DEI Lessons from Star Trek and History

Part 1: Individuals and organizations that thrive by pitting people against each other.

The original Star Trek is a treasure trove of entertaining (albeit heavy-handed) moral parables, many of which offer insights into group and race relations.

One of my favorite episodes is "Day of the Dove," where a malevolent alien entity lures the Starship Enterprise and a Klingon starship to a distant planet with fake distress calls. This entity, which appears as a pulsating energy blob, incites violence between the two starship crews by planting false memories in their minds, making each side believe the other has committed terrible injustices and atrocities.

The blob thrives on this violent hatred; each time the humans and Klingons clash, it pulsates more vibrantly. Somehow, it makes Klingons and humans who are mortally wounded miraculously recover so they can keep fighting forever. However, Captain Kirk cleverly discerns the blob’s motives and informs the opposing Klingons. Both sides agree to focus on their shared interests, lay down their weapons, and laugh in camaraderie at the blob. This deprives the blob of sustenance, driving it away.

This scenario has some obvious past and current parallels. Throughout history, self-seeking individuals and organizations have thrived by enhancing and exploiting group distinctions and antagonisms. The Ottoman Empire is one prominent example. The ruling Ottoman Muslims thrived for centuries despite being vastly outnumbered by non-Muslims. They succeeded at this by starkly distinguishing between different subject groups, dividing them, and aligning them against each other. As one contemporary chronicler noted:

“Greeks, Serbs, and Bulgarians, to say nothing of Vlachs and Albanians, have each their peculiar aspirations, and by playing off one against another…the central authority maintains its power.”

As the Ottoman Empire unraveled, those carefully fostered group distinctions and antagonisms spawned horrendous violence and genocide: Turks and Kurds against Armenians, Croats against Serbs, and so on.

Other examples abound in more recent history. Examine any ethnic conflict over the last century, and you will find individuals who boosted their standing by promoting group divisions and exploiting the conflict. In Sri Lanka’s civil war, both government and LTTE (Tamil Tiger) leaders often sabotaged peace efforts because the ongoing clash helped sustain their power. As one obituary put it, LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran “refused to compromise to the end” and executed fellow Tamils who were willing to compromise along the way. In the Balkans, leaders like Milošević and Tudjman launched their political careers by invoking memories of past injustices and atrocities, maintaining their status and power by perpetuating conflict. The consequence was brutal ethnic violence. Palestinians have been led by a succession of similarly opportunistic figures, from Yasser Arafat to Yehya Sinwar. They inevitably abort or sabotage agreements for peace because it won’t sustain them the way never-ending conflict does.

Unfortunately, America has its own blobs that nurture and subsist on group enmity. The size of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) industry is estimated to exceed $10 billion and is projected to increase to $30 billion within a decade. Like the Star Trek blob, this one thrives by dividing people and nurturing group resentment. It is no coincidence that a Gallup poll found the percentage of Blacks who believe that race relations are “good” or “very good” declined from 70% to 33% over the past two decades—in lockstep with the growth of DEI programs. Several studies (e.g., here and here) have now shown that “diversity training” can exacerbate racial and ethnic tensions. No surprise: telling people they belong to different groups and suggesting that certain traits inhere to each group divides people against each other.

If we could wave a magic wand and eliminate racism and discrimination overnight, do you think the DEI blob would declare victory and fade away? Of course not. Just like the Star Trek blob, this blob wants to thrive, and it feeds on racial animus and conflict; if these run out, the blob will implant more invidious, false ideas to perpetuate its lifeblood and its own existence. If the supply of micro-aggressions wanes, it will conjure up some pico- or femto-aggressions.

Many prominent individuals have also operated as freelance blobs, encouraging and exploiting group animus for their own advancement. For example, Ibram X. Kendi has made millions promoting an agenda of racial division and payback (“the only solution to past discrimination is current discrimination”). President Biden has similarly attempted to improve his electoral standing by sowing racial discord and resentment. For example, his recent commencement speech at Morehouse College delivered a powerfully divisive message to Black graduates:

“It’s natural to wonder if the democracy you hear about actually works for you... What is democracy if you have to be ten times better than anyone else to get a fair shot?”

It was an unctuous and patronizing reprise of previous speeches in which he put on an affected intonation and told Black audiences that Republicans “are going to put y’all back in chains” and if they vote for Republicans, they “ain’t Black.”

If we allow conflict-seeking blobs to continue dividing us, we will be destined for perpetual group antagonism, just like the starship crews in "Day of the Dove." Like Captain Kirk and those starship crews, we need to recognize what the blobs are doing and then deprive them of sustenance and drive them away.