DEI, Demographics, And Market Distortion - Why Are People Who Don't Buy Things On Every Television Commercial?

The days of DEI - Diversity Equity Inclusivity - are waning.  After the halcyon years of the Biden era where minorities could do no wrong, when the black man was placed atop the human pyramid, the gay, lesbian, and transgendered were lionized, and the obese and mentally deficient given their places as equal partners with the beautiful and brilliant, the pendulum has begun to swing to the center.  

Everyone has a place in a pluralistic America, just not an equal place - the Constitution guarantees equal opportunity, but no members of the Scottish and English Enlightenment, the foundation of American democracy, would have claimed all people are equal. Yet the progressive Left has ignored history, socio-anthropology, and common sense, and claimed otherwise. 

Affirmative action, the first of the reconfiguration of natural law, began decades ago to attempt to right the wrongs of slavery and Jim Crow.  Black people were deserving of a leg up, a helping hand - it was the least that the descendants of white oppressors could do - and efforts were made to propel black people far ahead of what would be their likely place in a competitive, free society. 

Affirmative action was not a new idea. During Reconstruction, the radical Republicans in Congress engineered black majority state legislatures - installing former slaves in the houses of government.  These black men, after a hundred years in the cotton fields and for centuries before in the Paleolithic forests of Africa, dressed in waistcoats and ties and as out of their element could be, were a mockery of Georgia justice, incensed the white population, and set back the cause of integration by decades. 

Liberal Democrats learned nothing from this, ignored Hamilton, Jefferson, and Adams and passed laws to engineer integration.  Society, the marketplace, the forces of Darwinian competition, and liberal democracy were considered ill-suited to the recompensing system of  enforced equality.  Simply by being a descendant of slaves gave one privileges that no other race had - and this discrimination was cheered. 

At first it seemed like a good idea - forcing the electricians', carpenters', and plumbers' unions to open their doors to African Americans was heralded.  It sent a message to the white powers that be while not disturbing the social order - black people could fix toilets just as easily as white ones - but when the scheme got out of hand and when thousands of unqualified black students were admitted to colleges they would otherwise be unqualified and unsuited for, the blush was off the bloom of the rose.

These students even with intense remedial education could not make it past freshman year, and dropped out.  Meanwhile, the universities were reimbursed by the taxpayer for defaulted federal loans, and built stadiums and state-of-the-art locker rooms with the money. 

The affirmative action idea spread, and more and more unqualified black applicants were hired for jobs that others could do better.  They would 'mature in place', so the argument went; but more importantly, even though their productivity might not match white workers, the office environment would benefit from 'diversity'. 

The Dean of Harvard Law School even went so far as to say that the institution needed more black students from the inner city, for they, offspring of the incarcerated, legatees of dysfunction and social disorder, would make good advocates for racial justice.  

Of course after all this fol-de-rol Harvard could not fail them, so hundreds of unqualified 'lawyers' made their way into the legal world, pushed along by law firms anxious to show their commitment to diversity, deferring law boards, and giving these applicants an easier path. 

 

The program continued in other professional schools - and because of ill-advised ideology, less qualified doctors got moved up and out and into professional life.  Prospective patients, aware of medical schools' affirmative action programs, rejected these doctors, setting back the ideal of racial integration far more than it would have been without affirmative action. 

This, social biologists and market economists would say, is obvious, logical, and expected.  It is the way the free market works - it encourages talent, ability, and performance, and is uninfluenced by socio-politics.  If the market were to be left unencumbered by such interventions, American society would in all sectors be populated by the best possible people. 

Race, gender, and ethnicity - in recent years the only lens through which society should be viewed say progressives, disappears in a free market.  Physical, mental, artistic ability is recognized per se.  

Although the new conservative administration in Washington has aggressively dismantled DEI programs in both the public sector and in private institutions receiving federal grants, and while the American public finally can look forward to a restoration of equal opportunity as the ethos of the land, DEI still remains in one very visible area - advertising. 

Even though the American black population accounts for only thirteen percent of the total, and this population's average income and net worth is at the bottom of any economic scale, black people are in nearly one hundred percent of television commercials.  Hispanic Americans who represent twenty percent of the population are hardly seen.

Yes, black consumers buy a lot of Tostitos and McDonalds' burgers, but black actors are hawking Cartier and Mercedes as well. Market distortion in the name of equity means indifference to economic principles. 

 

Latinos don't have much purchasing power either but in marketing, volume counts. Their visibility is limited because of DEI - identifying Hispanics without serape, sombrero, or a pencil mustache is not easy.

Asians, although only seven percent of the population, are increasingly wealthy.  In market terms, they should be featured disproportionately. 

Black actors are seen not only in television commercials, but in just about every television series in exaggerated proportions.  Any foreigner  binge-watching American prime time television would be convinced that the black population is well over 50 percent. 

The American viewing population knows the game being played, but has - as one black commentator mentioned - black fatigue.  Blackness has been thrusted on the 87 percent non-black population ad infinitum, ad nauseam.  Such universal affirmative action has, as always, had the very opposite effect of that intended.  White Americans shout black 'Basta!', demand demographic common sense, and a return to equal opportunity, not equal exposure. 

Integration has been set back significantly.