A no-nonsense black Chicago pastor slammed Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban for his wholehearted embrace of DEI policies, saying that Cuban’s position was “deeply flawed” and DEI policies are a “poisonous ideology.”
After Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stated, “Discrimination on the basis of race, which DEI does, is literally the definition of racism,” Cuban responded that it is a “a given that there are people of various races, ethnicities, orientation, etc that are regularly excluded from hiring consideration.”
Discrimination on the basis of race, which DEI does, is literally the definition of racism
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 3, 2024
Let me help you out and give you my thoughts on DEI
1. Diversity
Good businesses look where others don't, to find the employees that will put your business in the best possible position to succeed.
You may not agree, but I take it as a given that there are people of various… https://t.co/L00fl6ggUD— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) January 3, 2024
“I pastor one of Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods on the South Side and @mcuban’s defense of DEI is deeply flawed for one reason: this poisonous ideology has no impact on my community, the very community it professes to help,” Pastor Corey Brooks said.
Brooks noted that when people said DEI policies were being done in the name of his community, “Sometimes I laughed out loud at some of the claims. It was like listening to people who don’t know you talk about you as if they knew you deep down.”
He continued that Cuban’s assertion implied that the U.S. is systemically racist, adding, “I agree there is racism but not in the way that he thinks.”
“If @mcuban came into my community it wouldn’t take him long to understand that this DEI ideology is profoundly flawed, has no impact upon us, and creates more racial divisions,” he wrote. “The reality is that the countless of diversity programs that came into being since the late 1960s have been abysmal failures. Nearly every one of them, if not all, professed to have the goal of uplifting poor blacks after centuries of racial oppression. The original intent of Affirmative Action was true uplift by providing bootstraps: better schools, teachers and resources to uplift the undereducated segments of the black population.”
“However, this process of development was too slow for the many white university presidents who wanted to increase the diversity on their campuses now,” he pointed out. “They moved away from development to cold racial preferences. Diversity, not development, became the new virtue of our times. At the same time, our community was bombarded with one liberal policy after another since the 1960s.”
“Instead of embracing freedom and responsibility, too many of us allowed ourselves to be seduced into the culture of dependency. Those who could escape and make a life for themselves did and many did,” he recalled. “But for those of us who have been caught up in the multigenerational cycle of societal and governmental dependency, that is the only world they know. And we ask them to believe in the American Dream?”
“This is the world of bad faith that I’m trying to reverse every day with my work in the streets, which includes overseeing the building of a community center that came after long years of struggle. … many kids in my neighborhood have made it out — one of them was just awarded a prestigious fellowship at NASA.”
“The only tool I used with these youths: the American principles,” he declared. “Be on time. Say, yes sir, no sir. Respect your elders. Be responsible. Be accountable. Save money. Build credit. Plan for the future. Be a parent. Get married. You fall, get back up. Never give up. Just do it.”
“That is why I laugh out loud when I heard DEI advocates describe merit and punctuality as white supremacist values. Too many people were destroyed by this culture of dependency and now they want to take away all the remaining lifelines to a life of possibility and future?” he asked rhetorically.
“What Cuban doesn’t realize from his post is that the systemic racism that my community faces is not white supremacy but post-60s liberalism,” Brooks stated. “With diversity and not development as its focus, every one of those principles was created in the name of our inferiority.”
“It is my mission in life to develop strong individuals to the point where the thought of using race as an advantage would be an insult to their well-earned pride. We are only at the beginning of reversing the fortunes of our community and we have a long ways to go. We may not save everybody. But we know the harsh realities and it is our refusal to look way to some false ideological comforts that gives us the best chance of giving these young Americans a good life. That is how you create a deep and meritorious talent pool,” he concluded.