(Official Washington Examiner editorial, June 16) The State Department has asked Congress for $76 million to spend worldwide on “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” It’s a bad idea, and Congress should not appropriate even 76 cents.
The Left has made DEI a divisive racket. Rather than ensuring equal rights, it causes distraction, exclusion, and inequality in which skin color and “gender expression” trump equal standards for all.
The “message from the Secretary of State” outlining a DEI “strategic plan” makes two statements completely at odds with the department’s proper focus.
“Our country’s diversity is our greatest strength,” writes top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken. No, it is not. Plenty of other countries have diverse populations. What sets the United States apart is our commitment to the Constitution and the rule of law. The Biden State Department is making a fetish of external physical characteristics, contradicting the American creed.
Two sentences later, Blinken gets worse, saying, “I will measure the success of my tenure based on how well we can recruit and retain a workforce that looks like America.”
This is ludicrous. The sole legitimate measure of success is how well the secretary of state advances and secures the nation’s interests. It matters not at all whether the diplomatic corps and support staff have 27 skin hues or just one or how gender fluid they are. What matters is that foreign nations act in concert with U.S. aims rather than against them. What matters is whether the world is made more or less safe and free for U.S. citizens and U.S. commerce.
Alas, the plan is full of distractions from these important missions, such as a requirement for “promoting recruitment activity across the diversity spectrum and implementing a comprehensive recruitment plan that targets underrepresented groups.
And there’s the “survey” of the DEI “climate” that includes “chronicling the historic impact of discrimination through a digital storytelling campaign.”
It does not advance U.S. diplomacy to create a digital campaign describing how allegedly discriminatory past hiring practices were. This isn’t statecraft; it’s self-flagellation….. [The full editorial is at this link.]
