A Surviving Facts Blog
Guess what, white men? Your anti-diversity policies are backfiring.
Since Trump’s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion, fewer white men are getting into and going to college. In fact, elite private universities such as Brown University, Georgetown and others are reporting sharp declines in white male enrollment, the lowest they have ever seen. This is the exact opposite of the surge in white male college attendance that conservatives imagined ending DEI would bring about. Conservative white men have claimed for years that DEI has discriminated against them, allowing women and minorities to take enrollment spots that were rightfully theirs. Surprise! As progressives have tried to tell them for years, this simply isn’t true.
What’s happening?
Diversity, equity and inclusion programs actually have helped more white men get into college, especially at elite private universities which can consider gender in college admissions. Since 1971, under DEI laws, these universities have practiced gender balancing, an effort to have equal numbers of men and women in their entering freshmen classes. Why? More women than men have been going to college. In 2023, 800,000 more women than men applied to college. Over the past 40 years, nearly 40% more women than men enrolled in college. With such high numbers of women on campuses, private university DEI programs sought to balance the genders by accepting more men, even though white men’s grades and ACT and SAT scores were, and continue to be, lower. In plain speak: white men have performed worse than women and have had to be granted special treatment to get into private universities. Public universities are not allowed to use gender in admissions decisions, which has meant more women than men have automatically and already been going to public universities.
The Trump administration has now said that the private universities cannot consider gender in admissions. This is great news for women. Based on merit alone, women and minorities will receive more acceptances into higher education. Private college campuses, like public ones, will soon be primarily female. Women are doing better than men.
White men have become victims of their own misguided egos. White men have believed that they are inherently better than women and minorities. While they have lived this fantasy, women and minorities have been working hard to get into college, perform better on standardized tests and get better grades. White men on the other hand, have rested on their arrogance, falling behind year after year.
White men are harmed by their own privilege. They have been accustomed to getting everything they want, often without the effort women and minorities have had to exert. White men’s inherent privilege and self-preferential power have assured them of opportunities they have not earned and don’t deserve. Being male and white has been their entry ticket.
These times are gone. Now, white men will need to work for what they want. Many of these men don’t know how. They don’t understand the hours of studying, the necessity of social performance and good behavior and the extra efforts to set one’s self apart. They haven’t learned how to persevere through adversity, tolerate mistreatment and ridicule and ignore ignorance. They don’t know how to dig deep into their own resources, willpower and self-esteem to rally themselves in hard times. These are the techniques women and minorities have learned to survive.
Now, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is going to remove any kind of preferential characteristics from decision making for university admissions and for getting and keeping jobs. The premise is that white men have been discriminated against while others have been given opportunities white men deserve based on their inherent superiority. Conservatives expect barriers to be removed so that white men receive their birthright access to the advantages, wealth and mobility that is justly theirs. Just as they have with university admissions… oh wait, that doesn’t seem to be going as they had planned
Here’s a quick reminder: white men have 90% of the CEO roles in Fortune 500 companies. They hold 71% of leadership roles, 72% of C-suite roles, and 60% of senior leadership roles. These overweighted white male numbers exist even though women make up almost half of the overall workforce, receive more college degrees and perform better academically. White men have these advantages because they have been able to control access and entry. No more. Merit alone no longer gives them access.
So now DEI is dead, what are white men going to do? They cannot win on merit. They need the preferential treatment they fought to end. I guess they’ll need to do what women and minorities know how to do so well: work hard. Good luck with that.
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