☆ Education experts talk DEI at local colleges, intersectionality, cancel culture, & more (the full conversation)
What is the critical social justice movement actually trying to do in Bay Area schools? Why are its rhetorical strategies—albeit heavy-handed—so compelling? And do we fix education through admin, teachers, parents, or gov't (or all of the above)? An Opp Now exclusive interview with Ex-De Anza DEI Dean Dr. Tabia Lee and School of Woke's Kenny Xu. All parts consolidated, below.
ON "INTERSECTIONALITY" AS A MISUSED CONSTRUCT:
Opportunity Now: In your perspectives, how does race play into cancel culture at local colleges?
Tabia Lee: I was once a faculty director for an Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multicultural Education, which should have been a red flag by the title alone! And when I found myself in an environment where race and gender identities were weaponized (I was attacked and called names I had never been called in my life), I really wanted to understand the people around me.
Part of my background is as an educational sociologist (which is now a loaded term, so I don't often claim it anymore). So I sought to understand: who were these people that were surrounding me? We were using similar words but meaning very different things about them. I wanted to understand their mindsets. Where did this all come from?
In my work as a teacher in professional development, I had developed and coined this concept “ideology-in-practice.” It's based on Argyris and Schon's work, as well as others in the professional development and leadership fields. And as I started to examine what I was seeing around race, racialization, and gender identity—and that process in action—I noticed that many of the things that have overtaken our local colleges are rooted in what I and others call “critical social justice ideology.”
“Intersectionality” (defining people by identity checkboxes) is one of the key pedagogical tools that they use. However, it's not really a pedagogical tool at all—but a misapplication of the original tool as articulated by Kimberlé Crenshaw. It's morphed into something completely different. And, you know, that happens. As a theorist, you create things that people use (and misuse) as they will.
Kenny Xu: May I ask: what was it originally meant to be, and how was it warped?
TL: Kimberlé Crenshaw developed intersectionality as part of legal theory and critical legal theory specifically, to show that there was a disparate impact in the legal system on Black women in terms of judgments, sentencing, etc. She and Black feminists at that time were trying to shine a light of, “Hey, there's a difference in the way that Black women are treated by the legal system.”
So that was not supposed to be a pedagogy or go directly to students, right? Teaching these ideas of “I am a victim” or “I am an oppressor” or “you are the oppressor because your family has this background”—it’s against the original intent.
ON: While folding in some overt Marxism.
TL: Moreover, the original idea of intersectionality wasn't articulated as something to be packaged to kindergarten students, which is what's happening right now. Students are being taught things about: “Who is an oppressor? White people are oppressors. Your white relatives are oppressors.” Kindergarten students. You know—“How do we see white privilege around us?” These have become embedded as pedagogies in our K-12 classrooms, all the way up.
KX: That makes sense. And the fact that intersectionality as a pedagogy came out of a framework meant for the legal profession signals to me that it might be excessively recriminative.
ON INTERSECTIONALITY AND COLLEGE CANCEL CULTURE:
ON: Mr. Xu, you're not only working in academia but graduated college six years ago. How do your experiences inform your view of race and cancel culture in higher education?
KX: First of all, I want to acknowledge that it has gotten better. When I was a student in college from 2015–2019, race was probably the most important factor on campus for determining who was oppressed by society and, therefore, deserved better treatment by us as individuals.
As Dr. Lee mentioned, the effect is pronounced when you tie race into intersectionality. This framework says there are layers and layers of discrimination, and that if you’re higher on the intersectionality pyramid—not just if you're Black, but if you're Black and a woman, or you're Black and a woman and lesbian and trans, etc.—you deserve even more social currency to counteract how society's wronged you.
ON: So the more social currency, the less the likelihood of being cancelled?
KX: Right. And academia was building towards this intersectionality pyramid for a long time. In recent years, it spread to dominate how companies and even governments operate.
ON OTHER SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF INTERSECTIONALITY:
It’s a dangerous system. When you do belong into those identity categories and have that power, the temptation is to use it to abuse others—and they must allow it, by nature of the ideology. When I was doing investigations for my former nonprofit Color Us United, we found that if you were a Black woman and were working for, say, American Express, you could demand privileges that white men of your same grade couldn't demand. You could treat employees and customers in a way that you couldn’t if you were a white man. Lawyers were scared of you. Human Resource officers were scared of you. Clearly, this is not the way to build an engendering, trustful society.
