Leo Vernor
Editor’s note: This piece is one part of a two-part critique on DEI efforts within academia, political spaces, and broader society. A link to the second part of this series will be provided here upon publication.
As with many Americans, my upbringing significantly influenced my political beliefs. Unlike many Americans, I became disillusioned with partisan politics early on. I blame my parents. As ardent progressives, they often tried to foist their political (read: woke) ideals on me. In high school, they implored me to join affinity groups. In 2020, they crafted signs in support of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters. When Donald Trump was elected, they were vocal about their disdain for him. Truly, I had every reason to turn out as partisan as they were. The only reason I did not was because I resented how their political loyalties revolved around race. This motivated me to challenge their views, form my own beliefs, and eventually identify with moderatism.
I felt indifferent towards my race as a child because I had little reason not to. Although my hometown is less than one percent Black, I always felt like an equal there. I was never marginalized or coddled (which often feels the same). Likewise, I was never compelled to vocally align myself with my identity. In fact, I railed against efforts to establish an ethnic club and hire a DEI officer in the wake of the 2020 riots because they threatened to undermine our town’s racial harmony. Drawing attention to my race would make me feel visible or special in some way, thereby segregating me and the few other minorities from the broader community.
From elementary to high school, I repudiated DEI ideology on this basis—to the chagrin of my town’s bleeding-heart progressives. I did not accept that my worth is tied to victimhood. I felt that DEI wrongly teaches that success is a birthright, and furthermore, that DEI conditions one to cheat their way through life by imagining oppression and demanding pity. I speak from experience; I was indoctrinated with these ideals practically as soon as I left the womb. Demanding reparations. Celebrating pity parties such as Juneteenth. Leveraging my race when applying to jobs. These values and customs were taught to me at birth and typify the martyr complex I was expected to embrace. In essence, DEI taught me to advance in the world through fraud.
Gradually, I came to resent this. My immigrant grandparents instilled in me an appreciation for grit and merit. They came to this country destitute and toiled to give my father a better life. Despite enduring brazen and cruel prejudice, they succeeded. They did not do so by playing martyr. Indeed, they triumphed despite their oppression, not because of it. My mother’s grandparents, descendants of African-American slaves, did likewise. They brushed off the casual racism they endured every day to build the soapbox that many minorities now climb up on to wail about oppression.
Likewise, I have always felt that identifying with victimhood would trivialize the victories they made for equality. In my eyes, DEI expresses a perversion of the civil rights movement. My grandparents yearned to equalize the pendulum of privilege, for all races to have equal rights and opportunities. In championing DEI, I would not be striving towards a country wherein people “[are] not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” as Martin Luther King Jr. did, but the opposite: one wherein I wield power over overrepresented groups due to my race. In essence, I would not be advocating parity, but advantage—which is precisely what my grandparents fought against.
This is to say that I accepted early on that I alone am responsible for my circumstances in life. I have nothing to gain from victimhood but an aspiration to mediocrity, an expectation that success will be handed to me through quotas and pity, at the expense of my dignity and intellect and to the detriment of others. However, my experiences contradicted the narrative that Black people raised in lily-white enclaves feel isolated from or oppressed by their white peers. At some point, I understood that certain parents are wary of homogeneity; they fear that raising their children in predominantly white environments will engender racist sentiments in them. I had read of parents who decided to raise their children in neighboring towns for this reason. However, my own experiences taught me otherwise.
And yet, my parents constantly tried to foist this victimhood on me. Despite my feeling like an equal growing up, they believed that my race handicapped me. To their credit, their concerns were not unfounded. I learned what “n****r” meant when it was sprawled across a hallway in middle school. One year, students in blackface ran around my school goading others into yelling the slur. In writing this, I am not attempting to elicit sympathy. The fact is that I never felt marginalized by such incidents. I suppose one could argue I was “handicapped” in that I was more vulnerable to racism than my white peers. However, my point is that I did not feel this way. I was never personally discriminated against, nor did I hear about other underrepresented minorities (URMs) being harassed due to their race. Likewise, when incidents of racism did occur, I was not offended or alienated; in fact, I found them so outlandish that they were amusing.
Indeed, my most haunting memories from childhood had nothing to do with the racism I witnessed, but with the virtue signaling and moral panic that these racist incidents provoked. Often, this manifested as assemblies, heated school board meetings, and loudspeaker lectures peddling DEI. The town’s DEI brigade would overcompensate for racism by making baseless generalizations about the community.
When racism occurred, it felt like there was no middle ground; one either supported DEI or they were considered racist. I realized then the ability of partisan panic to dictate people’s views. I resented this. I resented that the truth—that racism existed, but it was not endemic in our school district as was claimed—was suppressed. I resented that I was expected to feign victimhood and that people lent credence to partisan accusations out of fear.
As I grew older, my resentment of how partisanship perverted reality led me to identify with moderatism. I wanted to interpret reality for myself, to form my own opinions about the world and my place in it rather than regurgitating those fed to me. Partisanship traps me; no matter which ideology I identify with, I am forced to reckon with inadequacy. To participate in partisan politics as a URM is to cede your dignity to a game of tug of war: at one extreme are people who like you to a fault, and at the other are those who like you very little. I tired of this game once I realized I do not have to externalize my worth.
Moderatism gives me the agency to break from this dichotomy, power to deduce things by assessing facts for myself rather than blindly siding with rigid partisan ideals. I want my own say. I have a voice and prerogative to reflect on policies that directly concern me. I am not interested in seeking refuge in one ideology and pretending it does not dehumanize me. This freedom from ideological constraints I have discovered is very useful. Because I am beholden to no ideology, I maintain broader perspectives on issues than many partisans do. I am not afraid of challenging DEI and being branded a “racist” or upsetting Republicans and being cast as “woke.” In that way, moderatism has instilled in me an altruistic purpose: to reflect on issues objectively and strive to reconcile them in a way that maximally benefits others. In pursuing this purpose, I have realized true equality can only prevail in America once we recognize the depravity of DEI and seek colorblind alternatives.
Editor’s note, May 11, 2024, 6:52 p.m.: Information has been changed in this article to protect the author’s identity. This decision was made in collaboration with the writer and the Maroon‘s Executive Slate.