Dr. Oz was sworn in last week by Donald Trump as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and this got me thinking about him and Dr. Phil.
Both men built their empires on the expansion of opportunity that they now derisively call DEI.
If not for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, affirmative action, and the broader movement to expand access and dismantle exclusion, there would be no Oprah Winfrey Show.
And if there’s no Oprah, there’s no Dr. Phil.
No Dr. Oz.
No multimillion-dollar platforms handed to them.
So to hear these men now speak out against DEI, as if they didn’t benefit from the hard work that went into cracking open the door for Oprah’s brilliance to shine, is not just hypocritical.
It’s disgusting.
They’re not self-made.
They were platform-made, on a stage carved out by Civil Rights legislation, Black women’s labor, and decades of struggle for inclusion.
If anything, they should be DEI’s loudest defenders.
I break all this down in today’s video version of the newsletter.
Because they aren’t the only ones who get to benefit from the fight for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and then pretend they didn’t.
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