Do you want a perspective other than the stifling woke orthodoxy being imposed on society through classrooms, TV shows, and corporate boardrooms? Tired of seeing “LGBTQ” this and “BIPOC” or “AAPI” that? Do you want a discussion of ideas without constant identity politics?
You just might be a white supremacist.
That’s essentially the message of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s latest attack on the mainstream conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom. You see, ADF had the gall to launch a “Viewpoint Diversity Score” to broaden the discussion in corporate boardrooms beyond the Left’s sacred cows.
The SPLC can’t stand for that, so it’s reaching for the tired old “white supremacy” card once again.
The SPLC gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy, but it weaponized that reputation to smear mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits. It publishes a map plotting parental rights groups; religious freedom organizations, including ADF; and pro-immigration enforcement groups alongside Klan chapters, suggesting that all sorts of conservative causes are driven by “hate.”
The SPLC’s annual report describes all groups on the map as part of the “organizational infrastructure … upholding white supremacy in the United States.”
What Is White Supremacy?
“White supremacy” once meant the idea that white people are superior to others and that society should be restructured to give them maximum power. Since the 1950s, this racism has rightly been pushed to the fringes of American public discourse, racial minorities have gained equal rights, and Americans have rejected race essentialism.
The Left, however, has embraced critical race theory, a Marxist worldview that attributes any racial disparity to racism and uses claims of systemic racism as a pretext to impose more government control.
Simultaneously, increasingly desperate leftist groups like the SPLC have realized that branding conservatives “racist” has lost its bite because Americans know it’s false—so, now they use an even more inflammatory term, justified by the false premises of CRT.
Under CRT, the SPLC can brand any conservative a supporter of “white supremacy” because it claims that American society is systemically racist. As such, anything short of a radical “anti-racist” restructuring of society amounts to donning a Klan hood.
The Viewpoint Diversity Score
How does ADF’s “Viewpoint Diversity Score” uphold “white supremacy”? Frankly, it doesn’t. The claim is absurd on its face.
The Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index measures companies’ respect for free speech and religious freedom, following the methods of the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. The Human Rights Campaign index pushes LGBTQ activism in corporate boardrooms, and its influence helps explain why Target promoted “tuck” swimsuits making males appear female and why a transgender influencer gave Bud Light the kiss of death. The Corporate Equality Index is a key part of the environmental, social, and governance movement pushing companies to adopt leftist positions on abortion, climate, and gender.
The ADF version pressures companies to provide breathing space for dissent from this woke orthodoxy. The Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index urges companies to “meaningfully respect customers, employees, shareholders, and other external stakeholders who hold diverse religious and ideological beliefs [and] foster viewpoint diversity in their workplaces.”
The ADF index isn’t trying to bully corporations to adopt its positions on political issues. Instead, it’s urging them to return to neutral, to recognize that not all Americans want to wear rainbow-flag pins and shout their abortions. Business should be about treating customers, employees, and shareholders well, regardless of what they believe.
It’s All About Power
The SPLC takes umbrage with this because it prefers the woke takeover of corporations. Scratch the surface of any woke complaint about “racism” and you’ll find an obsession with power underneath. The Viewpoint Diversity Score is calling out the Left’s tactics to dominate corporate boardrooms, and the SPLC can’t stomach it.
So the SPLC’s R.G. Cravens claims that “ADF’s public relations and legal crusades are intertwined with Christian supremacist and white supremacist ideologies.” According to Cravens, ADF’s efforts responding to diversity, equity, and inclusion “appear to resonate with white supremacist rhetoric that characterizes DEI policies as a form of ‘anti-white racism’ and a threat to white people brought about by ‘woke’ ideology.”
Yet anyone remotely familiar with criticism of DEI knows that Asian Americans, not whites, often find themselves most disfavored by “equity” practices that prioritize meeting racial quotas. Asian Americans cheered the Supreme Court’s overturning of racial preferences in college admissions not because they are secretly white supremacist, but because they value merit over “racial equity.”
Nowhere did Cravens provide a quote directly from ADF to demonstrate that the Viewpoint Diversity Score has anything to do with helping white people—because it doesn’t.
The SPLC just doesn’t have anything else to say.
