One of the goals of the Enlightenment that inspired the American and French revolutions was the rejection of exclusionary group privilege based on religion and aristocratic ancestry. This was epitomized by the French slogan “la carriere ouverte aux talents”—careers in public service and the professions open to men of talent irrespective of birth, faith, and innate characteristics. This sentiment has widened to include women. “The Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles” makes plain the social policy outcome underlying this occupational principle: “We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity and strive to work together for the common good for humanity.” Therefore, in free and just societies, we should judge people as individuals, not as members of a group. We must judge them based on their contribution and character, not on the deeds of their ancestors or people of the same gender and skin color. The fetishization of group identity, whether by religion, race, gender, or whatever, is wrong and divisive to society. It leads to the negation and, ultimately, the dehumanization of the individual. The above list of loyalties also shows the range of groups we ought to consider if we really wish to have diversity. The sheer number of identities and statuses demonstrates how difficult it would be in practice if we really wanted to diversify small organizations and make them truly representative of a society.

The great achievement of the Enlightenment was to offer a path that rejected life chances based on bloodline. It was to say—for the first time in human history—that we are not constrained by the circumstances of our birth or the sins or merits of our mothers and fathers. It advocated for a new type of polity bound together not by clan or tribe but by a commitment to rights and principles. This distinction is core to what made the United States of America exceptional in prioritizing the value of the individual over that of the group.

As secular humanists and heirs to Enlightenment thought, we must reject any ideology that grants some people a demerit and others an extra credit because of the circumstances of their birth, because that denies our individual value and our common humanity. To build a strong nation with the solidarity and social cohesion that is necessary to stand up to the challenge of dangerous authoritarian powers such as Russia, China, or Iran requires us to recover the radical, world-transforming proposition of the Founding Fathers that we are all created equal.

In my career in survey research, I was often asked to provide representative national population samples and to “oversample” some particular minority. The supplicant was unaware of the logic that to oversample one group means that one under samples another. If the unit under consideration is not a population sample but jobs, goods, or resources, then the result is unfair to some people, and there is a potential grievance that can lead to resentment.

Unfortunately, the fashionable, current pursuit of diversity has led to an implicit system or unspoken custom of quotas in universities and corporations. The downside of an explicit and ubiquitous emphasis on “diversity picks” is that it is inefficient for the organization and tokenizes minorities. Nobody would suggest in a competitive arena such as professional sports that merit and effort be downplayed or ignored in team selection.

In education and employment, equal opportunity supported by remedial and mentoring support for individuals disadvantaged by lack of access to social capital or networks is fair to all. However, in the national interest, we have to reject the cries of guilt-tripping professional agitators constantly dredging up historical grievances and hucksters demanding unearned personal preferment. An “outcomes only” approach to equity is unacceptable because it fundamentally undermines true equality for all members of society who should flourish because of their individual efforts, not innate characteristics such as their pigmentation or gender.

We secular humanists should have the courage of our convictions and reject all types of unearned preferences and privileges, including an explicit racism that professes to be anti-racist. Only a return to policies based on individual worth and competence can prevent divisiveness in society, dysfunction in working environments, and the marginalization of minorities. In today’s dangerous world, liberal democracies are under economic and security threats, so they need to harness all the human talent they have available by expanding educational opportunities and inclusion. As people who believe in reason and science, we cannot condone the current situation, where China alone awards more science and engineering undergraduate degrees annually than the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Japan, and South Korea combined. For the common good, we obviously need to increase our educated and skilled talent pool as an engine for domestic innovation and investment, but that will only be successfully accomplished by returning to a policy based on rewarding individual merit.