That’s why I started to speak out about it because, as an Asian man, I might belong in some of these categories. But the truth is, most of the world—most of America, even liberal America—does not view Asian men as part of the victimhood narrative, as part of the same level of oppressed classedness as if you were, say, a Black woman. It’s a confusing and inconsistent ideology. And it unfortunately affects everything about free speech at colleges: what’s permitted, celebrated, or censored.
ON CRITICAL SOCIAL JUSTICE AND POWER-CHASING:
ON: How would you interpret the “pyramid of intersectionality” in cases like Dr. Lee’s—where someone seems to check all the identity boxes on paper, but is ousted for their viewpoint? Are we missing something?
TL: From my perspective, this critical social justice movement isn't about social justice at all. It's always been about power—and seizing power by any means necessary.
So that's why you'll see different groups and individuals being used as pawns in a dangerous political game. That's why you'll see professors demanding that their students protest or stand in solidarity with certain groups when they don't even know what they're doing or what they're saying. That's why you see rampant racism and antisemitism on American college campuses.
Ironically, one of the foundational principles of critical social justice ideology is that racism is baked into American society. This is one of their core beliefs. And it's a very nihilistic viewpoint that completely disregards any progress that we've made. But I think that that's by design—and the cancel culture, that's part of it.
ON COLLEGE CANCEL CULTURE'S (LOCAL) HISTORY:
ON: Where did this come from, do you think?
TL: In the ‘60s and ‘70s, there were very violent protests born out of Bay Area universities—journalists were getting attacked, and then-Governor Reagan had to send out the National Guard. Many of the protests we see today are similar. The fruits of their labor.
ON: Tell us more about these protests. What was their aim?
TL: I’ve gone back to primary source documents to analyze the Third World Liberation Front, which pushed these protests on local campuses. Here's what was happening: they were demanding that an Ethnic Studies department be developed—and that we have Native American and Black Studies departments, too.
Their implication here is that only a few ethnicities have experienced any kind of strife in America or are worth studying. And according to this ideology, we get the idea of victims and oppressors, the idea that we need to discriminate now to right the wrongs of the past.
Sound familiar? That's all critical social justice ideology. But there’s no single founder. It's always been rooted in collectivism (by design, I think). So part of my work is to synthesize these seemingly disparate sources, to help people understand the rootedness of critical social justice ideology, and how it became so ingrained in our policies and practices.
ON: Indeed, not just ingrained but compulsory in many higher ed (as well as gov't) institutions.
ON THE WOKE WEAPONIZATION OF VIRTUE:
TL: This is how their rhetoric goes: “If you stand for justice, if you're a good person, you'll stand with us.” Of course I want to stand for justice, right? And of course I want people to feel included. This weaponization and subversion of language has been very intentional; it's been used to cast people out.
But it's more than social pressure. Anyone who shows an inkling of not aligning with the ideology often can't get hired or interviewed. Universities have policed this through DEI statements and other forms of screening.
ON DEI STATEMENTS AND PROXY DISCRIMINATION:
ON: Which are—at least in theory—being dropped by California Community Colleges and the UC system.
TL: We're seeing some shifts like these right now. Especially with the new administration.
But largely, it's a cloaking. The same things are happening, but we're not going to call them DEI statements anymore, right? We have to name it something different. Implement it in a different, subtler way.
ON: Proxy discrimination—we’ve seen it also in local college admissions. Institutions have pivoted to race-focused essay prompts and other workarounds to affirmative action.
We watch out for the word “holistic”; it often means “subjective.”
TL: Yes, they're very committed to their ideology, which wants equality of outcomes for everyone. But what that means is a system of government and a way of life that America has not known—and hopefully will never know.
ON INTERSECTIONALITY IN LOCAL K-12 SCHOOLS:
ON: Dr. Lee, you asserted earlier that intersectionality—as a paradigm and pedagogy—has taken over local public schools. How might folks identify it in education institutions they're considering?
