Podcast: How This Pastor Rebuilt a Community—Without DEI

On Chicago’s South Side, the old O-Block once carried a reputation as the most dangerous stretch of pavement in the city. Today, Pastor Corey Brooks calls it “Opportunity Block.” The transformation, he says, didn’t come from government programs or DEI initiatives—but from faith, discipline, and hard work.

In the latest episode of the Goldwater Institute’s Dismantling DEI podcast, Brooks argues that traditional values and a commitment to excellence will better create a stronger future than the orthodoxy that dominates corporate boardrooms and college campuses. DEI, he says, is not empowerment, but infantilization: it lowers standards, excuses failure, and teaches communities to expect handouts rather than demand excellence. “Hard work is good, struggle is good, trying to reach a standard and be excellent—those are good things,” he insists. “No one should lower the standard for anyone to try and help them get by.”

For Brooks, the real tragedy of DEI is how it uproots the cultural assumptions that help people maximize their opportunities. He recalls a time when black families taught their children to be “twice as good.” They encouraged that ethic not as an act of submission but as a creed of dignity and discipline. Post-1960s liberalism, he argues, replaced that ethic with grievance. Victimhood became virtue, and white guilt became currency. “Systemic racism is definitely not our biggest problem,” he says. Instead, he worries about the victim mentality, saying “it hinders us from progress. It hinders us from getting to the level that we aspire to get to.”

Brooks is a man of faith who practices what he preaches. Brooks has built both a thriving church and a movement dedicated to helping others earn success. When city officials dropped Venezuelan migrants in his neighborhood, Brooks fed them, housed them, and insisted they learn English and work for themselves. “No one owes you anything,” he says. “Everything that you get, you’re going to have to work for.” The same message animates his work with young men scarred by gang violence: discipline, education, and responsibility—not excuses—mark the path to success.

What makes Brooks compelling is that his critique of DEI is inseparable from his own story. In 2011, he climbed onto the roof of a run-down motel used for drugs and trafficking and vowed not to come down until it was shut. Ninety-four days later, the motel was gone. A decade later, he spent nearly a year in a tent to raise funds for a new community center that would uplift his neighborhood. Today, a $43 million facility is rising on the site, built not with government handouts but with private donors who believe in his vision and want to be part of something that is making a difference. “We transformed this place because we believe that we don’t run away from problems, and we don’t run away from things that are ugly. We run to them and we fix them, and we change them.”

Brooks sees DEI as a false gospel that cannot heal broken families, failed schools, or hollowed-out neighborhoods. He insists those problems can be overcome, but only through principle, perseverance, and a refusal to play the victim. DEI promises equity; Brooks demands excellence. And in that difference lies not only the fate of his neighborhood but also a warning for the rest of America.

Hear Pastor Corey Brooks’ full story on the Dismantling DEI podcast, available now on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

View the full Dismantling DEI series here.