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Conservatives often direct their criticisms at Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives by highlighting how these programs may erode merit-based systems and promote ideological conformity. While these concerns are valid, the arguments typically presented are incomplete. By failing to acknowledge the deeper causes of group disparities in educational and professional achievement, conservative critiques remain superficial and ineffective.
A recent article by Ellie Gardey Holmes in The American Spectator illustrates this issue. In her investigation of admissions practices at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, she reported that black applicants were six times more likely to be accepted than Asian applicants. This was despite the fact that the black applicants had an average MCAT score in the 62nd percentile, compared to an average score in the 87th percentile for Asians. To many conservatives, this appears to be undeniable evidence that DEI policies are unfair and discriminatory.
However, such arguments only point to the visible outcomes without addressing the underlying factors. They fail to explain why these gaps in performance exist in the first place. To understand why DEI initiatives were created, one must consider the enduring differences in cognitive ability between racial groups—a subject that remains taboo in mainstream discourse but is essential for a comprehensive discussion.
Well before contemporary researchers such as Charles Murray and Richard Lynn entered this field, psychologists like Henry Garrett and Audrey Shuey had already studied the issue in great detail. Shuey’s comprehensive 1966 book, The Testing of Negro Intelligence, analyzed more than 400 studies and consistently found that African Americans scored approximately 15 IQ points lower than white Americans on average. These results were remarkably consistent across different regions, time periods, and types of intelligence tests. Importantly, the research showed that these disparities could not be fully explained by socioeconomic status. Middle-class black children tended to score lower than working-class white children, even when factors such as education and parental occupation were held constant.
This is not merely an academic point. Intelligence, particularly general intelligence—often referred to as “g”—is a major predictor of success in cognitively demanding professions. When professions such as medicine, law, engineering, and academic research are described as “highly selective,” they are effectively filtering for individuals with high levels of cognitive ability. These fields are “g-loaded,” meaning that success within them depends heavily on general intelligence rather than on specific learned skills alone.
Because the average black IQ in the United States is around 85, compared to an average of about 100 for whites and even higher for some Asian groups, it follows mathematically that there will be fewer African Americans in the top percentiles of the intelligence distribution. This has significant implications. For example, only a very small proportion of the population has an IQ over 140, a level often seen in individuals who become top researchers, surgeons, or inventors. Given the average differences in group IQ, the proportion of African Americans at this level is much lower than that of whites or Asians.
This reality helps to explain the disparities that DEI initiatives aim to address. These programs are not random or irrational; they are responses to a stubborn pattern of unequal group outcomes. By focusing only on the symptoms—racial preferences and lowered standards—conservative critics fail to explain why these measures were implemented in the first place.
Moreover, this oversight weakens the moral force of conservative arguments. Progressives claim that all groups are equally capable and that disparities in outcome must therefore be due to discrimination. When conservatives accept this premise but oppose the remedies, they leave themselves without a consistent or credible foundation. If outcomes are unequal and ability is presumed equal, then policy must step in. If, however, differences in ability exist, then we must confront the implications directly.
Currently, conservative opposition to DEI is largely symbolic. It generates headlines, fuels commentary, and rallies partisan enthusiasm, but it does not change policy in any meaningful way. Court cases and investigative journalism can reveal misconduct and double standards, but without a deeper analysis of ability differences, these efforts will not produce a sustainable or coherent alternative to DEI.
To move beyond surface-level outrage, conservatives must begin addressing the reality that cognitive ability is not distributed equally among all racial groups. This does not mean embracing biological determinism or rejecting individual merit. It means acknowledging the scientific data and understanding the policy implications. If DEI is a misguided solution to a real problem, then we must first understand the nature of that problem. Only then can we develop more rational and effective responses.
Until conservatives are willing to engage with the psychometric literature and the possibility of genetic influences on intelligence, their arguments will remain incomplete. DEI will continue to grow in influence, not because it is wise or effective, but because its critics are too timid to challenge the assumptions that sustain it.
In its current form, the conservative critique of DEI lacks both explanatory power and strategic depth. It focuses on appearances rather than causes, and in doing so, it fails to offer an intellectually serious alternative. If conservatives truly wish to dismantle the DEI framework, they must be willing to speak the uncomfortable truth: that group disparities are not always the result of discrimination, but often reflect enduring differences in ability. Pretending otherwise will only ensure that the DEI movement remains dominant, unchallenged, and entrenched
13 comments
Yeah, but we’ll probably be waiting in vain…
Blacks are obviously significantly dumber and in most cases actually unable to learn skills needed to compete. That is why DEI exists. I was not under the impression anyone ever thought anything other than those incontrovertible facts. Even blacks know this. What am I missing? That we are not saying it to their faces? Having to feed them and give them jobs is not much different than having pets, and it comes with the blatant implication that they cannot care for themselves. The blacks just aren’t as grateful as our pets.
All jobs should go to White men. Women should be back in the kitchen. And everyone else exiled to somewhere, anywhere, else. And anyone who hires non-Whites, their business should be seized and given to a White man who will hire only Whites.
Lip man says: … DEI will continue to grow in influence, not because it is wise or effective, but because its critics are too timid to challenge the assumptions that sustain it…
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I suppose Lip man is referring to timid, worthless conservative losers in this piece.
