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Merit First, America Last: What to Make of the Death of DEI
Merit First, America Last: What to Make of the Death of DEI
By: Phillip Lede đť•Ź | 01/20/2025
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As dozens of household-name brands drop diversity programs in the wake of Trump’s win, Republicans have eagerly hailed the return of a pre-progressive era to reverse years of “Woke” identitarianism. While a return to a romanticized '80s—a prior, albeit less noticeable iteration of America’s decline—is what many Trump voters cast their ballots for, it is not what they shall receive. A boomer nostalgia for the familiar past, when Americans were one unhyphenated and colorblind people, is being exploited to pave the way for a profoundly unfamiliar future. Billionaire elites, from Bill Ackman to Elon Musk, have latched onto the popular backlash against race-based quotas, yet for entirely different reasons than their middle-class White American counterparts.
The common critique of DEI as undermining competence is admittedly accurate, but it cannot serve as the primary contention of a post-progressive GOP lest it pose an even graver danger. Many well-meaning Republicans, receptive to the talking points of pundits and policymakers, have parroted a merit-based appraisal of DEI. However, this particular attack disguises a prescription entirely anachronistic to their interests.
The unspoken motive for White American conservatives' opposition to DEI is that it disenfranchises them and their families, even if they aren’t as outspoken as someone like Jared Taylor in admitting it. It is rejected by the bulk of sophisticated and unsophisticated Trump voters alike because it cedes their political and economic capital to aggrieved minority groups who despise them. After years of being shunned by colleges under Affirmative Action, regarded as second-class citizens in hiring practices, and browbeaten for the sins of their ancestors, White Americans feel, and not inaccurately, that the country is slipping between their fingers. For the ever-shrinking pie they still hold within their white-knuckled grasp, they are accused of being greedy. Outside the fringes of online discourse, it is anathema to suggest that natural differences between people might contribute to the success gap between White Americans and underperforming minorities. Consequently, the specter of institutional racism has been conjured as its sole cause, with all blame falling squarely on America’s founding stock. The erosion of DEI policies after four years of Biden, and Donald Trump’s successive return to office, are evident reactions to the progressive identitarianism of the broadly anti-White, but also anti-male, anti-straight, and anti-normal, left. As the chief victim of these policies, conservative White Americans may dress up their complaint against diversity mandates in the garb of impersonal principle, but it nonetheless remains deeply personal.
The gripe that the corporate right has with DEI is less about its impact on White America and more about its ideological implications. White Americans take issue with the institutional preference DEI affords to so-called underprivileged groups at their expense, but multinationals take issue with the very implication of preference, regardless of who it impacts. They don’t care about White people, much less Americans. This is evidenced in the tendency of homegrown companies, incubated by American capitalism, to cast off any obligation to American workers and instead resort to foreign labor. This includes the outsourcing of jobs to third-world countries like China and India, but also the importation of foreign labor into the country. The loyalties of CEOs, who have seen a latent change of heart on race-based hiring, are accountable to no homeland, no people, and no nation, but only their own insatiable pockets. That the acceptable critique of DEI—of what is essentially discrimination against the majority of hard-working White Americans—omits race and nationality is not a coincidence. The motives for fixing the all criticism of DEI in characterless merit are obvious, born of its beneficiaries' agenda. The lackeys of this merit-based intellectualism that permeates the online sphere—its fiercest devotees being the likes of Richard Hanania, Christopher Rufo, and James Lindsay—are quick to condemn any hint of national or ethnic preference as right-wing Wokism. That America would insist its citizens ought to be considered first to occupy its jobs over first-generation immigrants or H-1B visa workers would violate the sacred dictums of meritocracy. The best individual for the job should receive it, they cry, not only regardless of their sex and race but nationality too. After all, elite human capital knows no borders! Why should an American receive the job a foreigner can do better? In their protests, they do not take issue with the injury of DEI to any particular people, but rather to a vaunted productivity which they hold above every people, non-Americans and Americans alike.
It is the natural duty of Americans to respond to these calls not by affirming just any meritocracy, but a distinctly American one: that the most qualified American would be afforded the job, not coerced to accept less pay and more hours in order to compete with the expectations of the third world.
