Yippeeeee! I’m gonna get paid!
I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it. I'm about to lose control, and I think I like it.
(h/t to the Poynter DEI Sisters!)
Check out this Tweet from EEOC’s Magaty chairperson Andrea Lucas:
Hi Andrea! Yes, I am!!!
I’ve built up so much DEI-based animosity in my 60+ years of living that I don’t know where to start.
Let’s take a look, Andrea, dating all the way to my childhood:
My first experience was at one of my first jobs in Harvey, Illinois, right at the bottom of Chicago’s South Side. My best so-called friend at that job was a Black kid (we were both kids, but that doesn’t excuse DEI behavior). We were car hikers for a local auto sales joint (they had a lot of cars). The lone Black car salesman (DEI hire) (in an area that was about 90% Black) kept calling my friend to move cars for him.1 The DEI salesperson called on me about the same number of times, but since white people outnumber Blacks, he should have called me more often. Don’t you think?
Estimated payout: $1 millionMy next experience was at a job I had while still in high school at a local supermarket. There was this Puerto Rican kid, whom I also thought I was friends with, who had this dumb idea we should have a competition for who could collect the most shopping carts out of the parking lot (we were kind of bored). He was better at it than I was, probably because he was more willing to run outside during those hot, humid Chicago summers than me. He claimed his secret sauce (for realz) was that he grew up working in a sugar plantation in Puerto Rico (sure, pal!).
Estimated payout: $30 million (I’ll admit the number is somewhat arbitrary)
That’s all I can think of for now.
Do I need to tell you why I can’t think of any more? Well, if you’re one of my regular readers, I’m sure I don’t. If you’re Andrea, you’re cloistered in a world of insanity, so you won’t pay attention. But for the rest of you, it’s pretty simple:
White people don’t experience discrimination. Period.
Hey, I’m in my sixties now, so I’ve experienced a bit of ageism. I know what that’s like:
How I Survived Workplace Ageism
Several years ago, I went through a round of phone interviews with a tech startup in Austin. The fit seemed perfect. I possessed the deep layers of software skills they were looking for, and I was ready to try my hand at a startup after several years of working at bigger companies.
Like any other job-related challenge, ageism in a male, white-dominated society is solved by being better than the competition, but this isn’t a how-to or self-improvement essay.
Workplace discrimination against whites is like an AI hallucination formed by Elon Musk’s Grok Apartheid AI: There isn’t such a thing, no matter how hard someone tries to invent it.
I have, however, in my long working life, seen a bigly amount of Black and other POC discrimination.
The worst one that comes to mind was when a hiring manager for a tech company I was doing some gig work for said of a Black candidate he asked me to interview, “I’m just worried about his background. I’m not sure his culture is really the kind that wires up someone of his age for the kind of work we do.”
Yikes.
Luckily, the project was almost over. I finished the job and never worked for the guy again. The comment surprised me, too, because he seemed cool (but I didn’t know him well).
White people never get evaluated in that way. Never will you hear someone say of a white candidate, “I’m not sure his culture is really the kind that wires up someone of his age for the kind of work we do,” unless he’s trying to do the Vanilla Ice thing.
In the rare company where there is a real DEI program, the only threat to white folks is those who do average work and can therefore be easily substituted.
Hot job tip: Be irreplaceable.
Look, here’s the thing. I’m trying to publish a novel right now through a traditional publisher. Do you know how many articles there are that tell me an older white guy can’t publish a work of fiction these days? No, of course you don’t, unless you’re also trying to publish a novel through a traditional publisher.
White dudes get published all the time. I’ve seen the numbers (I thought I saved them, but I can’t find them right now… I will keep looking and update this if/when I find them).
But what about all those female literary agents?
I don’t know. What about all those female casting directors in Hollywood? Check out a movie credit next time you watch a flick. Female casting director every time. I haven’t noticed a precipitous drop in male leads. Even Tom Cruise still gets roles, and he’s old and short.