As a White separatist/preservationist I couldn’t care less about what conservative losers think about anti-White DEI, or about what a Negro has to say about it for that matter. Lip man did point out this fact, however:
“…the average black IQ in the United States is around 85, compared to an average of about 100 for whites (sic)…”
All the more reason for racially responsible Whites to separate geographically from races that cannot make White babies, especially Blacks. We serious White separatists want them out of our living space, even the rare Black whose IQ allegedly is 140. His people need him. We do not.
I was halfway watching part of the movie Cape Fear on the Turner Classic Movies channel yesterday (1991, produced by Spielberg, directed by Scorsese). Anti-White actor Robert DeNero played the evil antagonist, while Nick Nolte played the weak protagonist. I wasn’t watching closely, mostly the movie was background noise while I typed. But I distinctly heard Nolte say of the nasty DeNero character, “I don’t want to see him, hear him or smell him.”
That caught my attention because Dr. Pierce once said of Blacks, “I don’t want to see ’em, hear ’em, or smell ’em.” Could he have gotten that line from Cape Fear, or was it coincidental? Doesn’t matter. It’s a reasonable maxim for serious White separatists.
There have always been too many of these “timid, worthless conservative losers” that you refer to. David French, Bill Kristol and David Brooks are examples. And National Review. None of them opposes DEI in any meaningful way, although they sometimes pretend to.
They are anti-White, pro-war, pro-woke, and favor tax-cuts for rich Jews like Paul Singer, Bill Ackman, Bernie Madoff, Jeffrey Epstein, Sam Bankman-Fried, George Soros and the rest.
They were all against Pat Buchanan, when he ran for president in 1992, 1996, 2000. And they are all hysterical never-Trumpers. They all publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020, and Kamala Harris in 2024.
This is what ‘smells wrong’ about the essay and its premise. The ‘conservatism’ described is really the sort of cant you get from Jewish faux-conservatives like David Brooks. They do not have a habit of speaking honestly, or adequately describing what they see at the end of their nose (to paraphrase Orwell) or understanding the nature and history of the society they have chosen to live in and militate against.
I don’t know a single serious Rightist type who denies race differences and bases opposition to DEI on that. The two issues are really unrelated. One is a fact of life, and the other is a deleterious policy that is leveraged against White men. (And White women too; there’s a little lie going about that women are beneficiaries of AA and DEI, but from what I’ve seen they are as likely as men to suffer from these policies.)
Have you had the misfortune of seeing De Niro’s kid? Every Italian grandmother’s wish: a trans obamamulatto in the house. Wow. Hollyweird has always been kosher degenerate horseshit but at least Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon, Tom Hanks, and Julianne Moore’s sons and daughters look exactly like them.
The critique of DEI policies and ideology by beltway conservatives is weak, ineffective and incomplete, for the reasons given by the author. That’s how they always are, these so-called “conservatives”. They conserve nothing. They are careerists, on the payroll of the Jews.
‘Conservative’ is a crotchety old fartbag’s word and I’m surprised that in 2025 people still use it. It’s like being proud of being a 40 year old unemployed virgin who lives with his mother and takes the bus.
Two points are frequently missed because of the slight positive skew in the Black IQ distribution. First, the median, which is lower than the average for a positively skewed distribution, is the best indicator of central tendency. Consequently, the most common Black IQ is probably closer to 80 than 85. Second, above about 110, the frequency of higher scores in Blacks thins out quickly due to the positive skew. Only around 2% of Blacks, for instance, have IQs above 115, perhaps 1% above 130, and virtually no one at or above 140. However, Black people that the general public are exposed to in the media (commercials, movies, etc., but not in sports) are probably those with IQs higher than 110, which is not even close to being reflective of the Black population as a whole. Hence, what we see based on what is being “promoted” by DEI policies completely misrepresents reality. This does a disservice to everyone, including Black people.
The question which conservatives need to ask is, “Why is there any need for DEI in the first place?”
After all, the USA has had seven decades of de-segregation court orders, civil rights laws, affirmative action policies, black studies programs, court ordered busing convoys, race hustling lawsuits, EO commissars across the fruited plains, diversity struggle sessions pushed into every classroom and workplace, black national anthem choirs a-singing, USAID subsidizing NGOs, mostly peaceful rioters tearing up cities, etc, etc. Exactly why is yet another echelon of government intervention required in the form of DEI?
There are a couple of obvious answers.
The first is the obvious race realist rejoinder: the failure to attain equal outcomes is owing to genetic differences among the races.
The second is that the civil rights movement was never ever about equality. It was from the get-go about expanding the power of the state. More laws, more regulations, more mandates, more power to unaccountable bureaucrats, more deplatforming of dissidents, more taxes to finance this age of entitlement…all part of the permanent revolution marching from the Edmund Pettus Bridge and on to the promised land of Equality.
Perhaps it is this second line which would win over more conservatives. Want to get rid of Big Government? Start by dismantling the civil rights revolution.
Defund
Overreaching
Government mandated
Equality
Well said. We waste time and energy by trying to imagine a comfortable, uplifting rationale for DEI. It’s equally wasteful to prate sneaky, dishonest reasons to say that DEI is bad. It’s bad simply because it’s a power-grab by enemy interests.
These underground forums can discuss IQ findings all it wants, but such discussion remains verboten in the mainstream press. Critiques of DEI/DIE/IED have gotten traction and had an impact. This is a simple idealism vs. pragmatism approach to getting things done.
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