Opposition to DEI is wrong

I don’t know letter writer Willard Salemink of West Liberty, but I hear he is well known as owner and operator of a dredging company he started in 1983. My wife taught school there back in the ‘80s, but their paths didn’t cross.

Mr. Salemink holds a deep animus for DEI, which (he says) is “the road to ruin.” He sees DEI as a straitjacket that requires him to hire unqualified minorities instead of meritorious white men to operate his huge dredging machines.

Au contraire!

Mr. Salemink sees a “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies as those wrongly giving preference to minorities — as he says, where “whites, especially males, need not apply.” Aside from Mr. Salemink’s abuse of political correctness, he confuses affirmative action policies with those that broadly encourage tolerance for differences in workplaces, in schools and universities — and on the streets of West Liberty. And, as importantly, at the town’s polling places.

Merit is at the top of Mr. Salemink‘s job descriptions. OK. But failing to acknowledge an African-American or Latino person could ever do the job is wrongheaded. Mr. Salemink’s confusion is a dot of blindness sadly shared by many. His need to advocate for it is reprehensible.

In a universe that preaches “liberty and justice for all,” Mr. Salemink should know our brand of American democracy is based on pluralism, “E pluribus unum,” where inclusion and the Golden Rule are universal values.

Gerald Ott

Ankeny