Why does nobody ever talk about these?

Recently, I had the exquisite pleasure of telling a DEI proponent how much I think their ideology is trash.

So-called diversity, equity and inclusion is all about separating people according to supposed “privileges,” often based on race, gender, and ethnicity. But also background, economics, sexuality, physically able-bodiedness, among other things. Then trying to assemble people of all these various stripes into every situation for the purposes of “inclusion.” You see this most pronounced in the casting of movies and TV shows now.

The idea is to create a human mosaic of the modern world, I guess. It’s why Doctor Who became a lesbian, and is now a gay Black guy. It’s why virtually every White lead must be paired with a token Black best friend anymore. For example, I was just watching Inside Out 2 last night (which is a good movie, check it out), and wouldn’t you know it, the 13-year-old White chick Riley just so happens to have two “diverse” best friends, one Black, and one Mexican or something (not sure). Then there was that Chris Pratt movie The Tomorrow War where Pratt somehow has two Black friends despite being a White guy living in the suburbs. That still cracks me up.

You see this sort of colorful casting and mixing most glaringly in NFL commercials, where virtually every married couple is interracial, and quite often middle-aged uncool White guys play fools getting corrected by cool and wise minorities. A trope so common it’s become, well, a trope. There’s even an X account called White Men Are Stupid In Commercials that tracks the trope.

Now, personally, I don’t watch TV much, and I rarely watch the NFL anymore. I don’t care about 99% of DEI shit when it comes to entertainment, just because I don’t watch much of what’s out here. I don’t really care that Riley has two minority friends, or that White guys are idiots in NFL commercials. I had friends of all backgrounds when I was a kid myself. I don’t care that the Little Mermaid is Black. The actress who plays Ariel is actually very nice, and I think she was unfairly targeted with a lot of racist B.S. when she took that role. I’m simply pointing out the trend and noticing the differences. And laughing about it, of course.

DEI itself all sounds very nice on the surface. That’s why it’s been successful in wedging itself into politics and the corporate world (for now). In fact, “superficiality” is really its defining characteristic as a belief system. It puts all this emphasis on generally superficial things, ignoring what makes people truly unique — their thoughts and beliefs and accomplishments. But even worse, it makes one’s physical appearance assumptive of one’s beliefs and status within the culture. Surely you recall Joe Biden’s comment to Blacks that if they didn’t vote for him, they “weren’t Black.” Because the assumption there is that if one is Black they must automatically vote Democrat, and that by voting otherwise is to commit a sin against the Black community.

How terrible that must be. To think that because of your skin tone you should be beholden to some political party. How stupid and silly. And how is that working out, by the way? Democrat-run inner cities are shitholes. It’s not to say Republicans would necessarily do better. Some places are just going to be ghettos regardless of whatever party is in charge.

As a biracial person myself, I can’t even tell you how much I’ve been condescended to and pandered to and told how freaking awesome it must be to have the “best of both worlds.” Very often by White liberals or Whites who have bought into this DEI nonsense. Or Whites who seem to think it’s their duty to make sure I know that they know they’re totally comfortable around non 100% Whites or whatever. All the while, I hate being biracial, and largely because some people can’t help but make race one’s biggest defining characteristic and want others to join in on their fucking race-fest. And for a host of other reasons I go into in the article.

I will say, though, that if there’s one benefit to being biracial, it’s that I’m able to speak frankly about race matters while being insulated (somewhat) from criticism as a full White person would be. Though that shouldn’t be the case. Everyone should be able to talk freely about race.

DEI also runs counter against competency, favoring superficiality over qualifications that actually matter. DEI only “works” in areas where people are interchangeable and where the placement of diverse individuals is being done largely as a symbolic gesture. This is why it’s so predominant in entertainment. To me, it’s a meaningless gesture and just a way for companies to pat themselves on the back and feel good about themselves. It’s not like I’m going to buy a bag of Tostitos because a biracial White/Hispanic guy who looks like me is munching on some in a commercial. I don’t like chips much anyway. In fact, I may purposely NOT buy them just out of spite because Tostitos thinks I’ll fall for that pandering shit.

