I attended former University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson’s January 30 talk at the Canadian Tire Centre with what appeared to be about 5000 white people. Peterson has risen to fame doing things like calling “Equity, Diversity and Inclusion”, “Diversity, Inclusion and Equity” or DIE. And he hates DIE. I mean he really hates it.
In a January 2022 National Post article Peterson said, “Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity — that radical leftist Trinity — is destroying us. Wondering about the divisiveness that is currently besetting us? Look no farther than DIE. Wondering — more specifically — about the attractiveness of Trump? Look no farther than DIE. When does the left go too far? When they worship at the altar of DIE, and insist that the rest of us, who mostly want to be left alone, do so as well. Enough already. Enough. Enough.”
Peterson believes the current system has some flaws but essentially works on “meritorious selection”. He implies that white people, especially white men, dominate so many places because they have pulled up their boot straps and risen to that level on their own merit. He says things like employment equity (or affirmative action in the US) are misguided and lead to unqualified members of equity seeking groups getting hired because, “there simply is not enough qualified BIPOC people in the pipeline to meet diversity targets quickly enough (BIPOC: black, indigenous and people of colour, for those of you not in the knowing woke).”
Peterson’s claim that there aren’t enough qualified brown folks demonstrates his poor understanding of Canada’s federal Employment Equity Act. The Act does set EE group hiring targets for federally regulated organizations but those targets are based on the percentage of qualified members of those groups available in the workforce, known as workforce availability.
So if, for example, a department is looking to hire engineers, and 7 percent of qualified engineers available in the workforce are women, they must try to achieve 7 percent female engineers in their organization. So saying there aren’t enough qualified people to meet the target makes no sense when the target directs organizations to choose only from pools of qualified candidates.
Peterson’s hate of EDI is rooted in two central beliefs: that society should prioritize individual – not group – rights and responsibilities, and that society should be based on equality of opportunity not equality of outcome.
The first belief focuses on “groups” like LGBTQ+ folks or women, asking for rights and Peterson opposing that with really logical sounding (at first) quotes like, “Groups can’t have rights because no group can be held responsible.” So what about things like the Persons case that gave women the right to be legally recognized as persons? Or what about when slavery was abolished and gave Black people the right not to be owned? In both cases it was individual women or Black people who were granted rights because of being part of a group – a critical nuance Peterson misses.
But what about group responsibility? Peterson is right about not being able to hold groups responsible, but that’s not the point – it’s the individuals who are held responsible. Again, in the case of Black people and employment equity, individuals are held responsible for things like being honest about their qualifications and meeting their job requirements. If they don’t, they get fired (you can’t fire a group).
Peterson’s “equality of outcome” point is partly based on his misunderstanding of workforce availability and the evidence members of equity groups give to demonstrate the existence of systemic discrimination.
Peterson says organizations like universities are forced to provide equality of outcome by being required to have the same percentage of each equity group at every staff level as the percentage of that equity group in the population. And he says that if the organizations fail to meet that target, equity groups accuse them of systemic discrimination and that’s too simplistic a way to claim systemic discrimination.
First, as explained before, Employment Equity Act hiring targets are based on workforce availability of qualified candidates, not the percentage of that group in the general population. Second, most equity groups’ claims of systemic discrimination are based on decades of empirical data that they had to fight to get collected – not assumptions.
Peterson sees Western society as having some flaws but being the merit based best system in the world that has improved the lives of millions of people. He ignores the fact that two of the “flaws” – slavery and Indigenous genocide – are the foundation of the West’s wealth. He also ignores the glaring evidence of current systemic inequity: all the brown people working in low paying, gig economy jobs at places like Walmart, Amazon and Uber.
Peterson and his followers reflect a disturbing trend. They enjoy lifestyles in a system that causes and/or aggravates problems that disproportionately affect marginalized folks, like climate change or all the systemic issues that led to COVID disproportionately killing racialized people. However, they aggressively resist collective solutions to these problems – especially those led by government – as violations of their freedom. The Ottawa “Freedom Convoy” occupation was an example of this.
Peterson and his supporters just want to be left alone – with occasional interruptions from all the brown, mostly immigrant people – who clean their hotel rooms and deliver their Amazon packages and Uber Eats. And they don’t want to talk at all about their role in contributing to the systemic discrimination that severely limits the choices – and therefore the freedom – of so many racialized people, corralling them into those low paying jobs – and keeping them there.