Rutgers University partnered on a new study that revealed DEI initiatives can 'foster authoritarian mindsets.'
Few public and private institutions proved resistant in recent years to infection by the race-obsessive ideology underpinning the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement. The body politic appears, however, to be experiencing a belated immune response.
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard/UNC, for instance, helped pave the way for the dismantling of DEI on college and university campuses nationwide. Lawsuits and federal civil rights complaints targeting companies' DEI initiatives immediately followed. Likely keen to avoid similar legal challenges and facing pressure from normalcy advocates, multiple American organizations once captive to the race-obsessed program, including Ford, Harley-Davidson, Tractor Supply, Jack Daniel's, and Walmart, have abandoned DEI.
A study published Monday by the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University provided strong justification for why Americans should dismantle the remainder of the DEI regime sooner rather than later, noting that race-obsessed programming is divisive, counterproductive, and helps create authoritarians.
The study, titled "Instructing Animosity: How DEI Pedagogy Produces the Hostile Attribution Bias," noted at the outset that a Pew Research Center study found in 2023 that over half of American workers have DEI meetings or trainings at work.
While the re-education that the majority of American workers are compelled to undergo is supposedly intended to increase empathy in interpersonal interactions, cultivate inclusive environments, and maximize diversity on the basis of immutable characteristics and sexual preferences, the study indicated that there is evidence to suggest "that some DEI programs not only fail to achieve their goals but can actively undermine efforts."
"Specifically, mandatory trainings that focus on particular target groups can foster discomfort and perceptions of fairness," said the study. "DEI initiatives seen as affirmative action rather than business strategy can provoke backlash, increasing rather than reducing racial resentment. And diversity initiatives aimed at managing bias can fail, sometimes resulting in decreased representation and triggering negativity among employees."
The researchers collected various DEI education materials used across three groupings — race, religion, and caste — in "interventional and educational settings," excerpted rhetoric from the materials, then employed the excerpts in psychological surveys "measuring explicit bias, social distancing, demonization, and authoritarian tendencies." Participants in the study were also tasked with reviewing the materials or neutral control materials.
The results were damning.groupings, participants "engendered a hostile attribution bias, amplifying perceptions of prejudicial hostility where none was present, and punitive responses to the imaginary prejudice."
In one test, researchers split 423 Rutgers University students into two groups. One group read an apolitical control essay about American corn production while the other read an essay incorporating racist CRT propaganda from Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo.
After each group completed reading their assigned materials, participants were presented with a "racially neutral scenario" — where a student's application to an elite East Coast university was rejected following his interview by an admissions officer — and asked questions about their perceptions of racism in the interaction. The scenario did not mention the race of either the hypothetical student or the admissions officer.
'Exposure to anti-oppressive narratives can increase the endorsement of the type of demonization and scapegoating characteristic of authoritarianism.'
The group previously provided with propaganda from Kendi and DiAngelo reportedly "developed a hostile attribution bias ... perceiv[ing] the admissions officer as significantly more prejudiced than did those who read the neutral corn essay."
According to the researchers, "Participants exposed to the anti-racist rhetoric perceived more discrimination from the admissions officer (~21%), despite the complete absence of evidence of discrimination. They believed the admissions officer was more unfair to the applicant (~12%), had caused more harm to the applicant (~26%), and had committed more microaggressions (~35%)."
Simply put, Kendi and DiAngelo had students seeing racism and unfairness that wasn't there.
In the other groupings, participants provided DEI materials similarly turned out nastier than the control group.
For instance, in the caste study, Adolf Hitler quotes resonated with participants who were exposed to DEI materials when the word "Jew" was swapped out for "Brahmin."
"These findings suggest that exposure to anti-oppressive narratives can increase the endorsement of the type of demonization and scapegoating characteristic of authoritarianism," wrote the researchers.
"When DEI initiatives typically affirm the laudable goals of combating bias and promoting inclusivity, an emerging body of research warns that these interventions may foster authoritarian mindsets, particularly when anti-oppressive narratives exist within an ideological and vindictive monoculture," said the study. "The push toward absolute equity can undermine pluralism and engender a (potentially violent) aspiration of ideological purity."
The paper concluded, "The evidence presented in these studies reveals that while purporting to combat bias, some anti-oppressive DEI narratives can engender a hostile attribution bias and heighten racial suspicion, prejudicial attitudes, authoritarian policing, and support for punitive behaviors in the absence of evidence for a transgression deserving punishment."
JOSEPH MACKINNON
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