The phrase “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” elicits vastly different responses from different people. Liberals tend to view DEI as a crucial component of any institution truly committed to “social justice” – there’s another buzzword. Conservatives tend to view DEI as empty virtue-signaling at best and a wholly corrupted enterprise at worst. So which is it?
Well, here’s the bad news. I’m going to argue that most DEI programs are rooted in contemporary critical theory, a deeply unbiblical ideology that Christians must reject. This fundamentally unbiblical understanding of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” is so ubiquitous that I’m not very comfortable with Christians even using the phrase “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”
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Now, since Marcus invited me and since he’s the director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Life Pacific University, I have about ten seconds to turn this talk around before he shuts off my mic and cuts the video, right? Yeah, maybe. But hear me out. My claim is that while most DEI programs are rooted in critical theory, we can think about these concepts in ways that are compatible with Christianity. In other words, we can see our churches, universities, and institutions as places where diversity, equity, and inclusion can be fostered provided that we define these terms in a biblical way and explicitly reject definitions rooted in critical theory. My aim here today is to show you how to do that.
Here’s my outline. First, I’d like to show you that something is happening to our culture, impacting everything from social media, to entertainment, to education, to DEI training.
Second, I’d like to give that “Something” a name: contemporary critical theory. I’ll explain the four central tenets of contemporary critical theory without offering any critique and I’ll even show that secular DEI programs are attempting to address some real problems. But third, I’ll show that a pursuit of diversity, equity, and inclusion based on critical theory is fundamentally flawed. As Christians, we simply cannot accept critical theorists’ understanding of oppression, justice, diversity, equity, inclusion, and a host of other concepts. Fourth, I’ll offer some biblical guiderails for thinking about DEI. And finally, I’ll offer a way forward in terms of having fruitful dialogue about these issues.
I. What is going on with our culture?
Let’s start with some data, since I’m a scientist and I love data. Here’s a chart of word usage frequency from the NYTimes. Around 2014, you can see the beginning of an event which some cultural commentators have dubbed “The Great Awokening.” Words like “racism” “privilege” “whiteness” and “intersectionality” suddenly exploded all over the pages of the NYTimes.
Another example: In 2020, the Smithsonian Institute published an infographic on “The Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness and White Culture.” It listed things like “objective, rational linear thinking” and “cause and effect relationships” and ideas like “hard work is the key to success” as elements of “whiteness.” Now, we might expect to see statements like that on a Neo-nazi manifesto, but on an infographic published by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture? What in the world is going on? And are these ideas only related to race? No.
Listen to a few quotes from the statement of beliefs page on the official Black Lives Matter website. They say that they want to “do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk.” And that they ‘foster a queer‐affirming network” and want to free themselves from “the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.” They sell T-shirts that say “Black Future is Queer.”
A 2021 CNN news article states: “It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.” Note: this is not an opinion piece. This is supposedly news. The highlighted sentence stayed in the piece for 24 hours before it was eventually removed.
Finally, the television show Blue’s Clues, which is targeted at preschoolers, released a Pride Month sing-along video last year set to the tune of “The Ants Go Marching.” The lyrics included these stanzas “These babas are non-binary / They love each other so proudly…/Ace, bi and pan grown-ups you see can love each other so proudly / And they all go marching in the Big Parade.” Ace-, bi-, and pan- refers to asexual, bisexual, and pansexual, for those who aren’t sure. And notice that one of the beavers in the video was portrayed with double-mastectomy scars. In other words, this character represents a biological female who had her breasts removed by gender reassignment surgery.
We can see these same ideas in dozens of books by scholars like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi. And we can also see these ideas in DEI training programs all over the country. Conservative activist Chris Rufo has provided hundreds of pages of primary source documents from DEI trainings at major corporations and schools.
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For example, at a Walmart Training program. Employees were told that racism is a “system of racial advantage that benefits white people,” that POC can suffer from “internalized racial oppression,” and that “white supremacy culture” includes things like “worship of the written word,” “individualism,” and “objectivity.”
AT&T recommended books like DiAngelo’s White Fragility, and Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning.
A middle-school teachers training program in Missouri asked attendees to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix” listing “racism,” “sexism,” “classism,” “heterosexism,” “ableism,” and “adultism” as various forms of oppression.
These artifacts are just the tip of the iceberg. So: what is the iceberg? In other words, where are these ideas coming from? That’s what I want to explain in the next section.
II. What is critical theory?
Critical theory today is an umbrella term which encompasses many different critical social theories including entire disciplines like cultural studies, postcolonialism, critical pedagogy, postmodernism, feminism, black feminism, queer theory, and critical race theory. So what are the ideas at the heart of contemporary critical theory?
I’ll list four: the social binary, oppression through ideology, lived experience, and social justice.
A. The Social Binary
First, contemporary critical theory is based on the idea of the social binary.
The “social binary” is the claim that society can be divided into dominant, oppressor groups and subordinate, oppressed groups along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, and a host of other factors. Here are Sensoy and DiAngelo in their book Is Everyone Really Equal?: “For every social group, there is an opposite group… the primary groups that we name here are: race, class, gender, sexuality, ability status/exceptionality, religion, and nationality.” Consequently, “sexism, racism, classism, and heterosexism are specific forms of oppression.”
Take a look at 5.1 from their book. As you can see, it lists various forms of oppression: racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, anti-Semitism, ableism, nationalism, colonialism. It lists the minoritized group: people of color, the poor, women, LGBTQ+ individuals. And it lists the dominant group: whites, the rich, men, heterosexuals, etc…
B. Oppression through ideology
Second, we have the idea of oppression through hegemonic power. What is “hegemonic power”?
