Following the Tuesday resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay, Billionaire investor Harvard alum Bill Ackman took to X on Wednesday to pen a 4,000-word essay on why DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) - which views society through 'oppressor/oppressed' framework - is inherently racist. Apparently it took Bill's galaxy brain this long to discover what we've been reporting for years.
"DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism, even if it is against white people (and it is remarkable that I even need to point this out)," writes Ackman, who says he became concerned over the evolving situation at Harvard following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, after which 34 student organizations banded together on Oct. 8, before Israel had responded, to come out publicly in support of Hamas, a globally recognized terrorist organization.
I came to learn that the root cause of antisemitism at Harvard was an ideology that had been promulgated on campus, an oppressor/oppressed framework, that provided the intellectual bulwark behind the protests, helping to generate anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate speech and harassment.
Then I did more research. The more I learned, the more concerned I became, and the more ignorant I realized I had been about DEI, a powerful movement that has not only pervaded Harvard, but the educational system at large. I came to understand that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion was not what I had naively thought these words meant. -Bill Ackman
According to Ackman, "Under DEI, one’s degree of oppression is determined based upon where one resides on a so-called intersectional pyramid of oppression where whites, Jews, and Asians are deemed oppressors, and a subset of people of color, LGBTQ people, and/or women are deemed to be oppressed. Under this ideology which is the philosophical underpinning of DEI as advanced by Ibram X. Kendi and others, one is either an anti-racist or a racist. There is no such thing as being “not racist.”"
He further explains that under DEI, "any policy, program, educational system, economic system, grading system, admission policy, (and even climate change due its disparate impact on geographies and the people that live there), etc. that leads to unequal outcomes among people of different skin colors is deemed racist."
So:
- Capitalism is racist
- Advanced Placement exams are racist
- IQ tests are racist
- Corporations are racist
"In other words, any merit-based program, system, or organization which has or generates outcomes for different races that are at variance with the proportion these different races represent in the population at large is by definition racist under DEI’s ideology," Ackman continues.
And in order to be deemed "anti-racist," one must have personally taken action to reverse unequal outcomes in society - while the DEI engine is designed to transform society "from its currently structurally racist state to an anti-racist one."
And so, as Ackman notes in the beginning, DEI is completely racist...
...Racism against white people has become considered acceptable by many not to be racism, or alternatively, it is deemed acceptable racism. While this is, of course, absurd, it has become the prevailing view in many universities around the country.You can say things about white people today in universities, in business or otherwise, that if you switched the word ‘white’ to ‘black,’ the consequences to you would be costly and severe.
To state what should otherwise be self-evident, whether or not a statement is racist should not depend upon whether the target of the racism is a group who currently represents a majority or minority of the country or those who have a lighter or darker skin color. Racism against whites is as reprehensible as it is against groups with darker skin colors.
He further points out that "Having a darker skin color, a less common sexual identity, and/or being a woman doesn’t make one necessarily oppressed or even disadvantaged," and that while the enslavement of blacks "remains a permanent stain on our country's history," and which is used by DEI to label white people as oppressors, "it doesn’t therefore hold that all white people generations after the abolishment of slavery should be held responsible for its evils."
"Similarly, the fact that Columbus discovered America doesn’t make all modern-day Italians colonialists."
What's the solution?
"A meritocracy is an anathema to the DEI movement," concludes Ackman, as "DEI is inherently a racist and illegal movement in its implementation even if it purports to work on behalf of the so-called oppressed."
The rest of Ackman's note goes into Harvard's mismanagement, and what he thinks should happen to turn the institution around.
In light of today’s news, I thought I would try to take a step back and provide perspective on what this is really all about.
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 3, 2024
I first became concerned about @Harvard when 34 Harvard student organizations, early on the morning of October 8th before Israel had taken any military…
In other words:
4000 words TL/DR: "DEI is marxist" https://t.co/UwHb5D8qKr
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 3, 2024
Oh and Bill's not done... now he's sparring with MSNBC homophobic host, Mehdi Hasan;
I am not right wing. I operate only in good faith, and am I am not a bully. I just pay attention to the facts and see where they take me. And Harvard didn’t roll over if you have been paying attention. She had the board’s publicly stated unanimous support only two or so weeks…
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 3, 2024