Jim Crow’s Favorite Idea Wins Diversity Officer of the Year

Author’s Note: I wrote Identity Politics: Jim Crow’s Rebrand in Drag because I was sick of watching racial discrimination get dressed up as progress while people who questioned it felt pressured to shut up. I came out swinging and hit a few legitimate efforts to remove barriers along with the hypocrisy. Fair criticism. My position hasn’t changed: open the doors, judge people on merit, and quit treating race like a VIP pass. This time, I brought court opinions. Turns out a federal judge had already called the government’s logic “absolutely radiant.” Wonderful. I’ve been out-sarcasted by a man in a robe.

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Welcome to the First Annual Everyone Is an Individual Awards, where admission requires identifying yourself as a demographic category. The organizers promise nobody will be reduced to a label, so they’ve printed the labels in a soothing font. One woman writes “mind your own damn business” on her questionnaire. She’s immediately placed in a new category, Resistant to Belonging, and taken backstage for a conversation about her attitude. The evening hasn’t begun, and we’ve already invented a minority of one.

Before the orchestra gets drunk: Jim Crow was legally enforced segregation and disenfranchisement, reinforced by racial intimidation and violence. A misguided modern program isn’t equivalent. But his rotten premise, that race tells an authority how to treat an individual, still attracts admirers who swear they oppose it. Tonight’s nominees have smuggled that premise into respectable institutions and won it a standing ovation for its commitment to equality.

First up, Outstanding Achievement in Fighting Discrimination with a Discrimination Verdict. Novant Health was pursuing more diverse leadership when it fired executive David Duvall despite his strong performance reviews. A jury found that race, sex, or both motivated the decision. In 2024, an appeals court upheld that finding but threw out the punitive damages. The court didn’t outlaw diversity efforts. It just refused to accept “diversity” as an alibi. The committee immediately nominates the trial for a second award: Best Mandatory Conversation About Race. Attendance was compulsory, the facilitator wore a robe, and the feedback was legally binding.

For Most Holistic Way to Misplace a Human Being, Harvard and UNC take the stage. In 2023, the Supreme Court struck down the schools’ race-conscious admissions systems. Dissenting justices warned that the ruling could make equality harder to achieve; the majority said colleges could still consider what applicants had actually lived through. Harvard’s final “lop list,” meanwhile, had room for legacy status, recruited athletes, financial-aid eligibility, and race. Imagine writing an essay about surviving a flood, raising your siblings, and building a satellite, only to reach a list that remembers your ancestors and whether you throw a ball. The admissions representative is impressed by the satellite. She asks if it plays lacrosse.

Most Inventive Way to Ignore a Person’s Actual Hardship goes to the Minority Business Development Agency. In 2024, a federal judge agreed that discrimination in government contracting was a real problem worth fixing. What he rejected was the agency’s shortcut: presume certain racial groups are disadvantaged and make everybody else prove it. One plaintiff was a disabled immigrant who’d fled communist Romania, but he wasn’t in a group that qualified automatically; he faced additional eligibility hurdles that favored applicants didn’t. U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman summed up the agency’s reasoning rather beautifully: “The illogic is absolutely radiant.” The committee calls this compassion. The plaintiff points to his life. The court examines evidence. The agency checks his family tree. Someone has invented a hardship detector that stops working the moment you put a real human being in front of it.

Three cases aren’t a census of every diversity program. The recurring failure is narrower: legitimate concerns about inequality led to decisions or classifications courts found unlawful. Group statistics can reveal a problem. Using them in place of individual judgment can manufacture another. The committee responds by eliminating individual cases. Categories stay put, never contradict your assumptions, and rarely hire lawyers.

The next trophy, Best Campaign Speech Delivered to a Voter Who Doesn’t Exist, takes us into politics. Political stereotyping isn’t the same as an illegal employment decision, but it exposes a related intellectual failure: assuming a demographic category can do someone’s thinking for them. Latino voters, inconsiderately, had opinions about more than one thing. In 2024, 85% of Latino registered voters said the economy was very important to their vote, compared with 59% for immigration. A postelection study found Latino voters split 51% for Harris and 48% for Trump. Some Democratic strategists eventually began wondering whether the cost of living deserved a speaking role.

Polling groups is useful. Pretending each group thinks with one enormous brain is idiotic. The producers have hired an actor to play “The Latino Voter.” His sole line is “Please ask me about immigration.” Real voters interrupt to ask about housing and grocery prices. He asks if they can stick to the script. They ask if he can learn a second line.

Next up, Best Perpetual Emergency with an Automatic Donation Button. Reporters investigating the campaign against DEI at public universities found donor pitches, grant proposals, and political coordination. Meanwhile, foundations and nonprofits were funding lawsuits and legal defenses in the wider DEI fight. Some disputes involve real discrimination. Others involve legitimate disagreement over how to remedy it. Unfortunately, “Some of Our Opponents Have a Point” makes a terrible fundraising subject line.

