Meritocracies vs DEI and Tom Homan’s Immigration Slip

So, folks, today I really wanted to talk about meritocracy, which is that, I don't know, what would you call it, that nirvana that the conservative right wants everything to be at.

They want it to be like the NFL, where everything is a meritocracy, where you have black people that thrive because they're the best. Look at the NBA and the NFL, they say. But is that right? Does that make a lot of sense? I wanted to talk about that. But before we get there, folks, I've got to just throw this out. You've heard that story about the three U.S. Citizens who are age 2, 4, and 7 who were swiftly deported from Louisiana.

And I'll give you just a snippet of what it's about here if you haven't heard. It's the three U.S. Citizen children from two different families were deported with their mothers by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the early hours of Friday morning. One of them is a four-year-old with stage four cancer who was deported without medication or the ability to contact their doctors, the family lawyers have said. So we have that situation that's going on.

And then you have the administration trying to push back the concern, push back what they're doing. No, what we're doing is okay, they say. What we're doing is okay. These people came in illegally, nevermind the fact that they were running from a more than likely certain death, not all of them, but most of them. That's why they were coming in here. That's a necessity defense.

Where, yes, breaking the law by running into another border to escape death, is a less egregious thing than actually getting killed. Necessity defense. They don't care about that. They don't care about due process, evidently, because these people didn't get it. But what happened in this situation? So listen to this clip here from Tom Homan. What is he? The ICE czar, they called him. The border czar underneath Stephen Miller and Donald Trump. Really nice guy.

So here he is talking about this situation, folks. And all of a sudden, he goes from not knowing anything about it to, oh, I know about that situation. And he kind of, it happened sort of automatically. Like he didn't want to talk about it. But then he gave some facts that obviously indicated that he knew what the situation was about.

Here he is. Have a listen. On Friday, there were three American citizen children born here who were deported along with their mothers from Louisiana down to Honduras. And according to advocates, one of them is a four-year-old child with stage four cancer, a rare form of metastatic cancer, who was sent back to Honduras without getting to talk to a doctor and without medication.

I understand this child's mother entered this country illegally, but isn't there some basis for compassionate consideration here that should have allowed for more consultation or treatment? Well, it certainly is discretion. I'm not aware of the specific case, but no U.S. citizen child was deported. Deported means you've got to be reported by the immigration judge. We don't report U.S. citizens. The mother was deported along with the children.

Children aren't deported. The mother chose to take the children with her. Oh, so Tom, you did know about the situation. The mother, you heard that pause. The mother chose to take the children with her. So that makes it all right, I guess, right? That makes it okay?

Not really. When you look at the article, it says lawyers say the families were taken to Alexandria, Louisiana, a three-hour drive from New Orleans, where they were prevented from communicating with their family members and legal representatives and then put on a flight to Honduras. Oh, that's how you did it. So let's just paint the picture. The mother comes in on what was going to be a routine check, and I guess she's got the kids with her.

She gets taken into custody immediately. She's not able to contact her husband. She's not able to contact any lawyer. And there she stands with all of these ICE people looking at her. You're going to get sent back to Honduras. They probably told her. What do you want to do with the kids? Well, what in the hell do you think I want to do with the kids? I'm not going to leave them with you, for God's sakes.

Ice people. I mean, if she was able to talk to her husband, he might have said, I'll be right down there. I can get the kids or something. But no, none of that was allowed to happen, folks. And I know a lot of people think that these people ought to be sent back, but there are right ways and wrong ways to do that.

And this is obviously a wrong way to do that they were probably clicking their heels at ice because she's taking kids with her out of here right birthright citizenship kids getting sent back with mom hey man thumbs up that's how they operate though that there's a certain human element that's not there with these people where do they find these people what was wrong what would be wrong with allowing the mother to talk to her husband to say, hey, I've got to go back.

They've got me. Can you take the kids? I don't really want to bring them back. Obviously, the one has cancer and is getting treatment, which is probably non-existent. I know it's non-existent in Honduras. So where is the humanity in this? Where's the due process, folks? I mean, it's, they don't want you to know all the facts because the facts you. Hurt their case in so many ways. It shows them to be heartless. The facts show them to be out of control.

They don't want you to know, but it's out there. Washington Post, April 26.

So folks, moving on to Charlie Kirk here. He wants you to live in a world where everything is based on meritocracy, right? And he's using the NBA and the NFL as an example of where meritocracies just work splendidly. Because in the NBA, we've got 75% blacks. In the NFL, we've got probably 50% blacks. See, it works. Before, we had racism, he says, if you can call That's what he just barely concedes, you know, that blacks weren't allowed to play.

