Conservative political commentator and author Heather Mac Donald condemned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts on college campuses nationwide at a Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy event Thursday.
Mac Donald said DEI is a “cover-up” for the “racial skill gap” caused by “a culture that makes excuses” for Black communities.
“At its core, the entire diversity agenda is about the academic skills gap, and it's about racial preferences,” she said.
Mac Donald’s statements come as federal organizations continue to crack down on DEI policies, and many colleges — and their students — have been left in the dark about programs’ futures. While DEI ostensibly covers a range of identifiers including financial status, race and gender identity, Mac Donald and other critics of DEI often focus their criticism — and legislative efforts — on Black students.
The impact of DEI on college admissions
Mac Donald told the crowd DEI programs unnaturally uplift Black students to positions outside their academic skill set, harming university programs through lowered graduation rates for Black students. However, data from the Civil Rights Project shows the opposite is true. Schools with affirmative action programs have both a higher Black student graduation rate and lower Black-to-white graduation gap than non affirmative action colleges.
Mac Donald argued the driving force behind DEI efforts nationwide is to “cover up the racial skill gap,” pointing to lower SAT scores among Black students as evidence.
When asked what would help close such education gaps, Mac Donald deflected the question, reiterating that DEI efforts in its current state do not help Black students bridge the gap at colleges.
According to the College Board, Black students in high school scored approximately one standard deviation below the nationwide average on the 2024 SAT. Mac Donald argued these lower scores enable “so-called” underrepresented minorities to be “catapulted into an academic environment for which they cannot competitively qualify” through DEI initiatives at college campuses across the country.
She said DEI programs give preferential treatment to minority groups, allowing them to be admitted to schools with scores that would be “automatically disqualified” if presented by a white student.
Affirmative action is intended to choose the most qualified individuals while achieving equal opportunity for all, according to Upstate Medical University, and does not require preferences. Instead, race, gender or nationality are factors to be considered similar to preferences given for geographic diversity on college campuses or for children of alumni.
Mac Donald says achievement gap caused by ‘culture that makes excuses’
Mac Donald also argued the Black-white achievement gap can be attributed to “a culture that makes excuses” in education starting at a young age, denying other factors could be at play.
“There should be more early emphasis on excellence in schools and not making excuses. I think we should all emulate Asian parents in their attention to students' school performance — doing homework, taking textbooks home, not running the streets. I think there needs to be a culture that values academic achievement,” Mac Donald told The Daily Cardinal.
The achievement gap can start as early as nine months old. Socioeconomic disparities, including income and differing levels of education between white, Black and Hispanic parents, often leads to higher-income and more educated families providing more resources for their children to do well in school, such as tutoring, according to the Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis.
Mac Donald said diversity departments at universities work to “cover up the racial skills gap and come up with a different explanation.” She said DEI officials and “liberal media” at large blame a “systemically racist society” as the reason for introducing DEI efforts.
She argued that academics leverage the idea of the West’s “unique” racism to implement systems of inclusion like “lower requirements” for Black students entering a school compared to their white counterparts, and believes it’s “bogus” that scholars refer to racism as a defining aspect of Western civilization because “there has not been a civilization anywhere that has not practiced slavery.”
Mac Donald referred to the Black Lives Matter movement, which spawned out of the death of George Floyd in 2020 as the “George Floyd mass psychosis.” She said the period of time following his death in which many companies strengthened their diversity hiring practices was a “mathematically illiterate” practice which failed to find the best candidates in the overall job market.
She said corporations were focused too much on hiring the most qualified person within a specific identity group rather than evaluating all applicants equally.
“My being female should earn me no privileges anywhere, and I know it does all the time,” Mac Donald said, noting that Fox News had asked her to panel at an event in which she was “the best female candidate” as opposed to the best candidate.
