The DEI Deception: What Lindy Li Gets Right About Identity Politics

Inclusion for some, exclusion by design

Lindy Li recently sparked controversy with her blunt comments on Her Take Podcast, claiming Democrats have “an affinity group for everyone under the sun, except White men.” Her critique struck a nerve not because it was inflammatory, but because it pointed out an uncomfortable truth about modern Democratic identity politics. They are built less on universal inclusion and more on selective favoritism.

What’s promoted as compassion and justice often becomes division, exclusion, and scapegoating, not by accident, but by design.

Affinity Groups for Everyone — Except

Democrats have long prided themselves on being the party of inclusion. From racial and ethnic minorities to gender and sexual identities, nearly every imaginable group is given targeted outreach and symbolic representation. But as Li points out, there’s one demographic consistently left out of this framework: White men.

While other groups are offered empathy, empowerment, and policy attention, White men are treated as politically expendable at best. At worst, they're cast as the villains.

Scapegoating as a Strategy

Li didn’t stop at pointing out the exclusion. She also highlighted how Democrats often blame societal issues on one group, namely White men, without nuance or individual context. In today’s political narrative, this group serves as the symbolic oppressor, the permanent antagonist in the party’s story of systemic injustice.

Scapegoating is no longer a fringe behavior. It is embedded in mainstream messaging. This dynamic has replaced meaningful debate with moral condemnation. Policy solutions are sidestepped in favor of signaling guilt, privilege, or inherent blame, always directed at the same target.

DEI: Divide, Exclude, Inflame

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, DEI, is the institutional face of this ideology. It sounds noble. But in practice, it often delivers the opposite of what it promises:

Divide: People are sorted into identity groups and ranked by perceived victimhood.

Exclude: Anyone outside the preferred narrative, especially if they’re White, male, or straight, is marginalized.

Inflame: Social tensions are heightened, not healed, as outrage is used to mobilize political action.

This is not a flaw in the system. It is the system. And it functions exactly as intended.

Conflict by Design

Here’s where my critique diverges from Li’s. While she accurately describes the exclusion and scapegoating, I argue it goes further. It’s not just careless politics. It is conflict by design.

Creating a villain is a proven political strategy. By defining one group as the perpetual oppressor, you can rally every other group around a shared grievance. It’s not about solving problems. It’s about creating a sense of moral emergency to drive turnout, consolidate power, and silence dissent.

The villain serves a purpose. It simplifies complex social issues into emotional binaries—good versus evil, oppressed versus oppressor—and gives voters someone to oppose.

The Price of Division

This strategy may win short-term elections, but it corrodes long-term trust. It creates shallow alliances built on shared resentment rather than shared values. It alienates millions of people who feel politically invisible or inherently guilty. And it fosters a culture where inclusion becomes conditional, not universal.

When political identity becomes more important than individual character, democracy suffers. When empathy is granted only to some, injustice grows for all.

Conclusion

Lindy Li called out the hypocrisy in Democratic identity politics, and she was right to do so. But it’s not just hypocrisy. It’s strategy. The exclusion of White men, the elevation of grievance, and the institutionalization of division are not political accidents. They are tools, designed to create enemies, rally coalitions, and manufacture moral clarity in a morally complex world.

If we want real inclusion, we have to reject identity-based villainy and return to something deeper: universal dignity, merit, and a politics that values people as individuals, not as symbols in someone else’s game.