Imagine Intellectual Diversity in the Diversity Industry: “The New York Times” “Endorses” DEI Dissident
Imagine Intellectual Diversity in the Diversity Industry: “The New York Times” “Endorses” DEI Dissident
What will it mean for Karith Foster and her message of unity?
My first real job was working at ABC Network News in New York.
It was there that I, a floppy-haired immigrant from San Diego, first learned about the special hold The New York Times has on our nation’s shapers of news and opinion.
When something—a book, an idea, a person—was covered favorably in the newspaper of record, it enjoyed instant credibility.
It seemed like the paper was on everyone’s desk and in every meeting at 147 Columbus Avenue. Countless stories made the jump from its page to the screen.
That was way back in the aughts. But even with all the media upheavals since then, the outsized influence of The Times remains.
I often lament that influence. Take, for instance, the mainstreaming of a staple of Diversity Equity and Inclusion workshops—microaggression training.
In recent years, I’ve been immersed in The Coddling of the American Mind. I directed the soon-to-be-released feature documentary based on The New York Times(!) bestselling book by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.
After reading the book, examining the microaggression literature, and speaking with many teens and twenty-somethings who have experienced such trainings, I’ve come to see microaggression training as harmful to just about everyone involved.
As The Coddling movie explores, it can be especially harmful to those it’s supposed to benefit most, racial minorities.
I’ve examined how The Times played an important, perhaps the most important role, in popularizing “microaggressions,” a once-obscure academic term that’s now casually referenced by teens on TikTok.
The Times has also done plenty to elevate the king of “common enemy” DEI training, Ibram X. Kendi (referenced 140 times by the paper, including in flattering dispatches, like this interview titled “Ibram X. Kendi Likes to Read at Bedtime”).
So yesterday I was quite surprised when I saw my good friend Karith Foster featured prominently and positively in The Times. Foster is a diversity trainer, but she’s nothing like her famous counterpart.
As an accomplished standup comedian, Foster incorporates comedy into her presentations.
And while Kendi divides people into “oppressor” and “oppressed” groups based on immutable characteristics like race, Foster employs a “common humanity” approach—she calls it INVERSITY™—that unites people of all kinds.
The difference comes through during a keynote address that Foster delivered to Woodward, an aerospace company:
Shortly after taking the stage, she asked everyone to close their eyes and raise their hands in response to a series of provocative questions: Had they ever locked the car when a Black man walked by? Had they thought, yes, Jewish people really are good with money? Had they questioned the intelligence of someone with a thick Southern accent?
People raised their hands tentatively, even fearfully. By the time Ms. Foster finished, nearly every hand — including her own — was up.
“Congratulations. You’re certified human beings,” she said.
My wife and I have been close friends with Foster for many years. We first met her on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, at Ballgame’s Laugh Lounge, a comedy show hosted by my comedian brother Matty Balaker.
We teamed up to develop a docuseries about female standup comedians, and then my wife and I featured Foster in our 2016 documentary Can We Take a Joke? (It’s still streaming on plenty of platforms including Prime Video).
It included comedians like Jim Norton and the late, great Gilbert Gottfried, and was the first mainstream film to address cancel culture (then called “outrage culture”).
It was also the first time Foster’s dissident approach to diversity attracted a national audience, and, as she told me in a February Shiny Herd interview, “Can We Take a Joke? was like the powder keg that blew INVERSITY™ into the atmosphere.”
Foster went on to speak at dozens of universities and corporations. Her career was going very well, but it could have been going even better but for the diversity industry’s disdain for intellectual diversity.
Even though it fails the effectiveness test, Foster told me that “almost 100%” of DEI workshops at universities and corporations conform to Kendi’s “common enemy” mold.
And recently, she found herself punished for not doing the same. She was disinvited from a speaking opportunity at a major California university.
The professor who had lobbied to bring her to campus informed Foster that his bosses decided her “messaging was not in line with how they wanted to approach things.”
It didn’t stop with a disinvitation, said Foster.
“He was, like, “I hate to say this to you, Karith, but you're unofficially blacklisted. You're on a list.”
And yes, Foster, a black woman, was blacklisted by white people. It’s another example of white people policing the views of minorities.
But maybe some Gray Lady pixy dust can change that.
Maybe the tacit endorsement of The Times will free her from the blacklist and shoot Foster’s career into the stratosphere. I spoke with her yesterday, and early indications point in that direction.
Take note you students and corporate employees who are forced into DEI workshops that deliver little more than division and distrust.
Chances are your diversity deans and HR directors are as spellbound by The Times as my ABC News colleagues were.
Armed with the link to The Times piece that showcases Foster, the decision makers in your organizations might finally pay attention to your requests for something different.
Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His recent work includes “Little Pink House”starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, “Can We Take a Joke?” featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and a forthcoming feature documentary based on the bestselling book, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.