Anyway, I’m not going to get too deeply down the DEI rabbit hole. There are enough commentators out there arguing against it way better than I ever could. As a thought system, it’s a piece of shit. I’ll just leave it at that.

In my 42 years I’ve noticed that people, including myself, rarely if ever fail or succeed based solely on their race and ethnicity. In virtually all cases, it comes down to a merit or a meaningful characteristic of some kind that make a real difference. Some of which are earned, while others are purely happenstantial or genetic. Here are a few of them:

Pretty Privilege

This has to be one of the biggest and the best privileges one can have. I often joke with friends that if reincarnation is real, I just want to come back as a hot surfer dude who lives on the beach and gets laid all the time. I don’t care how dumb I am. I don’t care if I get eaten by a shark at 25. I don’t care how superficial it may be. I just want to be a hot guy who fucks hotties in my next life. I am so done with this fucking face of mine.

Do you know how easy life is for attractive people? Do you know how much more welcoming people are to attractive people versus ugly ones? It is life on easy mode. Even more so if you’re a guy, just because few men are considered hot by women.

You could be a convicted felon and still have women head over heels for you, just because you’re hot. The guy in the mugshot above is Jeremy Meeks, whose picture went viral. Now he’s a model. If the guy had not happened to be born with perfect bone structure, he’d have been ignored and probably rotting away in a jail cell by now. Instead, he’s got a career.

This may be an extreme case, but it’s indicative of a real form of privilege and power a person can have purely accidentally and through zero effort of their own. Is it fair? No. But life isn’t fair, as we all know.

Look, all this DEI shit is just a way of talking about social status. And attractiveness is something that grants a person instant status. I’m not saying being hot is everything. If you’re really dumb but hot, your dumbness may really work against you and cost you. But let’s not pretend being good-looking is not a huge key than can open a lot of doors to a better life. My life would be very different and certainly better if I looked more like Antonio Banderas than a slightly less-pockmarked Danny Trejo.

Intelligence/IQ Privilege

At the end of the day, this form of privilege is really the only thing that matters. Hotness may get all the attention, but intelligence and IQ are monolithically way bigger and matter way more for survival and long-term success.

For sure, you can level up in life. You can apply yourself. You can earn degrees. You can learn different skills and such. But your intelligence is very often your hardware, not your software. You either have the ability to become a brain surgeon, or you don’t. Not everyone is cognitively equipped to deal with strenuous material or certain kinds of material. I don’t think I could ever become an engineer or a math expert no matter how much I tried. I have zero knack for things like construction or mechanics. I like to write, and that’s about it. I’m probably above average in that area. But I’m no Hemingway or Tarantino. In school growing up and in college, I consistently ranked in the top fifteen or ten percent of my class. But I was never a top one percenter. I was never that kid who was really smart.

There’s a certain cynical side in me that believes that humanity largely serves at the whim of a very small intellectual elite. Not the wealthy. Not the “powerful.” The intelligent, because in most cases it is IQ that put someone in that lofty position. Take Jeff Bezos, for instance. The guy completely transformed how ecommerce is done, and his company Amazon has a virtual monopoly in the U.S. Or take Google, Microsoft, Meta, etc. Our lives are largely controlled by a handful of hyper-intelligent guys working in Silicon Valley. Or take J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Nolan film that came out last year about the scientist. That whole movie is about showing how we live in a world shaped by a smart guy who (with other smart guys) invented a device (the atomic bomb) that can wipe us all out in an instant.

DEI talks all day and night about “economic inequalities.” But the truth is wealth is often a symptom of intelligence. Bezos, Zuckerberg and others are not super wealthy by accident. They invented things that reshaped society. They mastered the game of capitalism. Money is just a reward system for smartness, really. We can debate all day about whether it’s fair or right that some random guy gets paid millions on Wall Street trading with a proprietary algorithm software he created, but the fact is financial firms and hedge funds are willing to pay top dollar for such people and their talents.