As Fortune 500 giants—Amazon, Walmart, McDonald’s, Google, and countless more—scale back or abandon DEI entirely, and its once-ardent evangelists from Meta’s Zuckerberg, Tesla’s Musk, Amazon’s Bezos, to Airbnb’s Joe Gebbia grow critical of the diversity mandates they once championed, their motivations should be scrutinized. Is a genuine change of heart the cause of their concessions, or has a resoundingly defeated Wokism, with Trump as the victor, merely provided a ripe opportunity for the exploitation of public sentiment? It’s worth asking if their abrupt flip to GOP, and newly-discovered opposition to DEI, is spurred by ideological principle or conceited interest?
What distinguishes this breed of cunning billionaires from rust-belt Trump voters is that, while they may feign ideology, they do not deceive themselves as ideological. Ideology, for them, is merely a pliable veneer to obscure their personal interests. Armed with means to influence politics in ways that stretch beyond the confines of the ballot box, politics becomes more than a seasonal pageantry, but a permanent enterprise of its own. In the blurred boundary between public and private, the knife-fight of politics takes place, even while it is inaccessible to the Reagan Republican who blindly maintains its division. In this sense, the businessman can be cleaved from the common Republican voter completely and absolutely, belonging to a whole different world. They may benefit from signaling that they’re no different from the common man, putting up a recognizable face for the public, but they would never regard themselves as such.
On its face, the notion that the oligarchs who marched lockstep with the progressive status quo for decades have all seen a simultaneous epiphany stretches credulity. Mark Zuckerberg's own arc offers the best example of this corporate rebrand.
Zuckerberg, who was collaborating with the Biden administration to censor Republicans just four years ago, now expects them to believe that, after taking up MMA, elk hunting, and appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast, he has spontaneously become red-pilled. Never mind that he hired seasoned GOP image consultant Brian Baker to tailor his image to conservatives in September of 2024—his political conversion is, of course, entirely organic. If one looks past the right-wing cultural ornaments he has dressed himself in, they will see the same wiley capitalist as before. While he may meekly push back against the politics of identity obstructing workplace efficiency, he will not once name those most injured by it. The pressing casualty of DEI, for him and his ilk, is not the White American it has displaced but the profits forgone by its inclusion. Given Zuckerberg’s naked misalignment with the spirit of Trump’s movement, borne of a commitment to people over platitudes, it should raise eyebrows that he, of all people, was seated besides Musk, Bezos, and Sundar Pichai on the Inaugural platform overseeing Trump’s swearing in.
This is just another happenstance, obviously. That six of the top ten richest billionaires, from Bill Gates to Sergey Brin, hurriedly flocked to Mar-a-Lago in the weeks leading up to and after the election is more concrete proof of the transformative power of MAGA’s inclusive populism, surely. Trump’s ideas are just so persuasive as to draw a combined $1.2 trillion in wealth from the world’s most powerful billionaires to his inauguration, who stood in front of his own Cabinet members during the ceremony as if to signal their proximity to power.
The extent to which the wealthiest Americans’ willingness to kiss the ring will pay off remains to be seen, but their intentions to steer the direction of a post-progressive presidency are unmistakable. Riding the Trumpian reaction to egalitarian progressivism, they seek to cement a merit-first, albeit America-last, future. The post-preference future they seek to cement would see America become less affordable yet more successful, its people more competitive yet less cohesive, and its progeny more productive but less prosperous. It will be an America where no discriminations are made, where no lines are drawn—an undivided colosseum in which all must fight tooth and nail to inhabit. In place of a filial Republic shall stand an empire of earned individualism, bowed at the inviolate altar of merit. In rebuke of all bias, America will disown its own sons and daughters to usher in its new technocratic consuls.
This future is not so remote. Driven by the dogmas of merit and equal opportunity, America has become more estranged from its own posterity than ever before. For the first time in American history, children are worse off than their parents, as 90% of kids born in the 1940s saw greater upward mobility than their parents, compared to 40% of kids in 1990. As developing countries around the globe have grown richer, Americans have only grown poorer. If America continues its relentless pursuit of merit without regard for the well-being of its citizens, the once-high standard of living enjoyed by ordinary Americans will become a distant memory. Excellence is nothing if not embodied, and where it is not employed for the prosperity of any people, but only transactable individuals, it is not worth its purchase. The endgame of the corporate right is a country in which Americans are made to bid for their own birthright, where the social contract has been abolished by an international creed of competition. In this bold new world, all—regardless of race, sex, or party—will suffer under a machine that offers equal opportunity only insofar as all are flattened beneath it.
