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January 26, 2024 - 9:20pm
An Oregon county including parts of Portland, Oregon, has dismantled its government’s diversity, equity and inclusion programmes.
Efforts to defund the county’s million-dollar DEI programme have taken about a year, Ben West, a member of the five-person county board of commissioners, told Fox this week.
West, a Republican who was elected in 2022, has been a vocal critic of diversity initiatives, which he considers divisive. “In Clackamas, we promote classical liberal and American values, a good functioning government over ideology, promoting and hiring based on merit and competency, and not incessantly focusing on a person’s immutable traits,” wrote West. “The EDI work was divisive and heavily influenced by a radical ideology that measures fairness on the equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity. No longer.”
Portland, the whitest city in America, has a conflicted history over policies which contributed to its racial composition. Oregon was the only state in the US to explicitly bar black people from living in it upon its founding; violators could be whipped. In 2020, the heavily blue city was the site of 100 days of protests, many of which turned violent. The city’s leadership responded by making massive cuts to its police budget and staffing in June 2020 before reversing course the following year following a surge in crime.
Clackamas County praised a local community college for its DEI efforts in 2022, stating that the county was “part of a larger cultural shift”. But within a year, the county board had a 4-1 Republican majority, which has since taken a knife to the county’s diversity efforts.
The board’s lone Democrat, Martha Schrader, said that shutting down DEI was a mistake. “An extreme agenda is taking over,” she told Oregon Live. “Commissioners would be wise to lean into the expertise and history of the equity office in Clackamas County to understand the important work of the equity office that addresses the unique needs of our diverse workforce and community.”
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SubscribeWokeness is finally awakening those it seeks to vilify and destroy by its racist oppressor/oppressed agenda. Reasonable people, many who consider themselves liberal, have begun to realize that the landscape shifted beneath them as they slept through our culture’s descent into progressive madness. The questions are: has too much damage already been done? Can an effective sustained cogent responses organize and around what leadership? Are the generations now coming of age likely to ever reject the indoctrination they’ve received in lieu of education? The massive edifices of Big Academia, Big Media, and Big Tech are working overtime to drown the baby of rational resistance in its crib. UnHerd, the Free Press, Claremont Institute, the new University of Austin, and others give me cautious hope but there is much work to do against formidable odds.
“UnHerd, the Free Press, Claremont Institute, the new University of Austin, and others give me cautious hope but there is much work to do against formidable odds.”
Agreed. And this recent decision by Clackamas County to dismantle DEI is a reminder that Blue States are actually Blue Blobs: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA, and San Diego are all deep Blue cities (blobs on the map), but travel 50 miles (or less) inland and you’re in Red country and those folks have a voice too.
The other day you expressed frustration that one might write a comment on Unherd to little effect because of bias in the readership. I have no idea whether your comment aligns to the tribal jungle drums, but I agree with your concerns. Turning this around will take time. It took about 40 years to march through the institutions in one direction …. it will take many to turn it back. Positively, pockets of resistence are breakIng out across the piece (work, colleges, finance (ESG), etc. My fear in the UK is that Starmer will get a Liam Byrne-style note, have no room for manoeuvre economically and double down on left wing cultural views, which would also go some way to appeasing Momentum.
“Commissioners would be wise to lean into the expertise and history of the equity office in Clackamas County to understand the important work of the equity office that addresses the unique needs of our diverse workforce and community.”
Never, EVER, vote for someone who talks like that.
It has a creepy tone, I’m not familiar enough with American politics to follow the tone, is it smug self serving hubris, or is it a veiled threat. Either way, you are right, such people should be shunned and definitely not elected to positions of power.
The tone has corporate echoes to it. Learned language which seeks to make the author sound clever.
A small point, but Clackamas County only contains about 1% of Portland, if that. The vast majority of Portland is within Multnomah County, Clackamas mostly covers the rural and hilly region to the south and southeast of Portland.
The world will be better when all such things are wiped out.
Whatever the intent, the results have been a disaster.
The people who truly benefit from the extremes of the DEI ideology are comprised entirely of a few wealthy authors and a handful of white NPR tote bag wielding HR ladies… They should all get real jobs and leave the rest of us to work together to get along; things were moving largely in a good direction before they showed up and told us, if indirectly and in the name of “equity”, to start treating each other based on our most trivial characteristics again…
Matt: Your first sentence slayed me. First big laugh of the weekend. Thanks,
I’m to the point where the most intolerable thing is not Woke lectures but lectures from the “Always Centrists” claiming people are exaggerating this stuff.
Always Centrist defines “Establishment.” If the people that think they get to dictate the Overton Window just run with with whatever the current thing is until it runs out of gas than they aren’t good Guardians of Democracy.
Believe the stuff you say and be prepared to defend it. If its a good idea it will stand up to scrutiny eventually. Debate in good faith. Everybody has plenty to learn. These left-wing people make things too complicated and can’t defend anything rationally but still act like they know everything. Anybody in the “Center” defending current Left Wing Orwellian Ideology will eventually need to backtrack.
Mention “Oregon was the only state in the US to explicitly bar black people from living in it upon its founding; violators could be whipped.”
Doesn’t mention that the last of those laws was repealed 100 years ago.
Objective reality always wins out in the end.
Exterminate the brutes.