UMass Amherst Researchers Claim Racism is Behind Efforts to Dismantle DEI Policies

UMass Amherst Researchers Claim Racism is Behind Efforts to Dismantle DEI Policies

This is the laziest response and also the most typical. The truth is that DEI causes more division and is completely focused on race.

The College Fix reports:

UMass scholars: Racism behind attempts to abolish DEI initiatives

A quintet of University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers claim racism is behind efforts to dismantle DEI — diversity, equity, and Inclusion — programs in education and elsewhere.

Writing in The Conversation and citing sources such as NPR, MSNBC, and Axios, the academics begin by highlighting “right-wing” activists like Chris Rufo who had “helped force” the resignation of former Harvard president Claudine Gay.

Some activists even had dared to assert Gay got her position in the first place due to higher ed’s obsession with DEI. (Curiously, the scholars make no mention of Gay’s actual plagiarism.)

While the researchers concede those who still believe in colorblindness may not necessarily be racist (such as Utah Governor Spencer Cox), they choose to highlight silly DEI conspiracies like the recent destruction of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge and the election of the city’s mayor. (Never mind the mayor’s subsequent ominous comments).

In their January poll, the researchers “sought to identify what influence racism may have” on DEI programs, and found that people with “negative racial attitudes” were less likely to support them.

They point out “negative racial attitudes” is a term “used by scholars of public opinion to characterize respondents who hold prejudicial, stereotypical or racist views of people of color.”

Note the “used by scholars of public opinion” as the poll’s measure of “negative racial attitudes” is as follows: folks who believe “racial problems are rare,” those not “angry that racism exists,” and those who don’t think “white people have advantages.”

With just one exception, no majority of these three “racially negative” groups said that professions such as police, teachers, the military, and medical professionals should have to endure DEI trainings.

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