During an appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show, Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald went on a rant about racial diversity, which she said was antithetical to meritocracy. According to Mac Donald, any “institution” that “tells you they’re opting for diversity is telling you they have discarded meritocratic standards when it comes to hiring and promoting and admitting Blacks.”
Mac Donald also claimed that the federal government, under President Biden, is “handing out billions of dollars of federal taxpayer money” based on “who has the darkest skin color.”
Mac Donald lashed out at campus protesters who want their colleges to stop doing business with Israel, referring to them as “the most spoiled people in human history.” And she accused the protesters of being “completely self-involved,” taking for granted that America is “drowning in goods” and “drowning in prosperity.”
“And meanwhile we’re tearing down science by saying if any standard of excellence has a disparate impact on Black and Hispanic students, we should tear it down,” Mac Donald complained. We should get rid of credentializing in medicine. We should credentialize on the basis of race, not knowledge of medicine.”
She also claimed that the “federal government under Biden is handing out billions of dollars of federal taxpayer money, based not on who is the best oncologist or who is the best neurologist to try and cure Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease, but who has the darkest skin color.” She went on to warn that “when the West tears itself down,” China will “take over.”
Megyn Kelly turned her attention to the civil and criminal trials of former president Donald Trump, which are mainly being spearheaded by Black attorneys. Kelly singled out Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — who is currently prosecuting the hush money case against Trump — and ridiculed his education and legal acumen.
“Now instead of sitting back and asking ourselves ‘Maybe Alvin Bragg doesn’t have it. Maybe Alvin Bragg’s Harvard Law education didn’t exactly do for him what we had hoped,’ you’ve got the Joy Reids of the world who are having a very different reaction,” Kelly said.
She then played a clip of MSNBC host Joy Reid who called it “wonderfully poetic” that “the first person to actually criminally prosecute Donald Trump is a Black Harvard grad.” She said that Trump is “being held to account by the very multicultural, multiracial democracy that he’s trying to dismantle.”
The clip ended with Reid jokingly saying “Go DEI. My DEIs are bringing it home.” “DEI” refers to diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, but has been used by racists to mock the idea of Black success as being unearned.
When asked for her opinion, Mac Donald accused Reid of “telling us to see the race of people within the law first, and to expect a sort of race war coming out of the legal profession against a man.” She called this an “absolute violation,” and said that attempts to hold Donald Trump accountable are merely a “vendetta” against him and his policies.
Mac Donald then launched into a tirade against racial diversity.
“If Joy Reid wants to play race card [sic], let’s look at what’s going on,” she said. “Joe Biden, when he came into office in early 2021, his administration announced that it would no longer be submitting the federal judicial nominees to the ABA for preclearance. … Biden said we’re not gonna do that. Why? … Because he said the ABA doesn’t support diversity.”
Mac Donald claimed that since Biden isn’t submitting the names of judicial nominees to the ABA for review, this meant his nominees were unqualified. But she did not mention that neither George W. Bush nor Donald Trump allowed the ABA to vet nominees, or that Trump’s judicial picks were overwhelmingly white men.
Instead, she faulted President Biden for nominating a high number of Black women, which she called a “disaster.” According to Mac Donald, the fact that, at one point, Black women made up 22% of his nominees meant he was “lowering standards,” since the skills of Black law students are “at the bottom of the barrel.”
She also alleged that “the skills gap” between Black people and white people/Asians is “is so high that you cannot have diversity and meritocracy at the same time.” “Any institution — like a university, a Federal Bar, a law firm — that tells you they’re opting for diversity is telling you they have discarded meritocratic standards when it comes to hiring and promoting and admitting Blacks,” she concluded.
