Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ideology essentially addresses “systemic racism” by enforcing and advocating systemic racism. It would be difficult to envision a scenario that better illustrates this than the scandal now being revealed at the University of Washington, where the Department of Psychology hired a black candidate for a professor position despite the hiring committee’s assessment that an Asian applicant and a white one had superior qualifications, with the white candidate rated the strongest of the group.

The decision violated a university policy barring discrimination on the basis of race and sex, as well as the law banning affirmative action practices—that is, racial discrimination for “good” reasons— in the state of Washington. An investigation was launched after a whistleblower complained about the process, and the resulting report by the university’s Complaint Investigation & Resolution Office found that the psychology department distorted its hiring process to give the black applicant an assistant professor’s position titled “Diversity in Development,” though it had ranked a white academic first out of 84 applicants.

Why? The hiring committee members told investigators that they hired the candidate who was the right color over those who had the superior credentials after multiple meetings with the diversity committee, which had the power to influence the hiring committee’s decisions based on a “case study” document that had never been approved by the university. Now hold on to your head…the university investigation found that they had not “changed their minds about which candidate is most qualified,” but rather decided to do so:

1. “Because they were worried junior faculty will hear a lot of ‘nasty stuff’ said at the faculty meeting and wonder if they were hired simply because of their races” [As well they should!]

2. “Because they thought it would result in a failed search”

3. “Because it was creating personal stress on them” [Aw. Poor babies!]

4. “So as not to create a ‘bloodbath’ at a faculty meeting” [Because the DEI religion is considered mandatory in woke academia, presumably]

5. “So the Developmental Area is not accused of ‘not prioritizing DEI'” [ Because their culture has decreed that color is more important than ability, experience and demonstrated excellence in universities and colleges…]

There isn’t a single valid or defensible justification for the decision among those five explanations, but particularly glaring is the second: the hiring committee convinced itself that a successful search would achieve DEI objectives rather than finding and hiring the most qualified candidate. #5 is also telling: it is indistinguishable from the logic of the Klan, just with different racial preferences.

This hiring committee was caught, thanks to a brave soul who revealed the corrupted process, and the University of Washington is punishing the department by barring it from adding any tenured positions for two years. The beneficiary of DEI bigotry still has his job, and the victims of the school’s racial discrimination probably don’t know what was done to them.

We should not fool ourselves into believing this episode was unique, or that what occurred isn’t occurring across all of academia and in virtually every other institution, organization, corporation, project and hiring process in the United States. It is occurring throughout the Biden Administration and its many agencies and departments. It is systemic anti-white, anti-Asian racism, dressed up in virtue-signaling rhetoric and given an aspirational name. Consider what university spokesman Victor Balta told College Fix regarding the incident: “The UW is committed to diversity — and committed to equal opportunity in hiring — while upholding University policy and state and federal law,” he wrote. “Our students and our state benefit from a faculty whose knowledge and understanding represent the diversity of Washington state.”

This is gibberish and self-contradictory. Hiring can be based on substantive credentials, or it can be distorted by “diversity”—meaning a candidate’s color and gender can be used against him, particularly if he’s white, male, and “cis.” Citizens who believe in equal justice and civil rights need to call the diversity obsession exactly what it is. That will at least be a start.

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Sources: College Fix, Inside Higher Ed