On April 14, the Biden administration unleashed a “total transformation of government” — as described by the Department of Energy — arguably based on principles of Critical Race Theory.
Toward that end, more than 90 federal agencies announced “equity action plans” to supposedly address inequality in American society — but critics say that the plans will create a coercive bureaucracy intent on punishing certain Americans based on racial marxism and other progressive ideas that champion victimhood.
The White House recently noted that on his first day in office, President Joe Biden “signed Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government” which “directed the whole of the federal government to advance an ambitious equity and racial justice agenda” focused on creating “prosperity, dignity, and equality” for underserved communities.
Ryan Girdusky, founder of 1776 Project PAC, a non-profit focused on electing school board members opposed to Critical Race Theory-inspired curriculum, told The Daily Wire that Biden administration’s “plan towards equity is race-based Marxism with a different word.”
“The entire program is set to lower standards, dilute meritocracy, and have the first large-scale government-supported laws that discriminate against people based on their race since before Eisenhower was President,” Girdusky added.
Indeed, the Department of Energy explained in its equity action plan released last week that it has already started considering factors other than technical merit when doling out financial assistance via a pilot program through its Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) office.
Starting back in March 2021, applicants seeking research and development funding from EERE have had to issue diversity, equity, and inclusion statements for their projects on their applications.
The purpose of such statements are to explain how their project would help and include “underserved communities” — which is taken to mean minority, non-white, non-heterosexual, non-male groups — in order to be considered for the taxpayer-funded grants.
DOE plans to incorporate that program across all of its funding opportunities and will also focus on “increasing the diversity of merit reviewers.”
Beginning in the fiscal year 2022, all applicants seeking funding opportunities through the agency “must include at least one DEI-specific program policy factor” in a move that “will allow DOE to prioritize equity-related factors in awarding financial assistance.”
“Program policy factors allow the selecting official the flexibility to consider factors other than technical merit,” the Energy Department explained.
In other words, America’s top scientists and engineers must now incorporate progressive ideas about race, sexuality, gender, and other factors into their business model and scientific research plans in order to be considered for tax-payer-funded money. Furthermore, it would appear those plans must actually show they will benefit non-white or straight, or minority groups, in order to fulfill the goals of the equity action plans.
The plan notes that this new guidance, “will ensure that when all other aspects, such as technical merit, are considered equal, programs can select applications that broaden the diversity of institutions and individuals who are awarded DOE R&D funding.”
Under that framework, the government would prefer research and development applicants to be equally mediocre in their energy innovations while having quality DEI statements rather than have a handful of exceptionally innovative applicants without DEI statements.
The more exceptional applicants in that scenario would be discriminated against because they refused to submit a DEI statement.
Thus, as Girudksy pointed out, the diluting of merit in America comes to fruition in Biden’s America and for years to come.
Stanford professor Victor Davis Hanson explained to The Daily Wire that the transition to “equity” away from “equality” is intentionally done to increase government power and advance Leftist ideology.
“Equality is an American idea of equality and fairness in opportunity,” Hanson explained. “Equity is a French revolutionary idea of equality of result mandated by a coercive government.”
“Equity is the code for an elite professional and bureaucratic class to gain more influence, money, and power by forcing all people to be equal no matter of their circumstances or behavior,” he added.
As explained by the Department of Energy, Biden has initiated the “total transformation of the government into an entity that centers the concerns of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and underserved communities.”
As for what that entails for the American people, Hanson explained that “it simply means that in reductionist fashion, any inequality is due to racism or bias and the government must have the wisdom and morality to punish perceived victimizers and redistribute to supposed victims.”
“All else does not count–not merit, not tragedies, not health, not class, not work ethic, not family structures, not culture, not anything—except the elite in charge will always be exempt from the ramifications of their own equity ideology,” he explained.
Taken all together, it is clear that the equity action plans are covert vehicles for implementing critical theory in a way that would fundamentally alter the American way of life — which is the entire point.
“CRT’s ‘equity’ demands race-based discrimination,” a recent Heritage Foundation guide to identifying critical race theory explained.
“Because systemic racism has produced disparities between the races and because the system will only deepen these disparities by rewarding the ‘wrong’ criteria, government must treat individual Americans unequally according to skin color to forcibly produce equal outcomes,” Heritage said in its explanation of the tents of CRT and equity. “Advocating equity over equality is part of CRT.
That is the complete abandonment of the idea that Americans should be treated as individuals by the government. Now, more than 90 federal agencies under Biden have seek to institutionalize this form of discrimination.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Source: Dailywire