TL: Several years ago, the State of California put out a (still highly contested) model curriculum for ethnic studies; and when you look at it, you will see the principles and claims of intersectionality and why it's needed to achieve social justice, right there in the curriculum. You know, units on “What's my place? Where do we see racial privilege?”
KX: This is the subject of my second book, School of Woke (written and published in 2023). I visited K-12 schools across the nation, interviewing the parents and analyzing the materials that students are being taught. And you'd be shocked at some of the things I observed.
Fourth graders are being given fill-in-the-blanks that say, “ We live in a world with systemic ___” and expected to write “racism.” Kids are being given coloring books with angry protesters on the cover. There's a “Wheels on the Bus” cartoon that was taught in a New York City public school where one stick figure is Black and the others are white—and it asks, “What’s the difference with this kid?” Students are supposed to answer, “Oh, he’s Black.”
By the way, it was, like, the third thing that the kids noticed. One of them said he had a hat. But, no, the teacher wanted him to say that he was Black and, therefore, was going to be treated differently. All of these things really happened in schools around the country.
TL: Yes, children actually had to live through these things.
If you're looking at local school curriculum and see intersectionality in there, then that's time to double-click and do some research. That's the time to go to the school board. That's the time to meet with the principal and ask, “What other ideas are being taught here to our community besides this? There are other ways to view human will and agency than this.”
Intersectionality is not research or evidence based, even if it is touted as important and necessary in academia. And, look, I'm not saying nobody should teach it. I'm all for diverse perspectives. But if that's the only perspective you're teaching—or allowing your school's teachers to teach—it's problematic. And you're doing students a disservice by showing them only one way of seeing the world.
KX: Exactly. It's just one theory.
Thankfully, some school mandates related to the Woke intersectionality pyramid are being rolled back. Others are not. When it comes to universities, it's a particularly tough road.
ON COVERTLY CONTINUING DEI IN COLLEGES:
ON: How so?
KX: What I have noticed culturally is this: companies are rolling back the censorship that they did in the name of Woke. X got bought by Elon Musk and has seen changes. Even Mark Zuckerberg, right? Meta was used as a tool during the Biden administration to censor conservatives and any ideas questioning the Biden agenda on Covid or race. But Zuckerberg recently went on Joe Rogan and said, “We're not doing that anymore. We were pressured by Biden to do it.” Okay, sure. Likely story.
But on college campuses, this stuff is still very much alive. There have been incidents at Davidson College, for example, where I work. Videos were shown to student athletes that asked them, “Are you a racist for believing in XYZ idea?” And these videos gave such a “you’re with us or against us” mentality that it left no room for students to breathe.
This is what critical social justice does—it is inherently divisive. It acknowledges the divisiveness of its own ideology, but it is inherently divisive. So these kinds of trainings and movies and curricula may be backing down in part, but there are still segments of our institutions—across the country—that are owned by people with this ideology.
TL: I'm a senior fellow with Do No Harm Medicine, which has put out recent reports tracking the renaming, revisioning, and relaunching of DEI programs in medical schools across the nation. These ideologies are still permeating our schools—just under new language.
ON CORRELATION VS. CAUSATION IN "EQUITABLE" OUTCOMES:
Opportunity Now: Can you explain what you believe are the drawbacks to a critical social justice ideology, commonly adopted by local higher ed institutions (if not in name, then in practice)?
Kenny Xu: Critical social justice is the ideology of highly paranoid people. People who believe society is out to get them. So they’ll interpret and contort reality to support their conclusions.
I'll give you an example from my book, An Inconvenient Minority. I did an investigation on Silicon Valley and found that Asian American men are less likely to be promoted to the C-suite executive salons as white men. Okay, that's true. At the FAANG companies, the Meta companies—it's just a fact.
Now, the question is: is it systemic racism? Is it racism that's preventing the Asians from getting these promotions? Those in the critical social justice camp would think so.
But I believe the actual bias against Asian Americans—assuming it’s a factor in this—is a very small factor. We should focus on much bigger elements: where investment capital comes from in Silicon Valley, the particular traits that Asian Americans are training towards, and how that aligns with higher-level traits sought by these companies.
Your publication is called Opportunity Now. If we really want to create opportunities for Asian Americans to advance within Silicon Valley, we need to focus on engendering those traits in people who want to advance. Not blaming racial discrimination and bias for what we observe in the data. I’m very skeptical of people who do that.
