DEI Assigns Minorities the Victim Role

Routine DEI processes — hiring rubrics, curricular 'oppression' audits, mandatory mentoring roles — can implicitly relabel minority faculty and students primarily as fragile victims rather than professionals, reshaping their career trajectories and public identities. That role assignment can produce two harms: invisibilizing individual competence and incentivizing performative suffering to gain recognition. — If widespread, this dynamic undermines the goals of inclusion and merit-based advancement, altering debates over affirmative action, campus governance, and professional diversity practices.