Pastor Corey Brooks on Mark Cuban and the DEI controversy

Hi all,

Some of you may have been following the debate between Mark Cuban and Elon Musk on X. If not, here is the link.

I asked Pastor Corey Brooks, who appeared in our “What Killed Michael Brown?” documentary what he thought of the debate. After all, he works in one of Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods and is now in the process of building a massive community center that will give kids a safe haven from violence to focus on everything from receiving tutoring to jobs training as well as world-class basketball court and swimming pool. (Please visit the Project HOOD website to learn more.) After hearing the pastor’s response I encouraged him to write out his thoughts.

And here they are:

From my church located in one of Chicago’s most violent and impoverished South Side neighborhoods, I watched with disquieting fascination the public trial of Claudine Gay. I followed the debates — online, TV, my neighborhood — on the influence and impact of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) movement not just in the case of Gay but throughout America. What I heard often was that these DEI policies were being done in the name of my community and that they were designed to uplift the people I see every day on these streets. Sometimes I had to laugh at some of the claims because I can tell you with certainty that none of this DEI stuff has trickled down to my community. 

It was like listening to people who don’t know you talk about you as if they knew you deep down.

Perhaps the most visible example was Mark Cuban’s response to Elon Musk’s claim that “Discrimination on the basis of race, which DEI does, is literally the definition of racism.” Cuban, whom I admire as a native of the Hoosier state and whom I use as an example of creating possibilities for my neighborhood, responded that it is “a given that there are people of various races, ethnicities, orientation, etc that are regularly excluded from hiring consideration.” 

The implication here is that the United States is a systemically racist country. I agree there is racism but not in the way that he thinks. 

Cuban then wrote, “By extending our hiring search to include them, we can find people that are more qualified.” This rather simple sentiment is one that most people would find agreeable and I do so to a certain degree. 

What this ignores is how profoundly education and skill development has declined in our community for decades, for generations. We are profoundly behind in nearly every education, social, and economic metric and while living in an ever-changing world that seems to be speeding beyond the grasp of our fingertips. 

If Cuban came into my community it wouldn’t take him long to understand that it is truly a privilege to believe in the DEI ideology. When one applies the word privilege to an act or a person the implication is that it was unearned. Cuban will never have to pay the price for the good intention of believing in an ideology that is profoundly flawed, has no impact upon us, and creates more racial divisions. 

The reality is that the countless of diversity programs that came into being since the late 1960s have been abysmal failures. Nearly every one of them, if not all, professed to have the goal of uplifting blacks after centuries of racial oppression. The original intent of Affirmative Action was true uplift by providing bootstraps: better schools, teachers and resources to uplift the undereducated segments of the black population. 

However, this process of development was too slow for the many white university presidents who wanted to increase the diversity on their campuses now. As a consequence, they moved away from development to cold racial preferences. Diversity, not development, became the new virtue of our times.

At the same time, our community was bombarded with one liberal policy after another since the 1960s. We were encouraged to move out of our homes — many admittedly not in good condition, but which we owned — and into housing projects where we had zero equity. Man-in-the-house rules broke apart too many families and made the government a third partner in too many relationships. Our schools produced far too many illiterates. For decades, our culture rewarded black deviancy shown on countless of BET rap videos. The only way too many of our children know how to buy food is with Uncle Sam’s dollar.

Instead of embracing freedom and responsibility, too many of us allowed ourselves to be seduced into the culture of dependency. Those who could escape and make a life for themselves did and many did. But for those of us who have been caught up in the multigenerational cycle of societal and governmental dependency, that is the only world they know. And we ask them to believe in the American Dream?

This is the world of bad faith that I’m trying to reverse every day with my work in the streets, which includes overseeing the building of a community center that came after long years of struggle. I have encountered far too many tragedies. A young man I mentored since he was knee-high was shot dead and all I could think about was the promising future he had been working toward. Another kid I mentored made a dumb mistake and is now on trial for murder. But many kids in my neighborhood have made it out — one of them was just awarded a prestigious fellowship at NASA. 

Here is DeMario, second from left, at NASA:

The only tool I used with these youths: the American principles. Be on time. Say, yes sir, no sir. Respect your elders. Be responsible. Be accountable. Save money. Build credit. Plan for the future. Be a parent. Get married. You fall, get back up. Never give up. Just do it. 

That is why I laugh out loud when I heard DEI advocates describe merit and punctuality as white supremacist values. Too many people were destroyed by this culture of dependency and now they want to take away all the remaining lifelines to a life of possibility and future? 

I know Cuban surely doesn’t believe in this ridiculousness — he is a businessman after all. I also hope that he surely recognizes how racist it is to create the belief that standards — educational to societal — across America must be lowered in the name of helping black people. 

What Cuban doesn’t realize from his post is that the systemic racism that my community faces is not white supremacy but post-60s liberalism. With diversity and not development as its focus, every one of those principles was created in the name of our inferiority.

That is why it was disappointing to learn how little Gay produced by way of academic merit and yet rose to the presidency of Harvard because of her race. And seeing people like Cuban defend these diversity ideologies only reminded me of how profound the stigma is that we cannot succeed without race. 

It has been my singular mission in life to develop strong individuals to the point where the thought of using race as an advantage would be an insult to their well-earned pride. We are only at the beginning of reversing the fortunes of our community and we have a long ways to go. We may not save everybody. But we know the harsh realities of our world and it is our refusal to look way to some false ideological comforts that gives us the best chance of giving these young Americans their best shot at a great and meaningful life.

That is how you create a deep and meritorious talent pool. 

Blessings to you all,

Pastor Corey Brooks

https://www.projecthood.org/

https://twitter.com/CoreyBBrooks