Unmasking the “Whole-of-Government” DEI Agenda

The real-world effects of the White House’s diversity initiatives will soon be revealed.

Every nation has an operating ideology. In a country that hews faithfully to the principles embedded in its written constitution, that ideology is overt. In a tyrannical government, however, it is concealed, as the regime preaches one set of values in principle but pursues the opposite in practice.

Most Americans believe that our nation today lives up to its founding principle that all men are created equal. The letter of the law seems to provide for colorblind equality, according to which individuals are judged on their talents and virtues, rather than on their ancestry, religion, or place of origin.

This has not held true in practice, however. Most obviously, of course, was the long American history of slavery and disenfranchisement of African Americans. Since 1965, however, when Lyndon Johnson first implemented the policy of affirmative action in federal contracting, the United States has racially discriminated in favor of minority groups—maintaining discrimination, but changing the target.

The old rationale was that achieving equal rights for the previously disenfranchised required a short period of favoritism on their behalf, which would wither away. But the withering never happened. Instead, our institutions intensified their commitment to racial favoritism, right up to the present day, and most recently under the mandate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI.

One prominent proponent of that policy is Vice President Kamala Harris, who rose to power on the coattails of racial politics and, as vice president, has worked to entrench DEI into every aspect of the federal government.

This agenda was made explicit by her running mate. During the Democratic primary campaign in 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden committed to choosing a woman as vice president and to appointing an administration that “will look like the country,” a polite way of saying that he would consider identity first and merit second. The following month, he noted that among his list of potential VPs were “four black women,” and amid a pressure campaign to select one, eventually chose Harris, then senator from California.

Since then, both Biden and Harris have reinforced their commitment to racial preferences. “To me, the values of diversity, equality, inclusion are literally—and this is not kidding—the core strengths of America,” the president said earlier this year. The vice president, for her part, has denounced those who “say that it is a bad term to talk about DEI.”

Those commitments have since become federal policy. On his first day in the Oval Office, President Biden rescinded former president Donald Trump’s order to “combat offensive and anti-American race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating,” and replaced it with a new executive order on “racial equity,” which “charged the Federal Government with . . . addressing systemic racism in our Nation’s policies and programs” via “an ambitious, whole-of-government approach.”

A few months later, the president issued another executive order, directing the head of each agency to “establish a position of chief diversity officer,” to “take steps to implement or increase the availability and use of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility training programs,” and to issue annual DEI plans and reports to the president—all in the interest of advancing the administration’s “racial equity agenda.”

The key word here is “equity.” As Harris explained in a campaign video, an important distinction exists between “equity” and “equality.” Equity is about “giving people the resources and support they need, so that everyone can be on equal footing and then compete on equal footing.” The goal, as distinct from equality’s directive of equal standing in the law, is equal outcomes: “Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.”

In other words, Harris wanted to replace the equal treatment of all individuals with preferential treatment for certain racial groups. Her desire that all “end up at the same place” recalls the basic formula of Communism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

While these executive orders have drawn attention in the press, their real-world effects have remained mostly hidden—until now.

My team and I have spent months meticulously reviewing internal documents, contracts, budgets, and ideological material across a range of federal departments. Together, they paint a stunning portrait. The federal government not only punishes and rewards individuals based on racial identity but also has dispensed billions of dollars toward building a DEI regime spanning government, academia, medicine, and contracting.

The administration has abandoned the old notion of equality in favor of a pseudo-Marxist ideology that condemns the United States as a fundamentally racist country, an evil that can only be corrected through the forced equalization of outcomes.

Over the course of this month, we will publish a series of stories investigating these policies and their impact on science, foreign policy, finance, and government contracting. Together, they will underscore the need to dismantle DEI and to pursue the only real solution to America’s racial woes: the principle of colorblind equality.

This article was originally published in City Journal.