Maybe, and hear me out here, chicks just dig lit.
It makes sense they’d be attracted to a literary agent job or other jobs in publishing.
Besides, guys don’t read books. They watch sports, listen to Joe Rogan, and then talk about how much more they know about a subject they haven’t read about than you do.
Except for my male readers. They read everything and frequently correct me. Thanks, fellas! Seriously, my readers all seem to have the literacy levels of a PhD candidate (pre-AI). It’s one of the joys of Substack.
But most guys out there? Not so much. Did you know that the majority in every age bracket of male voters voted for Trump, including young voters? Dudes don’t read.
Another complaint I hear a lot is that most of the best-selling novelists are female.
Maybe, and hear me out one more time, chicks just dig lit.
Isn’t it cool that they’re making inroads and actually finally getting published? I know, I know. Jane Austen and Erica Jong. But seriously, that’s not an argument.
I, for one, welcome the invasion of chick lit.
In fairness, it’s fair to think for a minute that this makes it harder for men to break through, since it’s a numbers game and there are now more numbers. However, there’s always room for great writing. If we males need to try a little harder and write a little better than we did when we had all the editorial jobs, I think that’s okay.
Here’s a funny, not funny story about a Hollywood screenwriter:2
On Monday, CBS settled a lawsuit with Seal Team script coordinator, Brian Beneker, who claimed that the company’s DEI policies prevented him from being hired as a writer on the show. In the lawsuit filed in February 2024, he alleged that he wasn’t promoted to the writer’s room “due to his race, sex, and heterosexuality.”
A real hetero man would have punched his way in, but I digress:
He asked for $500,000 in lost wages and for Paramount+ to offer him a job as a producer on the show— despite the streamer already announcing that the show was coming to an end. The final settlement is private and reportedly does not include any changes to their diversity polices. Deadline speculates that the payout for the former employee “was not particularly large.”
Here’s a list of the afflicted writer’s credits:3
SEAL Team, 4 episodes
Resurrection Blvd., 1 episode
He also did a stint as a script coordinator for the TV show Vegas in 2012, where he may have picked up some anti-DEI pointers from Dennis Quaid.4
As for it being tough for white male writers in Hollywood, after I stopped laughing about Beneker’s plight (and request to become a producer), I thought randomly about a recent movie I saw. It was written by a white dude:
I realize that’s not empirical evidence. I randomly thought of a movie, and there he was. But Blacks, People of Color, and Women are still not playing leading roles in Hollywood productions and screenwriting. When they do, it’s still newsworthy, often involving an against-the-odds story in Hollywood Reporter or Variety.
The Trump regime has twisted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into an Apartheid scheme
Remember the screenshot at the top of the post? That’s from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s home page. That little blue box appears at the top of the agency’s home page. When you click “Learn more,” you descend into the labyrinthine world of Maga, a frightening land of trolls, orcs, and demonic haters.
You’re presented with a page titled, “What To Do If You Experience Discrimination Related to DEI at Work.”5
Oh, do tell.
The web page does so:
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on protected characteristics such as race and sex. Different treatment based on race, sex, or another protected characteristic can be unlawful discrimination, no matter which employees are harmed. Title VII’s protections apply equally to all racial, ethnic, and national origin groups, as well as both sexes.
On the surface, this seems fair and reasonable, right? Who would argue that?
The web page goes on to guide the poor saps who’ve been buried by DEI-related discrimination on how to get what’s coming to us.
Dig in a little for a bit of a chuckle:
“What can DEI-related discrimination look like?” asks the web page
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is a broad term that is not defined in the statute.