ON PROMOTING INDIVIDUAL AGENCY AND MERIT:
Tabia Lee: I would concur with Mr. Xu. These discussions have taken our focus away from things like merit and the traits that are needed for success, which apply to all of humanity. Not just this group or that group.
What if we stopped obsessing over these processes of racialization and minoritization and started emphasizing human agency and will? What if we focused instead on critical thinking and education and innovation, on developing the qualities that are needed to access them at deep levels? We would see so much more in terms of equality of opportunity.
ON: So you're saying that by zeroing in on one construct—race—we neglect other important factors like culture, education, and individual strengths?
TL: Race has historically been a socially engineered construct used to define and divide people. There's one race—the human race. We're focusing on these made-up categories rather than things that truly matter.
What’s more, we’re teaching it through a single lens and stifling all other philosophies. There are many different ways to view race that I was never taught in my background as an educational sociologist.
Critical social justice has completely supplanted the mission of many colleges; it started out as a fringe movement in Ethnic Studies departments, but make no mistake—it's been mainstream for a while now. Ironically, it's become the dominant force of higher education.
ON THE SILENT, SENSIBLE MAJORITY:
ON: Though we wonder how many everyday Californians actually buy into the ideology.
TL: Right, the polling numbers tell a different story about popularity than Woke activists would have you believe. The numbers say that maybe we're not so alone. And I love that hopefulness for people in the decent middle, the silent majority right now—knowing that the far left and far right aren't truly representative of America.
The pendulum is swinging back. The balance of things is shifting—a little bit—to be more aligned with reality.
ON RETURNING TO HIGH-QUALITY ACADEMICS:
ON: How can colleges pursue true inclusivity with diverse student bodies, both racially and ideologically?
TL: A lot of colleges need to install leaders with backbones who will support the original missions of their institutions—critical thinking, diverse opinions, civic discourse, merit. The idea that there are many ways to see a topic or a thing, and letting students decide on their own. These are some of the fundamentals of education that we as educators—it saddens me—have given over to DEI consultants.
What is our charge as educators? What is the purpose of education? We've lost our mission, many of us as individuals and as institutions. And we need to get back to that, kick out these so-called “experts” and focus on developing our students as human beings and active citizens in our society.
Does it make sense to centralize terms like “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” in higher education institutions? Our student bodies are diverse by the very nature of humans being enrolled. Right? There's great diversity in each individual, and that makes up an institution. Adopting dogmatic DEI policies college-wide and infusing it into every study hasn’t helped this at all. Academic disciplines need to become academic disciplines again.
ON ELECTION '24 AS A CULTURAL WAKE-UP:
Kenny Xu: I agree: our colleges have become infected. And specifically, in the case of the Woke movement, they were infected by an intentionally divisive sociology that spread and spread through the Academy because it was not challenged or exposed.
The good thing is that students are more likely to see this now than they were 10 years ago.
ON: Or even five years ago?
KX: The illusion that everyone agreed on DEI issues was shattered after this most recent election. It was a huge cultural wake-up call because a lot of these people went, “Wait! Most of America does not agree with me.” Hopefully, this can be the start of universities genuinely opening up to different ideas. But regardless, it’s important that reformers like you and me, Dr. Lee, seize the advantage and win the moment. The fight’s not over yet.
ON TENURE AND (AVOIDING) MAKING WAVES:
TL: Yes, I can share a personal story there, Mr. Xu. When I was going through the tenure review process that brought me to national attention—and I was exposed as a free thinker and someone who wanted to encourage people to question things and think for themselves—one of my mentors at the time urged me, “Lee, please just be quiet. Don't say anything. Get your tenure. You'll be secure, and then you can start to make all these changes and discuss these things.”
It's a very tempting thing when you’re looking at health benefits, at the possibility of long-term job stability, and your peers and colleagues are telling you, “Just don't say anything.”
By the time I was being given that advice, it was already too late; but that's the culture. And so when you come up through that culture as a faculty member, and you sit in silence for the 4–6 years or however long your tenure process is, guess what happens? At the end of those six years, you continue sitting in silence because you've learned how. You've accepted it. You've submitted to it by that point. And you need to keep doing so for your research grants, your health benefits, for this and that benefit.
