In recent years, both governments and corporations have openly embraced discriminatory “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies. But the resulting public backlash, and the Trump administration’s efforts to enforce anti-discrimination laws, have caused many to pull back.

That’s welcome news, but the sad reality is that DEI has yet to die, even in Oklahoma.

For example, the Oklahoma Housing Finance Authority has been sued for engaging in alleged illegal racial discrimination when administering a federal COVID mortgage-relief program.

The complaint noted that other states—even left-wing California—used race-neutral criteria to administer their programs. 

In Elaine Wilkinson v. Oklahoma Housing Finance Authority, nine plaintiffs allege that OHFA directed extra funds to “socially disadvantaged” individuals and defined that phrase to include a member of any group “that has been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias within American Society: African American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, LGBTQ+.”

Put another way, white, Asian, and Pacific Islander homeowners faced a higher hurdle to receive assistance, even though those categories include homeowners of Caucasian, Jewish, Middle Eastern, North African, Korean, Pakistani, Native Hawaiian, and Samoan descent.

The complaint stated that homeowners considered “socially disadvantaged” were allowed to seek homeowner assistance while having substantially higher incomes than individuals in other racial categories.

In July 2024, the group Do No Harm, citing open-records information, said the University of Oklahoma’s College of Medicine had “adopted potentially racially discriminatory admissions practices under the guise of ‘holistic admissions practices.’”

Do No Harm reported that the OU College of Medicine provided “financial scholarships to students based on racially discriminatory criteria” that would, in practice, “disadvantage people of certain racial and ethnic backgrounds—namely, nearly eight out of ten in-state residents for whom the university was intended to serve.”

In March, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened investigations into 45 universities for alleged violations of anti-discrimination law, including the University of Oklahoma’s Tulsa School of Community Medicine. 

On another front, Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols, a Democrat, recently announced signing an agreement with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation that prevents Tulsa police and municipal courts from pursuing charges against any alleged criminal who is a member of any of the more than 500 American Indian tribes in the United States. 

Nichols signed that agreement even though the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has held that cities and the state maintain jurisdiction over nonmember Indians on land within the historic boundaries of a tribe’s reservation.

Throughout human history, there have been varying levels of resistance to desegregation and societies based on merit. The adherents of DEI, which is an ideology in academic drag, apparently view historical error in favor of division not as a warning, but as a guidebook.

Photo credit: Cintaretvallery, via Wikimedia Commons