The common critique of DEI as undermining competence is admittedly accurate, but it cannot serve as the primary contention of a post-progressive GOP lest it pose an even graver danger. Many well-meaning Republicans, receptive to the talking points of pundits and policymakers, have parroted a merit-based appraisal of DEI. However, this particular attack disguises a prescription entirely anachronistic to their interests.
The unspoken motive for White American conservatives' opposition to DEI is that it disenfranchises them and their families, even if they aren’t as outspoken as someone like Jared Taylor in admitting it. It is rejected by the bulk of sophisticated and unsophisticated Trump voters alike because it cedes their political and economic capital to aggrieved minority groups who despise them. After years of being shunned by colleges under Affirmative Action, regarded as second-class citizens in hiring practices, and browbeaten for the sins of their ancestors, White Americans feel, and not inaccurately, that the country is slipping between their fingers. For the ever-shrinking pie they still hold within their white-knuckled grasp, they are accused of being greedy. Outside the fringes of online discourse, it is anathema to suggest that natural differences between people might contribute to the success gap between White Americans and underperforming minorities. Consequently, the specter of institutional racism has been conjured as its sole cause, with all blame falling squarely on America’s founding stock. The erosion of DEI policies after four years of Biden, and Donald Trump’s successive return to office, are evident reactions to the progressive identitarianism of the broadly anti-White, but also anti-male, anti-straight, and anti-normal, left. As the chief victim of these policies, conservative White Americans may dress up their complaint against diversity mandates in the garb of impersonal principle, but it nonetheless remains deeply personal.
The gripe that the corporate right has with DEI is less about its impact on White America and more about its ideological implications. White Americans take issue with the institutional preference DEI affords to so-called underprivileged groups at their expense, but multinationals take issue with the very implication of preference, regardless of who it impacts. They don’t care about White people, much less Americans. This is evidenced in the tendency of homegrown companies, incubated by American capitalism, to cast off any obligation to American workers and instead resort to foreign labor. This includes the outsourcing of jobs to third-world countries like China and India, but also the importation of foreign labor into the country. The loyalties of CEOs, who have seen a latent change of heart on race-based hiring, are accountable to no homeland, no people, and no nation, but only their own insatiable pockets. That the acceptable critique of DEI—of what is essentially discrimination against the majority of hard-working White Americans—omits race and nationality is not a coincidence. The motives for fixing the all criticism of DEI in characterless merit are obvious, born of its beneficiaries' agenda. The lackeys of this merit-based intellectualism that permeates the online sphere—its fiercest devotees being the likes of Richard Hanania, Christopher Rufo, and James Lindsay—are quick to condemn any hint of national or ethnic preference as right-wing Wokism. That America would insist its citizens ought to be considered first to occupy its jobs over first-generation immigrants or H-1B visa workers would violate the sacred dictums of meritocracy. The best individual for the job should receive it, they cry, not only regardless of their sex and race but nationality too. After all, elite human capital knows no borders! Why should an American receive the job a foreigner can do better? In their protests, they do not take issue with the injury of DEI to any particular people, but rather to a vaunted productivity which they hold above every people, non-Americans and Americans alike.
It is the natural duty of Americans to respond to these calls not by affirming just any meritocracy, but a distinctly American one: that the most qualified American would be afforded the job, not coerced to accept less pay and more hours in order to compete with the expectations of the third world.
As Fortune 500 giants—Amazon, Walmart, McDonald’s, Google, and countless more—scale back or abandon DEI entirely, and its once-ardent evangelists from Meta’s Zuckerberg, Tesla’s Musk, Amazon’s Bezos, to Airbnb’s Joe Gebbia grow critical of the diversity mandates they once championed, their motivations should be scrutinized. Is a genuine change of heart the cause of their concessions, or has a resoundingly defeated Wokism, with Trump as the victor, merely provided a ripe opportunity for the exploitation of public sentiment? It’s worth asking if their abrupt flip to GOP, and newly-discovered opposition to DEI, is spurred by ideological principle or conceited interest?
