For decades, American hiring and admissions have been distorted by a legal and bureaucratic regime that promised equal treatment while repeatedly rewarding institutions for sorting people by race and sex. The Civil Rights Act itself does not exclude white men; Title VII protects employees from discrimination because of race and sex regardless of which race or sex they are. But affirmative action rules, consent decrees, diversity mandates, contracting preferences, and institutional risk management created powerful incentives to treat demographic categories differently.
Incentives shape behavior. Universities, Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and nonprofits learned to fear discrimination claims, bad publicity, activist campaigns, and regulatory scrutiny. Long before “wokeness” became a corporate religion, lawyers and compliance departments were already teaching institutions to think in terms of protected groups, disparate impact, representation targets, and litigation exposure.
The right does not need another conference panel lamenting DEI. It needs lawyers willing to make discrimination expensive. Equal protection will not enforce itself.