'Some of you know that I’m a white guy married to a black woman for over 30 years.
My wife’s family on both sides traces its heritage back to slave days, and all of her family grew up in the Deep South. Through the years, I have been privileged to hear stories from her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles about what it was like to be black in America under Jim Crow. I don’t think one can fully appreciate the horrors and evils of that system unless you hear it explained stoically and matter-of-factly by one of its victims. The stories were appalling. Through all of those stories though, the common theme that always struck me was the indignity of it all. As a black American in those days, you had to “know your place.” If you suffered discrimination silently, nothing worse could happen to you. But if you spoke up—if you were “uppity”—the consequences could be dire economically, socially and even fatally via lynchings. So if you loved your family, you kept your mouth shut, willingly remained subservient in the face of active discrimination, and suffered the INDIGNITY of it all.
That indignity of silent suffering was corrosive to the soul, which I think is one of the most pernicious and unspoken psychological effects on each victim who lived through that era.
"Corrosive to the soul.” Hold that thought.
Fast forward to last week, where I was forced to endure my firm’s annual DEI training. I had to sit there silently while I was informed that I had earned none of the things that I earned through my own blood, sweat and tears; that I was inherently and unchangeably inferior because of the color of my skin and my genitalia; that all that I owned and am were only there due to “privilege” and the “patriarchy”; and that if I spoke out against any of this, it only proved my racism and my ignorance as to my own privilege.
That’s when it occurred to me. I was supposed to just sit there silently and “know my place.” This was an INDIGNITY. I knew it, they knew it, and if I were to speak up—if I were to be “uppity”—a real potential existed that significant economic and social harm would come crashing down on me. So because I love my family, I kept my mouth shut. I sat silently and steamed. My soul corroded a little bit that day.
Now I know this analogy is far from perfect. The forms of discrimination black Americans faced under Jim Crow were far, far worse than what I might ever face in terms of lost income or social/professional opportunities as a result of DEI, and the penalties I might face for speaking out publicly against DEI pale in comparison to the extreme risks of false imprisonment or lynching death that tangibly existed under Jim Crow.
Still, I sensed a common psychology of both systems.
I was the victim of active discrimination based on my race and gender. I had to suffer this indignity in silence. This was corrosive to my soul. I was living a familiar refrain.
DEI is Jim Crow in a new, less aggressive, deceptively benign form. But both Jim Crow and DEI have corroded the souls of their victims, and they both have served to corrode the collective soul of the United States of America.
If we are ever to live up to our founding promises, DEI must be crushed and eliminated as the soul-corroding cancer that it is, just as we crushed and eliminated Jim Crow.' Writer unnamed.
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