Oh. You mean the 1964 Civil Rights Act, right? That seems like a problem. Go on…
Under Title VII, DEI policies, programs, or practices may be unlawful if they involve an employer or other covered entity taking an employment action motivated—in whole or in part—by an employee’s race, sex, or another protected characteristic. In addition to unlawfully using quotas or otherwise “balancing” a workforce by race, sex, or other protected traits, DEI-related discrimination in your workplace might include the following…
Wait. Before I continue, didn’t you just say that DEI is not defined by the statute? That makes the rest of the page moot, but I’ll conclude by referring the page to any of my patient readers who have a mysterious yearning to read some pretzel logic:
https://www.eeoc.gov/discrimination-against-american-workers-against-law
The website rewrites the statute for its convenience. It also includes claims that you can’t make “DEI” hires for business reasons, like cheaper labor, which would put every farm in America out of business if enforced.
A lot of family farms are going out of business because DEI (by the EEOC’s own definition) migrant laborers are scared too shitless to be seen. But that’s another post.
It’s hard to know exactly why Maga got stuck on this fascination with DEI. I suspect some of it is related to the weird “Great Replacement Theory” that claims whites are a disappearing species, to which I say, as a bleachy, blotchy-skinned old white guy, is that a bad thing? I swear, if I find one more big ass freckle on my hand that wasn’t there five years ago, I’m going to sue somebody.
No matter the origin, these new enemies of DEI were empowered by the end of Affirmative Action.
Affirmative Action was racial stereotyping. That was the point.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the 6–3 conservative supermajority, said in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023) that collegiate affirmative action programs violate the Constitution because they “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner” and “involve racial stereotyping.”6
Affirmative Action was always about race. It was supposed to be. That was the whole idea.
Affirmative Action was originally designed to take baby steps toward correcting the wrongs of slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and a host of other crimes against our Black brothers and sisters. It was designed with one race in mind: Blacks who suffered under centuries of slavery. It eventually became an extension of the rights of other minorities, but its original intent was to offer a lifeboat to descendants of slaves.
Similar policies were put into place to help even out the employment imbalances for women, who are still generally way behind men in pay for the same jobs.
The implications of the Roberts Court’s decision were felt quickly. First in education, then in the workplace.
According to the New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb:7
In 1998, after the University of California system stripped away race, gender, and ethnicity as a factor in admissions, the number of Black and Latino students enrolled at its most selective schools, Berkeley and U.C.L.A., dropped by some forty per cent.
The Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Medical Association wrote in a brief (ignored by the court’s majority after it was submitted to the case files):
States that have banned race-conscious admissions have seen the number of minority medical-school students drop by roughly 37 percent.
This, in turn, has affected the number of Black and Hispanic doctors.
According to the New York Times, the effects of nine states that have already banned race-based college admissions have already altered the shape of the student population in those states:8
After Michigan banned race-conscious admissions in 2006, Black undergraduate enrollment declined at the University of Michigan, the state’s flagship school. The share of Black students fell to 4 percent in 2021, from 7 percent in 2006.
A similar drop took place at the University of California’s most selective schools after a 1996 referendum, Proposition 209, banned race-conscious admissions. That year, Black students at the University of California, Los Angeles, made up 7 percent of the student body. By 1998, the percentage of Black students had fallen to 3.43 percent. In 2022, it was up to 5 percent — but still well below what it had been more than a quarter-century earlier.
At highly selective liberal arts colleges, officials expect that the number of Black students could return to levels not seen since the 1960s.
Another Times article notes that in recent polls, the “majority of Americans said race should not be a factor in college admissions.”9
Except that it is a factor, whether we like it or not, and will continue to be until Blacks have gained full equal rights in America. We’re not there yet. We’re not even close.
This is most easily reflected in the fact that “Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons across the country at nearly five times the rate of whites.”10
It isn’t because they’re more violent. It’s because the circumstances of many Black families are still dire.
And even if we were close, Blacks deserve the reparations that affirmative action indirectly gave a few of them.