Even if their ideology conflicts with your core beliefs, you are part of the problem at that point. You are perpetuating it. It may go against your morals, your values. But you're so in it.
ON SMALL, INCREMENTAL REFORMS:
ON: So you're saying that regression (and, to flip it around, positive change) isn't just dependent on administrations. But individual teachers can make a difference, for better or for worse—no matter how granular.
TL: And that is success. When it comes to viewpoints that have become so deeply ingrained, it’s all about the impact you make on that one student, that one person.
Sometimes I would give workshops at the highly ideologically entrenched community college I was at, and only two people would show up. And I'd think, "Wow, was that not successful?" But those two people who showed up—seeds were planted in them.
They might not get manifested tomorrow or in that season. It might be a while later. But I have faith that those seeds will bloom, and those people can then help others push back, ask questions.
Even asking questions like “Why?” really rattles the cages of these ideologues.
ON A BETTER FUTURE FOR DEI ADMINS:
ON: Many folks are employed in DEI jobs and are very committed. How can we build a new consensus that will include them.
KX: There are many goodhearted people recruited for DEI who could have been recruited to be coalition builders for their county sports team, or their community association, or the YMCA, or their religious association. They're not bad people. They just need better goals.
It's the responsibility of intellectuals in the academy to give them direction in the way of those better goals. Unfortunately, education has failed them in that regard by steering them towards an unpopular DEI ideology that strives toward nothing. At least, nothing important—several weeks ago, it was found that some North Carolina DEI administrators were responsible for paid propaganda for critical social justice. Nothing else. I doubt they envisioned that kind of a career when they were in high school.
But somehow they got roped into it; and eventually you become complicit in it, as Dr. Lee said, and an actor in it. So my advice for these people is to make a U-turn—use the skills they've developed over the years and pursue a better goal.
ON: Prepare the person for the road, not the road for the person, right?
KX: If you're sympathetic to or involved in the critical social justice movement, and see it collapsing around you, it's time to find something with a better foundation. That's how you can truly change your community.
ON SHIFTING OUR FOCUS AWAY FROM RACIALIZATION:
Tabia Lee: Agreed. I understand being committed to a job that you have or even have been promised due to your loyalty to a particular ideology. But, as Mr. Xu said, it's time for these people to think about their lasting contribution to our society, to our world. Is it really important for us to put all of our focus on constructs like racialization—instead of seeking to understand and accept (not just tolerate) each other?
ON: A rare concept in Silicon Valley, we surmise.
TL: There are so many more things that we can do once we give up this mission to divide, to box in, to try to understand someone just by looking at them or what groups they affiliate with. For instance, getting to know our neighbors. Embracing our human agency. Being positive actors in our communities.
These are noble pursuits. And we can reach them when we stop prioritizing the wheel of privilege and oppression and, you know, whether I'm a victim or I'm an oppressor, or who's the newest minoritized group of the day.
ON: How can we help our critical DEI-entrenched friends begin to shift their focus, see that there might be another way?
TL: Part of it involves acknowledging how abnormal this all is. For instance, demanding that people declare their pronouns is something we see and experience regularly in local society. But this is not a normal practice—not to mention, it’s antithetical to human existence and expression. It's destructive, intentionally divisive.
ON: We're reminded of an excellent quote from City Journal contributing editor Theodore Dalrymple, which we share here:
In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. ... I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
ON RECLAIMING AMERICAN VALUES IN EDUCATION:
TL: Furthermore, instead of framing the conversation as anti-DEI, we should say we're returning back to American principles and values. We need to know what our founding documents say, what the aspirations of this great experiment are—and then we can begin to make goals to guide us toward that great beacon of light that America is, and always will be, if we allow it to be. It's not about minimizing the past. It's about how we move forward from it.
I also think there's value in pushback from the federal government, so colleges and their administrators go, “Oh, there might be consequences outside of our bubble. We might lose some funding if we keep promoting antisemitism and racism on our campus.” A pump on the brakes, you might say.
Yes, it's a shame for these DEI folks whose jobs are disappearing. But it's great that institutions can refocus on things that really matter—their institutional goals, their original missions.
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