What distinguishes this breed of cunning billionaires from rust-belt Trump voters is that, while they may feign ideology, they do not deceive themselves as ideological. Ideology, for them, is merely a pliable veneer to obscure their personal interests. Armed with means to influence politics in ways that stretch beyond the confines of the ballot box, politics becomes more than a seasonal pageantry, but a permanent enterprise of its own. In the blurred boundary between public and private, the knife-fight of politics takes place, even while it is inaccessible to the Reagan Republican who blindly maintains its division. In this sense, the businessman can be cleaved from the common Republican voter completely and absolutely, belonging to a whole different world. They may benefit from signaling that they’re no different from the common man, putting up a recognizable face for the public, but they would never regard themselves as such.
On its face, the notion that the oligarchs who marched lockstep with the progressive status quo for decades have all seen a simultaneous epiphany stretches credulity. Mark Zuckerberg's own arc offers the best example of this corporate rebrand.
Zuckerberg, who was collaborating with the Biden administration to censor Republicans just four years ago, now expects them to believe that, after taking up MMA, elk hunting, and appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast, he has spontaneously become red-pilled. Never mind that he hired seasoned GOP image consultant Brian Baker to tailor his image to conservatives in September of 2024—his political conversion is, of course, entirely organic. If one looks past the right-wing cultural ornaments he has dressed himself in, they will see the same wiley capitalist as before. While he may meekly push back against the politics of identity obstructing workplace efficiency, he will not once name those most injured by it. The pressing casualty of DEI, for him and his ilk, is not the White American it has displaced but the profits forgone by its inclusion. Given Zuckerberg’s naked misalignment with the spirit of Trump’s movement, borne of a commitment to people over platitudes, it should raise eyebrows that he, of all people, was seated besides Musk, Bezos, and Sundar Pichai on the Inaugural platform overseeing Trump’s swearing in.
This is just another happenstance, obviously. That six of the top ten richest billionaires, from Bill Gates to Sergey Brin, hurriedly flocked to Mar-a-Lago in the weeks leading up to and after the election is more concrete proof of the transformative power of MAGA’s inclusive populism, surely. Trump’s ideas are just so persuasive as to draw a combined $1.2 trillion in wealth from the world’s most powerful billionaires to his inauguration, who stood in front of his own Cabinet members during the ceremony as if to signal their proximity to power.
The extent to which the wealthiest Americans’ willingness to kiss the ring will pay off remains to be seen, but their intentions to steer the direction of a post-progressive presidency are unmistakable. Riding the Trumpian reaction to egalitarian progressivism, they seek to cement a merit-first, albeit America-last, future. The post-preference future they seek to cement would see America become less affordable yet more successful, its people more competitive yet less cohesive, and its progeny more productive but less prosperous. It will be an America where no discriminations are made, where no lines are drawn—an undivided colosseum in which all must fight tooth and nail to inhabit. In place of a filial Republic shall stand an empire of earned individualism, bowed at the inviolate altar of merit. In rebuke of all bias, America will disown its own sons and daughters to usher in its new technocratic consuls.
This future is not so remote. Driven by the dogmas of merit and equal opportunity, America has become more estranged from its own posterity than ever before. For the first time in American history, children are worse off than their parents, as 90% of kids born in the 1940s saw greater upward mobility than their parents, compared to 40% of kids in 1990. As developing countries around the globe have grown richer, Americans have only grown poorer. If America continues its relentless pursuit of merit without regard for the well-being of its citizens, the once-high standard of living enjoyed by ordinary Americans will become a distant memory. Excellence is nothing if not embodied, and where it is not employed for the prosperity of any people, but only transactable individuals, it is not worth its purchase. The endgame of the corporate right is a country in which Americans are made to bid for their own birthright, where the social contract has been abolished by an international creed of competition. In this bold new world, all—regardless of race, sex, or party—will suffer under a machine that offers equal opportunity only insofar as all are flattened beneath it.