Republicans have convinced a majority of white people that affirmative action is reverse racism. Now, they’re going after history itself in places like Florida and Texas, trying to erase the history of slavery in this country, and trying to pretend that the United States somehow became an empire without committing genocide and ethnic cleansing against First Settlers and torturing Black people as a matter of public policy.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her strongly worded Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard College dissent that affirmative action is about race, and intentionally so. She added that there is nothing unconstitutional about it:11
“The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment enshrines a guarantee of racial equality. The court long ago concluded that this guarantee can be enforced through race-conscious means in a society that is not, and has never been, colorblind.”
Meanwhile, millions of white families on the East Coast and the South who made their original money on the backs of slavery send their kids to elite colleges through legacy admissions, which, as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has said, is affirmative action for the white elite.12 And I’ll add that a lot of these legacy families come from old money earned directly through slavery.
Affirmative action was always about race. That was the point. Now that it’s dead, they’ve moved on to trying to claim white guys are being replaced.
Post mortem
As it turns out, I’m out of luck. I can’t file a complaint because, according to the EEOC:
If you suspect you have experienced DEI-related discrimination, contact the EEOC promptly because there are strict time limits for filing a charge.
Dammit, DEI! How’s an old white guy like me supposed to get reparations?
More seriously, if there are excesses involved with DEI, I haven’t felt them. I’ve known a lot of white dudes in my time. I don’t know anybody who’s complained about this.
The EEOC has created a hallucination crazier than the worst of AI. Hmmm. Now that I think about it, maybe their new page was written by AI. The prompt would be easy enough: “ChatGPT, please write a page for the EEOC describing how to get compensated for a Title VII violation from the perspective of the Great Replacement Theory. Use DoubleSpeak.”
Thanks for reading!
Footnotes
Remember the days of paging systems on car dealership floors? This busy place had an operator announcing something every thirty seconds.
IMDb. “Brian Beneker - Script and Continuity Department, Producer, Writer.” IMDb, 2017. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1170350/.
Segarra, Edward. “Dennis Quaid Reveals He Helped Housekeeper Get US Residency amid Deportation Fears.” USA TODAY, 2025. https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2025/09/24/dennis-quaid-housekeeper-trump-immigration-charlie-kirk/86329466007/.
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “What to Do If You Experience Discrimination Related to DEI at Work,” 2026. https://www.eeoc.gov/what-do-if-you-experience-discrimination-related-dei-work.
Supreme Court of the United States. “Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. V. President and Fellows of Harvard College.” Supreme Court of the United States, June 29, 2023. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf. (PDF)
Cobb, Jelani. “The End of Affirmative Action.” The New Yorker, June 29, 2023. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/10/the-end-of-affirmative-action.
Saul, Stephanie. “Affirmative Action Ruling May Mean a Drop in Black and Latino Students.” The New York Times, June 29, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/politics/affirmative-action-college-students-black-latino.html.
Igielnik, Ruth. “A Majority of Americans Say Race Should Not Be a Factor in College Admissions.” The New York Times, June 29, 2023, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/politics/affirmative-action-polls.html.
The Sentencing Project. “The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons – the Sentencing Project,” October 13, 2021. https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/the-color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons-the-sentencing-project/?source=post_page-----b6ecbc1ed4dd---------------------------------------.
Supreme Court of the United States. “Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. V. President and Fellows of Harvard College.” Supreme Court of the United States, June 29, 2023. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf. (PDF)
Sforza, Lauren. “Tim Scott Calls on Universities to End Legacy Admissions.” The Hill, June 29, 2023. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4074428-tim-scott-calls-on-universities-to-end-legacy-admissions/.
First, thank you for the compliment, Charles. Not only do I not have a PhD, I don’t even have a Bachelor’s degree. I could probably scrape together enough college credits to get an Associate’s degree, but I don’t give a fig.
Second, I have, when I was younger suffered from sex discrimination. I worked as an estimater for a local electrician, but I couldn’t sign the bid paperwork because I was a woman. My boss, a man, would sign my work. As a result we won a few jobs that I put together as bid packages.
Later, I worked for a shopping club, and my pay was equal to the men in my department. They had definite DEI policies.