As a number of big businesses continue to roll back “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” plans, a new anti-DEI framework is on the rise. It’s called MEI: Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence.
The framework was created by Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang, the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. He explained that for Scale, MEI means hiring only the best people for the job, demanding excellence, and prioritizing intelligence.
“We treat everyone as an individual,” Wang explained. “We do not unfairly stereotype, tokenize, or otherwise treat anyone as a member of a demographic group rather than as an individual. We believe that people should be judged by the content of their character — and, as colleagues, be additionally judged by their talent, skills, and work ethic.”
One of the major complaints against DEI is that it is rooted in racism and continues to perpetuate harmful stereotypes: “Most tellingly, DEI rests on the use of racial discrimination to remedy past racial discrimination, regardless of how remote.” Hiring individuals based on their background, education, accomplishments, and sheer intelligence is far more equitable than hiring people based on what demographic they fit into.
American linguist John McWhorter wrote in the New York Times about DEI in academia: “DEI programs today often insist that we alter traditional conceptions of merit, decenter whiteness to the point of elevating nonwhiteness as a qualification in itself, conceive of people as groups in balkanized opposition, demand that all faculty members declare fealty to this modus operandi regardless of their field or personal opinions and harbor a rigidly intolerant attitude toward dissent.” (emphasis added)
When DEI took corporate America by storm following major BLM protests in 2020, the ideology slowly eroded the merit-based hiring method used for generations. While every company has different needs and interests, hiring someone qualified and good at their job should be the top priority – not what they look like or what group they are part of. Needless to say, hiring or not hiring individuals based on the color of their skin is the definition of racism, but that practice has been disguised and wrapped up in a not-so-pretty package by the DEI agenda.
“Improving outcomes for Blacks or any struggling American begins with refocusing on meritocracy, achievement, building human capital and embracing the principles of a free-market system,” author Patrice Onwuka noted. “Lowering academic and professional standards for minority job applicants, setting low expectations for minority students, assigning levels of oppression to classes of people based on their skin color or gender rather than their unique situations and undermining values such as hard work and punctuality as signs of ‘whiteness’ do Blacks and minorities no good.” (emphasis added)
The DEI agenda does a grave disservice to minorities, assuming that they are incapable of being hired based on their own merits and achievements. That couldn’t be further from the truth. As Wang noted, “No group has a monopoly on excellence.”
Corporate America: bring back merit-based hiring, focused on excellence and intelligence. The DEI agenda is discriminatory, harmful, and does no one any good.