Tonight’s organizers unveil two podiums. One reads INCLUSION UNDER ATTACK. The other reads MERIT UNDER ATTACK. Each podium has a QR code where an actual proposal ought to be. A woman asks whether either side has a plan to stop actual discrimination. The moderator thanks her for caring and offers to turn her concern into a recurring monthly gift. Politicians get a campaign issue. Advocacy groups get donors. The woman gets a new designation: Untapped Revenue. The committee calls this civic engagement. The treasurer calls it a sustainable business model.

Now the evening’s crowd favorite: Best Performance by an Outcome Nobody Measured. Two researchers reviewed hundreds of scholarly articles on diversity training. This was unnecessary, since the committee had already printed SUCCESS on the certificates. They found that enthusiasm and spending had outrun evidence of results. They didn’t say every program fails. They did find a troubling fondness for measuring things that are easy to count instead of things that matter. The organizers unveil a statistical breakthrough: 100% of employees who completed the training have now completed the training. An audience member asks whether hiring or promotions became fairer. The emcee congratulates her for demonstrating the critical thinking skills the program was designed to cultivate, then removes her question from the evaluation because it might skew the success rate.

At intermission, a stagehand offers a truly subversive idea. Define qualifications before reviewing applicants. Use consistent interviews. Broaden recruiting and mentoring. Examine pay and promotion decisions. Investigate individual hardship instead of assuming it. Protect people who report discrimination. Measure results and stop funding failures. Research favors mentoring and holding managers accountable over yet another compulsory lecture about how committed the company is to equality. The committee asks whether managers could be held accountable without inconveniencing any actual managers. When the stagehand says no, his proposal is rejected for failing to respect their lived experience of being in charge.

The finale is Human Being of the Year. Nominees are asked to stand, but the committee hasn’t recorded their names, experiences, or accomplishments. It has only categories. A student asks to be judged on his story. A business owner describes the obstacles she actually faced. A voter refuses to speak for an entire ethnicity. The judges call this uncooperative. The nominees begin walking out. The audience follows. To preserve the ceremony’s commitment to harmony, security assists anyone whose individual opinions are interfering with the statistical portrait.

At last the committee sits alone in a ballroom filled with empty chairs. Nobody complains. Nobody challenges the mission statement. Every remaining attendee agrees with every decision, producing the first unanimous satisfaction survey in the organization’s history. The organizers declare a historic victory for inclusion and present their guiding principle with the evening’s highest honor: Diversity Officer of the Year. For the first time, they’ve created an institution where absolutely everyone belongs.

The committee rises for a standing ovation. A junior staffer looks through the glass doors at the crowd of people who were escorted out and asks what the final report will say about them.

The chairwoman raises her champagne.

“We don’t count them.”

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Tammy Pondsmith was expelled from the Institute for Individual Dignity after asking whether the institution had ever met one, a question subsequently classified as a hostile workplace incident.

Tammy’s Suggested Reading for Anyone Planning to Argue With a Federal Judge

The following sources are offered for readers who prefer having their opinions contradicted by documented evidence rather than the much more fashionable method of shouting at strangers.

1. Library of Congress, The Segregation Era. Historical context for Jim Crow.
   https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/segregation-era.html
2. Fourth Circuit, Duvall v. Novant Health (2024). Discrimination liability upheld; punitive damages vacated.
   https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca4/22-2142/22-2142-2024-03-12.html
3. U.S. Supreme Court, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard/UNC (2023). The majority opinion and dissents.
   https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/20-1199
4. U.S. District Court, Nuziard v. Minority Business Development Agency (2024). Government-contracting discrimination and the agency’s unconstitutional racial presumption.
   https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/texas/txndce/4:2023cv00278/374447/60/
5. Pew Research Center, In Tight U.S. Presidential Race, Latino Voters’ Preferences Mirror 2020 (2024). Voter priorities, including the economy and immigration.
   https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2024/09/24/in-tight-u-s-presidential-race-latino-voters-preferences-mirror-2020/
6. Pew Research Center, Behind Trump’s 2024 Victory (2025). Validated voter analysis and demographic voting patterns.
   https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/behind-trumps-2024-victory-a-more-racially-and-ethnically-diverse-voter-coalition/
7. Associated Press, To Reach Latinos, Some Democrats Pivot to Talk More About the Economy and Less About Immigration (2025). Reporting on campaign strategists reassessing identity-centered outreach.
   https://apnews.com/article/latinos-democrats-immigration-economy-933707d43741a0c3f97242b33f4ad8e6
8. Patricia Devine and Tory Ash, Diversity Training Goals, Limitations, and Promise (2022). Annual Review of Psychology.
   https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-psych-060221-122215
9. Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev, Why Diversity Programs Fail (2016). Harvard Business Review.
   https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail

10. Nicholas Confessore, America Is Under Attack: Inside the Anti-DEI Crusade (2024). The New York Times, republished by The Salt Lake Tribune. Investigative reporting based on internal documents, fundraising proposals, and coordinated political activity.
    https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2024/01/24/america-is-under-attack-inside/
11. Associated Press, As DEI Policies Come Under Legal Attack, Philanthropic Donors Consider How to Adapt (2024). Reporting on financial support, litigation, and organized responses from opposing sides of the DEI controversy.
    https://apnews.com/article/dei-nonprofits-affirmative-action-freedom-fund-a5d3928a2c9bc8b85e844314664ec275

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As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.