
You have Taylor Swift but we have Kid Rock and Jon Voight.
That was so indicative of that mindset that you're identifying right there.
Because there's this perceived, besides for clicks and attention, obviously, but Colin Cowherd did this, I sent it to you, I don't know if you watched it, but this amazing piece about why these right and these right men are so against Taylor Swift, and it has nothing to do with Taylor Swift.
But then to justify it, you have Jack Presaic come out and say, We have Kid Rock, so we're just as good.
And it's like, that's such a ridiculous argument, but I think it actually encapsulates what you were pointing out.
On a cultural level, you can extrapolate and put that on an intellectual level as well, because if you do close readings of documents by people like Derrick Bell or any of the people who like Critical Race Theory, and then you try to read a Rufo essay, you're like, these are worlds apart in terms of intellectual rigor.
They're worlds apart.
And to me, that's where I sit with all this.
I'm like, get your game up at least.
If you're going to come at me, come at me a little bit better than this.
Like, come at me with arguments that are actually really sound.
I don't think that DEI work is perfect.
I know, we know that there's work to be done, but we don't quit on anything.
Why do we have to quit on it?
Because it's not producing the results right away.
We don't quit on everything just because it's like, oh, well, I don't see the results.
Are fans of losing teams for generations.
And they don't quit in these teams.
He's pointing to me right now, everyone, just so you know.
I'm just saying, people will choose fandom for losing.
And it's like, DEI didn't in one year change my organization, so therefore it's a failure.
I'm like, come on, can we apply a little bit more of a realistic standard?
We're operating within a very deep, long, sordid history that requires human beings In real time, to try to engage and incorporate new ideas as they're living their lives, as food prices are going up, as there's uncertainty about their futures.
I'm sensitive and aware of that.
And all of us, as we were doing good practitioner work, are aware of that and sensitive to that as well.
And we try to bring that into our work with clients and say, this is a journey.
We're going to be in it together with you.
We're going to support you.
We're going to push you at times.
Right?
So that article that you just shared with me at the end, I'm glad that that argument exists in the world.
I'm glad that viewpoint is still being platformed in the New York Times, because for a while I was worried that the New York Times, quite frankly, had just turned its back on articulating a stance in favor of.
Because I'm going to be honest with you, it's not like any of these newspapers and magazines ever come to me or anybody I know and ask us to write anything.
I hear a lot, I see a lot of people writing about DEI who've never done it.
I'm a writer who writes about, who does DEI, and nobody says, Dax, what do you think?
Like, I actually could tell you, because I'm in the room every day, I'm on these calls, I'm doing this work, I'm writing the reports, I'm doing the analysis, I have the clients, but you go and talk to people who don't know anything and follow them.
And then maybe that's on me, but it just tells me something, right, that you're not even going to the source.
To try to understand, and you at least, as you always do, because that's who you are, you try to come to one source.