Here are Sensoy and DiAngelo again: “Hegemony refers to the control of the ideology of society. The dominant group maintains power by imposing their ideology on everyone.” This is crucial. Traditionally, “oppression” is understood to refer to acts of cruelty, injustice, violence, and coercion. But critical theorists expand this definition of oppression to include the ways in which the dominant social group, imposes its norms, values, and ideas on society to justify its own interests. Iris Young writes: “In its new usage, oppression designates the disadvantage and injustice some people suffer not because a tyrannical power coerces them, but because of the everyday practices of a well-intentioned liberal society… Its causes are embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols.”
If you understand that dominance and oppression are produced not by numerical size, but by hegemonic power, you’ll understand why “old white men” are the canonical oppressor group. Demographically, only about 15% of the U.S. is “old white men.” So they’re actually a minority. But, according to contemporary critical theory, they are a dominant group because they have the power to impose their old white male values on society. We all accept these values as natural, objective, and common sense when actually, they serve old white male interests.
C. Lived Experience
Third: lived experience. Contemporary critical theory argues that “lived experience” gives oppressed people special access to truths about their oppression
Here’s an incredible quote from Anderson and Collins in their book Race, Class, and Gender. They write “The idea that objectivity is best reached only through rational thought is a specifically Western and masculine way of thinking – one that we will challenge throughout this book.”
To put it simply, critical theorists believe that privileged groups tend to be blinded by their privilege. They have both conscious and subconscious reasons to avoid or ignore the reality of oppression. In contrast, by virtue of their “social location,” oppressed people have the possibility of “seeing through” the hegemonic discourse imposed on them by the ruling class. They can recognize that dominant social norms are really attempts to justify oppression and can thereby achieve what’s called a “liberatory consciousness” or a “critical consciousness.” Colloquially, they can “get woke,” by waking up to invisible systems of oppression all around them.
But that’s not automatic. Because we’re all socialized into the dominant group’s ideology, these oppressive ideas appear to be “natural” and “common sense” to all of us. So even oppressed people can experience “internalized oppression” when they embrace the ideology of the dominant group, failing to see it for what it is: a bid for power.
D. Social justice
Finally, the motive force behind critical theory since its inception is the achievement of “social justice.”
Listen to how feminist scholar Mary McClintock defines that term. She writes that “social justice” is “the elimination of all forms of social oppression” where that oppression can be based on “a person’s gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability, or economic class.” In other words, critical theorists define “social justice” to mean the elimination of the oppressor-oppressed social binary by dismantling the systems and structures used to justify the hegemonic power of the ruling class: whether it’s the hegemonic power of whites, men, heterosexuals, or the rich.
Now, if anyone has experience with diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, you’ll realize that these ideas are pervasive. DEI initiatives often simply assume critical theory’s conceptualizations of the social binary, hegemonic power, lived experience, and social justice. That’s why it’s so important to understand critical theory when we’re trying to evaluate DEI initiatives. It’s crucial to understand the basic assumptions on which they’re built.
But before I offer any critique of critical theory-based DEI programs, let me call attention to some of the positive aspects of these initiatives. Even if we strongly disagree with their ideological foundations, like I do, we should recognize that they’re trying to solve real problems that Christians can acknowledge.
E. Positive goals of DEI
First, let’s talk about diversity. Is diversity always bad? Is it always godless and “worldly”? Well, no. Some kinds of diversity are God-ordained and can be celebrated. Think about Paul’s entire argument in 1 Cor. 12 about how God gives a diversity of spiritual gifts to the local church. One of his main points is that the church would be impoverished if everyone had the same gifts. Similarly, a local church that providentially includes people from multiple tribes, nations, and tongues is one that looks more like the picture of God’s Kingdom that we see in Rev. 7. So certain kinds of diversity are good and God-ordained.
Second, let’s talk about “equity” which is often contrasted with “formal equality.” “Formal equality” or “procedural equality” means that laws and policies treat everyone exactly the same. But does that guarantee actual equality of opportunity? Not necessarily. Simple example: after the Civil War and the 13th and 14th Amendments, former slaves had all the formal, legal rights and privileges of other American citizens in theory. Does it follow that they had the same opportunities? Or even the same legal rights in practice? Absolutely not. Many of them ended up as sharecroppers whose lives were only marginally better than they had been under slavery. So formal equality under law does not guarantee equality of opportunity.
Third, DEI programs argue that because formal equality is not enough, therefore we need to embrace “equity” which means explicitly embracing unequal treatment. That’s rightly controversial, but is it always wrong? No. There are many cases where unequal treatment is actually good and just. For example, wheelchair ramps. Are those unfair? Can’t people in wheelchairs use stairs. Well, no, they can’t. That’s exactly the point. What about handicapped parking spaces? What about free school lunches for children in poverty? In all these cases, almost everyone recognizes that unequal treatment is justified because the goal is equal opportunity. We want to ensure that everyone has access to the same public goods. So there are cases where unequal treatment is just and fair.
Fourth, institutional culture can sometimes unintentionally exclude or marginalize people and DEI tries to fix that. And that can be fine. Where the Bible is silent, we can be flexible about our own cultural traditions, out of love for our brothers and sisters outside our culture.
So these are all problems that DEI initiatives are trying to address and we can appreciate these issues as Christians.
That said, there are a number of places where DEI programs go fundamentally wrong, from a Christian perspective.
DEI Done Wrong
A. Redefining oppression
First, DEI programs rooted in critical theory redefine oppression, which leads to a false view of inclusion. In an earlier slide, I showed an “Oppression Matrix” used at a teacher training session in Missouri. That table probably came from the “Matrix of Oppression” in Appendix C of Adams’ Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice. Notice that racism and sexism are listed as oppressions right alongside heterosexism. Why? Because critical theorists have redefined the word “oppression.”