DEI hollowed out a generation — and sapped America’s promise

The wholesale adoption of diversity, equity and inclusion ideology in almost all our major institutions has done untold damage to American society.  

It was advertised as something noble — a way to open opportunities for women and minorities who had been unfairly denied them.

But through a combination of bureaucratic laziness and political malice, DEI soon became something approaching a ban on hiring millennial white males at the beginning of their careers. 

The harm goes far beyond the wreckage it imposed on those young men.

“Affirmative action,” of course, has been around for decades, and anyone who’s worked at a major institution in America, whether government, corporate or academic, has seen its effects. 

When I was applying for law-professor jobs years ago, I was well aware that minority or female candidates were likely to get more interviews, and more job offers, than “traditional” candidates like me.  

But the degree of discrimination then was comparatively minor: a question of a thumb on the scale.

Sometime around 2014, the thumb turned into a brick.

That became undeniable last week when Compact magazine published “The Lost Generation,” a detailed exposé of DEI’s impact by Jacob Savage, a writer who suffered it directly.  

“The doors seemed to close everywhere and all at once,” Savage writes.

“In 2011 . . . white men were 48% of lower-level TV writers; by 2024, they accounted for just 11.9%. The Atlantic’s editorial staff went from 53% male and 89% white in 2013 to 36% male and 66% white in 2024.”

And so on, Savage recounts, in one prestige industry after another.

Crucially, the burden of diversifying the American workplace didn’t fall on all white men.

Boomers and GenX executives were too senior to fire, had friends in their various industries and had experience that few minority candidates could offer. 

It was new hires, and junior employees looking to move up, who were shut out.

And shut out they were: Savage offers not only statistics, but compelling personal stories of white men in various fields whose careers were stifled by officially sanctioned discrimination.

Many aiming for lucrative careers were sidelined into menial jobs as their opportunities dried up overnight — as others with comparable or lesser qualifications were fast-tracked.

And the people pushing these policies demonstrated zero sympathy for those hurt by them. 

Those at the top got to feel good about themselves (and to brag about their progressive bona fides), as others bore the costs.

Savage’s article set off some heated debate — Vice President JD Vance’s X post recommending it got 4.4 million views. 

It opened the door on a topic that has made Americans uncomfortable for years, but that hasn’t been considered fit for public discussion.

His descriptions of individual tragedy are heart-wrenching — unless you’re one of those people who thinks the hopes, dreams and lives of others aren’t worth considering if they’re of the wrong race or gender.

But there’s much more to this than men’s hard-luck stories.

Because the DEI fad didn’t just wreck American lives. It went a long way toward wrecking America.

First, the institutions that went all-in for DEI had several things in common: Not only did they openly (and largely illegally) discriminate on the basis of race and gender, they also went to hell. 

Pick any one of these industries — media, government, academia, the corporate world, tech — and they’re pretty much all much worse than they were a decade or so ago. 

The legacy media has burned its credibility to a crisp, Joe Biden’s mad DEI-fueled hiring spree bloated federal payrolls without improving services or efficiency, and academia’s descent into leftist lunacy has destroyed Americans’ trust.

With young men’s careers stalling out or withering away at a crucial age, DEI impacted a whole generation’s willingness to marry and have kids.

We fret about the nation’s “baby bust,” wring our hands over declining rates of homeownership and bemoan epidemic levels of loneliness among young people.

Maybe unfairly barring a whole cohort of them from good jobs is a reason why.

And if you’re puzzled that so many Gen Z men have moved hard right, perhaps it has something to do with society’s major institutions saying that men are awful, white men are worse, and they won’t hire any of them? 

Of course they’re angry. When you make war on a group of people, they tend to get mad.

A diverse society needs more meritocracy, not less. 

If jobs are handed out based on qualities like race and gender, people have every reason to resent and suspect the qualifications of those who beat them out. 

The DEI fad undermined a core strength of America, even as it hollowed out a generation. 

It’s time to undo it. 

And now that Jacob Savage has had his say, I hope a million plaintiffs’ lawyers file antidiscrimination suits against its perpetrators.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.