But now we've made it all right, and it's a meritocracy that's working. This is what we want to promulgate throughout the whole United States. It should all be this way. Don't you get it? Well, no, I don't get it. And folks, here's the exchange. So Charlie Kerr, Turning Point USA, you know, he's got this organization that's well-funded.

Pushes things like this. And in this particular circumstance on TikTok, he has a channel where he's sitting in a microphone and he's got all of his acolytes in front of him, followers, acolytes, whatever they are. And then there's always somebody in the audience that comes up that has a counterpoint, a question. And it's really just a springboard for him to go into something like a meritocracy and a way to prove that it's all okay.

And here's how that went, folks the opposite you're mistaken my friend it's actually we're getting rid of any racial stereotyping what happened was actually a form no dei is racial stereotyping so what actually was before was a form of white preference dei which is white supremacy or whatever and then we got rid of it we said we're not going to discriminate it and the quality of play got better do you guys see the difference between the two if

the nba is 75 black because it's on merit great terrific if If the NFL is half black because I'm merit, we don't want to force race. We want excellence and meritocracy over race in every possible circumstance. In every possible circumstance, they want a meritocracy. Well, here's why that's a bad idea, folks. Sports like the NBA and the NFL are very narrow meritocracies. They reward very specific, visible, measurable talents.

Things like speed, strength, height, athleticism In real life, the rules are not that clear-cut Biases exist, conscious and unconscious. Biases that affect hiring, promotions, housing, education, access And pay in ways that aren't as obvious as a three-point shot or a touchdown And it's been going on for a long time. There have been historical systemic problems that made DEI necessary, none of which people like Charlie Kirk and the far conservative right want to

deal with. We've had things like redlining. You remember that? That's where we had black families that were historically denied mortgages outside designated black neighborhoods in the 30s through the 60s. This happened via the HOLC maps and FHA policies. And what did this do? It blocked wealth creation. Homeownership is how most Americans and their families build wealth, and they weren't allowed to do that. We've had problems in employment discrimination.

Black workers were systemically excluded from unions and high-paying jobs, especially pre-solar rights era. We've had educational inequity. Black schools were severely, severely underfunded during segregation. So there's a lot of reasons why we have something like DEI. In fact, folks, there were a lot of studies that were done. And I'm just going to give you like the five-second detail on some of these. There was that study that was done in 2004, Bertrand and Mullinathan,

study from 2004. It was also called the Resume Audit Study. And the title of it was pretty clever. It was, Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakeisha and Jamal? and what they did was they sent out resumes with either white-sounding names or black-sounding names. The end result was that the resumes with white-sounding names got 50% more callbacks, even when qualifications were identical.

It's like an unconscious bias, isn't it? Then the Economic Policy Institute did a study on ongoing wage gap reports, and what they found was that black workers have faced persistent wage gap problems since at least the 70s. Even the Federal Reserve did a study in 2017 and 2019. It was called the Report on Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households, and that showed that black workers earn less and have much lower net wealth compared to white workers at every education level.

So there's been a lot of problems here and now we're getting into college access that was a problem too for blacks black students are underrepresented elite colleges relative to their percentage of the population lower family wealth are some of the problems weaker school funding and less access to expensive tutoring test prep things like that are huge factors.

So i guess where i'm going with this folks and it kind of makes sense when you think about it this way many nba players went through college basketball programs where dei helped ensure their access to that college and without dei many of those talented black athletes that charlie's talking about might not have had the same access to scholarships college facilities coaching visibility and pathways into the nba and when you look at the the reality of it here there are things called HBCUs,

historically back black colleges and universities, bolstered by DEI funding, by the way, produced some very legendary NBA players. So yes, Charlie Kirk, DEI helped open doors to colleges, which in turn fed the NBA talent pipeline. That's how they got there at DEI. They just didn't appear. They don't have that.

A lot of these kids don't have that kind of money, Especially some of the black kids Unfortunately don't have that kind of money To just appear at some of these Top level universities To get ultimately Drafted into the NBA.

So the NBA is not the real world. You can measure a slam dunk, but you can't measure a resume in the same objective way. Systemic racism in housing, education, and employment still creates unequal starting lines. DEI is not unfair. It's just an attempt to make sure people who have been historically boxed out get a chance to compete, folks. So don't call it DEI if that makes you feel any better, conservative.

But to say that we don't need to be cognizant of what it does is actually a way to keep those folks from having a level playing field. And I don't know about you, but I don't necessarily want to live in a United States that isn't equitable, that doesn't offer a level playing field for these black players to ultimately get into the NBA. I don't think that's a United States that really anybody wants when you get down and think about it.

I think a lot of Republicans, when they think about this and conservatives are like, oh yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. They wouldn't have been there. In those colleges they wouldn't be on that playing field in that game that i'm watching on saturday if it wasn't for dei something to think about till next time folks.