DEI Comes to Jasper, Indiana

The medical staff at our community hospital in Jasper, Indiana, a small, generally conservative burg in the middle of fields of corn and soy, received an email from hospital administration indicating that they would begin implementing DEI training. I couldn’t remain silent and, instead, pushed back.

As the world knows, DEI refers to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This concept, like many seemingly innocuous-sounding slogans or acronyms, carries with it aspects quite sinister. It is a phrase that has swept the nation and all our major institutions, including our universities and schools. DEI has become the new mantra, indeed, a booming industry and ethos, dominating our culture. But contained within it are concepts that are alien and antithetical to the Christian mission of our hospital, which is “being for others.” It is also hostile to the founding principles of the nation.

DEI is a hyperaggressive and politicized quota system, a radicalized version of affirmative action for certain so-called “marginalized” people. It divides society into “groups” based on race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, and so on. It gives preference to certain favored groups, which include, in descending order: Muslims, transgenders, gays, blacks, Hispanics, and women. It discriminates against other groups currently out of favor, chiefly whites, Asians, men, heterosexuals, and Christians. Alas, of late, another group has joined the list of the despised, and is now, perhaps, the chief target of DEI hatred: The Jews.

Apart from being intensely divisive, DEI reflects a world view that is not compatible with our biblical tradition. That tradition holds that each person is an individual uniquely made in the image of God. This transcendent concept is peculiar to the West and accounts for its extraordinary success, chiefly here in the US, the greatest embodiment of Western thought and accomplishment. (Although today, certain alien ideologies, of which DEI is one, threaten it.)

Our emphasis on the individual, protecting individual rights and liberties, has made Western nations, in general, and America, in particular, so desirable and this is why all the world seeks to come here. Our concept of individual worth explains our economic growth, standard of living, and extraordinary cultural and technological achievements. It is based ultimately on the freedoms and protections of the individual, precisely because of our belief in the sanctity of each person.

DEI rejects that. It is an identarian ideology, a “caste” system, so to speak, that divides society into intersectional groups based on perceived wrongs committed by alleged dominant power centers in society, which it perceives as intrinsically racist or sexist or homophobic, and so on. Within the DEI calculus, there are oppressors and oppressed, victimizers and victims, and, as noted above, so-called “marginalized people.”

This divisive, hierarchical worldview emerges from standard Marxist ideology, except its centered on culture or race rather than class, as originally conceived, hence the term “cultural Marxism.” DEI is an extension of cultural Marxism, part of the “intersectional” hierarchy of “oppression” that divides society into odd categories. Thus, it places the groups allegedly most “oppressed” at the pinnacle of the pyramid (e.g., blacks, women, or transgenders) and those designated most guilty of “oppression” at the bottom (e.g., whites, males, Christians, Jews).

Bari Weiss sums it up this way:

[The new ideology] replaced basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad). It replaced lots of things. Colorblindness with race-obsession. Ideas with identity. Debate with denunciation. Persuasion with public shaming. The rule of law with the fury of the mob.

Rejecting the individual, DEI reduces American society into a collection of groups or tribes, hence the “tribalization“ of society. This tribalization(racialization) is based on certain immutable, physical traits such as skin color and sex. This, by the way, has been the norm for all of human history and throughout the world. America was unique in that it rejected tribalization, group characteristics, and superficial appearance, and elevated the individual, which accounted for its historic success, and the reason so many sought to live here.

DEI, furthermore, has no place in any institution that values standards and color-blind meritocracy. If diversity becomes the driving force behind hiring and promotion, or even a small part of it, rather than skill, accomplishment, and merit, then it necessarily compromises standards.  If the goal is diversity, and to have proportional representation in Memorial Hospital’s work force, based on race, sex, sexual orientation, and other such trivialities, even in part, and the hospital does not contemplate the individual and his unique abilities and contributions over all else, then the system collapses and becomes simply one of groups or tribes competing with one another. Meritocracy necessarily dies in such a system. You can have DEI or meritocracy, but not both.

Should hospitals now have quotas for their doctors, nurses, technicians, and janitors based on DEI principles of proportional allocations for blacks, Hispanics, gays, lesbians, Muslims, and transgenders over more qualified individuals of the wrong color, sex, or sexual orientation? Shall they treat patients based on such considerations?

Such a concept is antithetical to a hospital’s mission. It betrays these institutions’ purpose and, if they are faith-driven hospitals (as mine is), their religious and biblical basis for current fashionable, destructive, and divisive Marxist goals that have no place here and should be unequivocally rejected. Further, why is “diversity” a goal? Diversity is actually a challenge to overcome in the pursuit of “unity,” which is a far more important aspiration.

I made these same objections known in writing and verbally to the entire medical staff, hospital administration, and the board at my hospital, including the CEO. I have heard nothing back and do not know if they plan to proceed with their disastrous plans. I will continue to oppose it vigorously and must imagine that it is a small minority of leftist activists on the medical staff that pushed for it. I will do all that I can to ensure that it does not stand.

Richard Moss, M.D., a surgeon practicing in Jasper, IN, was a candidate for Congress in 2016 and 2018. He has written “A Surgeon’s Odyssey” and “Matilda’s Triumph,” available on amazon.com. Contact him at richardmossmd.com or Richard Moss, M.D. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.