Physical Privilege (Height, Health, Athletic ability, etc.)

This is another big one, and I don’t just mean being able-bodied and so forth. Obviously not being paralyzed or being born with some incapacitating disease or disability is a big privilege to have. But good health is pretty much the best thing to have when it comes to winning the genetic lottery. High intelligence and good looks are rare. But most people are at least given a decent-enough body that if they take care of it they can be in optimum health. Having good eyes is a privilege, as many people need glasses or lose their sight as they age.

Mental health is especially valuable. I used to work with the mentally disabled, and I can tell you that NOT having a brain that sabotages you at every turn is a gigantic plus in life.

Then there are nice features to have, like height or athletic ability. I was usually on the taller side in my classes. I’m six feet now as an adult. But I was never much of an athlete. I could compete up through junior varsity soccer in high school. But there was always a huge divide between me and the bigger more athletic boys. I could just never keep up.

Youth Privilege

I have to laugh when I see these DEI activists crying on TV news shows or podcasts about inequities and inequalities and all sorts of unfair things in life, because usually they are young people in college or right out of college.

I’ll be sitting there thinking, sir or madam, do you not realize that you are in the prime of life? Do you not realize how you likely have decades before you need to worry about gray hair, back pain, heart problems, and many other age-related issues? How are you not appreciative of the fact that in fifty years you will likely still be here while many people will not be here even tomorrow? There are people in their 90s that are as you read this languishing on their death bed, with only days or hours to live. I think of my beloved grandmother’s last days with cancer. She spent almost six months in a hospital before finally passing away. I loved her deeply and wish I could have spent more time with her. Six months is a blink, really. It all went too fast, and now she’s gone.

The younger you are, the more time you likely have in life for everything. Time is itself a real privilege. We all have some it, we just don’t know how much.

Those are just a handful of big privileges that matter in life a lot more than race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other things. Yet I never hear DEI people talk about them, because they’d rather focus on superficial bullshit that frankly, doesn’t matter all that much. They’d rather throw up tokens and symbolic castings on TV shows or movies and act like all that stuff equates to “progress.” I’m a little more concerned that we live in the Nuclear Age where we can destroy ourselves at the push of a button. I’m more concerned that half of humanity wants to blow the other half up because they don’t believe in the same sky daddy. But hey, at least the Little Mermaid is Black, right? We got that going for us.

It’s not to say racism and discrimination don’t happen and impact people’s lives. But one should be cognizant of the many tools they may have in their toolbox. Sometimes some privileges can be canceled out by deficiences elsewhere. Years ago as a teen I went to church and there was a White guy there I knew who was exceptionally good-looking. He was blonde and blue-eyed. I remember him because I was honestly jeolous of the guy’s looks when I first met him. He was what DEI weirdos would accuse of having White privilege. Except he had a rare immunity disorder that caused him to be sick a lot. Like every month he would end up bed-ridden and have to stay home for days. Imagine having to live with something like that? I woudn’t trade in my uggo face for a better one if it meant I’d be stuck in my house sick as a dog all the time. It just wouldn’t be worth it.

There are some privileges that cancel out other privileges. A healthy young Black guy is in a better spot overall than a 60-year-old White guy with heart problems. One’s got fifty some years to live. The other not so much. Wouldn’t youth and health privilege cancel out the supposed White privilege in that scenario?

DEI, like many race-obsessed thought systems, is divisive, demoralizing, and counterproductive to living a good life. It also trains people to ignore the many gifts they do have and should be thankful for and try to use for their own benefit and others. I count myself there, too. I agonize far too much over being biracial. I let it affect me when it shouldn’t. I should really just get over it and realize everyone’s an individual and not a semblance of features.