WASHINGTON—Martin D. Brown, chief diversity officer and director of the Office of Diversity, Opportunity, and Inclusion for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, recently declared that “DEI is dead,” prompting widespread applause from conservatives.

Heritage President Dr. Kevin Roberts made the following statement in support of Brown:

“Conservatives around the country support Martin Brown for having the courage to speak truth to power when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The people of Virginia categorically denounced the nationwide effort to push Marxist critical race theory to our kids when they elected Glenn Youngkin governor in 2021.

“Speaking to the Virginia Military Institute, Brown said, ‘Let’s take a moment right now to kill that cow. DEI is dead. We’re not going to bring that cow up anymore. It’s dead. It was mandated by the General Assembly, but this governor has a different philosophy of civil discourse.’

“Marxist-infused DEI government propaganda has no place in our constitutional republic. Teaching students to treat each other differently based on the color of their skin rejects the America ideals that founded this country and which Martin Luther King Jr. helped make a reality through the civil rights movement.

“Martin Brown was speaking truth to power. It was an act of bravery. I and Heritage salute Gov. Youngkin for making such a stellar choice. Once again, Virginia is leading.”

BACKGROUND: Diversity has come to mean an identity-based approach to society, a call for quotas, which are unconstitutional and antithetical to American ideals. Alignment to the political orthodoxy of the Left hides behind it. If we have learned anything in the past few days, it is that diversity as defined by the Left does not include Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. It does not include Martin Brown.

Equity, perhaps the worst corruption, enjoins government and the private sector to treat Americans differently because of their race, country of origin, or other immutable characteristics. It promises equal outcomes, an old Marxist idea, not equal opportunity, the American ideal. It is now the functional opposite of equal treatment. Inclusion also means the opposite of its original definition. People espousing the wrong ideas are excluded and canceled from public debate. Just ask the kids wearing the pro-life hats who were told to remove them or get out when visiting a taxpayer-funded Smithsonian museum.

All these ideas are now entrenched in our cultural institutions.