Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance skewered Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban after the NBA owner proudly stood up for his team’s DEI policies in a Jan. 4 X post.
Cuban was engaging in a discussion with author Ashley St. Clair about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies and set out to defend DEI policies as important policies for businesses.
To St. Clair’s criticism of DEI, Cuban exclaimed, “So what you are saying is that when done well, DEI is a goal every company should have?”
St. Clair disagreed, adding that the “E” in DEI is “equity,” not “equality,” and equity represents a serious problem under the 14th Amendment.
Cuban tried to massage it into a positive, though, replying, “Equity is a core principle of business. Put your employees in a position to succeed. Recognize their differences and play to their strengths wherever possible.”
“You disagree with this?” he asked.
Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks looks on during the game against the Chicago Bulls at United Center on December 10, 2022, in Chicago, Illinois. (Quinn Harris/Getty Images)
Cuban went on to try a different track to excuse his deployment of DEI, claiming that it is a company’s decision on whether to implement DEI policies and played on ideals of liberty to excuse it all.
“Running a company, as you know, is hard. In the @ibm video their CEO says he wants the demographics of IBM to reflect the entire country. Could it be that’s what puts his company in the best position to succeed? Do you have a problem with that? It’s exactly what I suggested and you said that was good,” Cuban wrote.
“Do you have a problem with the CEO/board being able to run the company the way they choose? He said he wanted to improve towards their diversity standard 1pct per year. Do you have a problem with that?”
To that, Sen. Vance had a trenchant observation.
“Do the Dallas Mavericks reflect the demographics of America as a whole?” Vance asked.
Do the Dallas Mavericks reflect the demographics of America as a whole? https://t.co/FT72W3kS9V
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) January 4, 2024
Cuban responded to Vance by calling his comment “stupid.”
If you were trying to make a stupid comment, you nailed it.
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) January 4, 2024
First, as an organization as a whole, yes we do.
More importantly, if you understand the value of DEI, it's not in checklists and quotas , it's in understanding how to best compete as a company.
We hire the… https://t.co/GS7t14zl9U
Cuban attempted to sidestep Vance’s accurate insight by saying the Mavericks reflect America “as a whole.” But, of course, that’s not what Vance meant. What he was talking about was the team on the floor. And when you look at that roster, of the 19 players listed as players for the Mavericks on the ESPN website, only two are white, and neither are American. It further appears that not a single player on the team is Hispanic.
How is that representative of America?
Republican U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance arrives onstage after winning the primary, at an election night event at Duke Energy Convention Center on May 3, 2022, in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Cuban can brag on the diversity of the team’s marketing staff all he wants. But no one is buying tickets to watch the marketing team. If Cuban truly believed that DEI wasn’t solely aimed at diversity in hiring but in putting companies in the best position to compete, as he says it is, then he would have built a basketball team that reflected that mindset.
But he didn’t. Instead, he drafted, traded for, and signed the best players he could, regardless of their skin color. And if Mark Cuban is allowed to build his business that way, why shouldn’t everyone else be allowed to do the same?
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