Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs are the newest and most far-reaching conservative war against so-called “woke culture.”
Many GOP officials and publicly conservative public figures they blamed terrible accidents, such as the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, on “DEI Employment Practices”. South African billionaire, owner of X and newly appointed “Administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency” for the United States Elon Musk has blamed DEI for the massive climate change fires this month in Southern California, claiming in a video posted on X that “DEI means people DIE”.
In recent months, those who are against DEI have also gone after the institutions that support these efforts. From the Fearless Fund to Merckfrom Walmart to McDonald'sand from Meta to Amazon, some non-profits and major corporations are now in the background. They are abandoning or removing programs they have implemented or greatly expanded following the outcry over the 2020 police killing of George Floyd. In states such as Alabama, Iowa, Utah, Missouri, Kentucky, Texas and Nebraska, DEI infrastructure was dismantled in public higher education institutions it reportedly started at the local and institutional level three years ago.
As expected, President Donald Trump used the first day of his second term in the White House to begin the tearing each other apart of the federal government's overall diversity and inclusion infrastructure. He asked all federal OF THE employees to be placed on paid leave starting Wednesday – they will be laid off eventually.
So why does it stop DEI – which generally accepts, even embraces racial, gender, sexual, and other differences and creates a welcoming environment for marginalized Americans at universities and in workplaces – such a priority for Trump, his conservative supporters and the far right?
They want to see the end of DEI because they believe that these programs present a real challenge to their efforts to rebuild the “white man's country” they want. Their commitment to color-blindness in educational and employment practices actually urges a return to the days when only white men could positively benefit from supposedly fair practices. a social movement. They want to do nothing short of closing the very narrow paths to social and economic advancement available to people of color and other marginalized people in the US. They want to make sure that DEI or anti-racist or “woke” programs cannot force them to face their own racism in the process. To them, DEI is simply code for “Never Integrate”.
None of this is accidental. As of 2019, the the extreme right has been lobbing grenades at critical race theory and African American Studies in K-12 and at colleges and universities across the country. In the June 2023 cases of Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v Harvard University and SFFA v University of North Carolina, the US Supreme Court ruled that race-sensitive affirmative action in college admissions is unconstitutional, overturning decades of precedent. They were not isolated developments. The efforts against DEI programs, affirmative action in education and employment and critical race theory are all part of a larger movement to return the US to a state of semi-legal racial segregation.
Long before the current efforts against DEI, race-based affirmative action opponents consistently rejected the idea that Americans of color—especially blacks—needed a ramp to better educational and employment opportunities. They stood against President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 Government Order 11246 and the gradual expansion beyond government contractors into higher education and employment in all sectors of the US economy. President Johnson may have sensed this challenge as well. In his 1965 commencement address at the historically black Howard University in Washington, DC, in June, titled “To Fulfill These Rights,” Johnson said, “You don't take a person who, for years, has been sent away by chains and free him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, 'You are free to compete with everyone else,' and still rightly believe that you have been to completely fair. ” Johnson wanted to find ways to create ramps on an uneven playing field, one that had always favored white Americans and white men over all other groups. Trump at Government Order 14171Ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunities, officially repealed the Johnson order, and 60 years' worth of anti-discrimination protections in the workforce federal with him.
Every movement has its campaigns, even anti-social justice movements. For conservatives like Ward Connerly and Edward Blum, any corrections that purport to work against white supremacist racism in American systems and institutions—whether affirmative action, DEI, or even race theory emergency – which is too many corrections. Connorly, who is African American, stood up against affirmative action in the 1980s and 1990s. He led the anti-affirmative action movement in California, and with the help of Republican Governor Pete Wilson, successfully managed to abolish affirmative action in the state. with the Proposition 209 initiative in 1996. The implementation of the initiative in the law helped a significant reduction in the number of Black and brown students attending California universities.
During interview with Politico in 2023on the eve of the end of affirmative action, Connerly reiterated his rationale for ending any efforts at race-sensitive admissions and employment, whether affirmative action or DEI. “But 'diversity building' is just a euphemism for discrimination, because you're race-conscious.” For Connorly, the path to equality was through race-blind policies, because “government is supposed to be color-blind. I think we as people should try to be color blind – not to be affected by a person's color”.
Edward Blum's work as an anti-affirmative action and anti-DEI attorney over the decades following directly in Connorly's footsteps. In his own definition for to storm the lawsuits against universities, law firms and private companies over the years, Blum said, “I'm a one-trick pony. I hope and care about ending these types of race and preferences in our public policy… In explaining the Supreme Court's SFFA victory in 2023, Blum doubled down on his vision for the blind United States. “In the culture war this country has been struggling to wake up, the SFFA thought it was like the Allies landed on Normandy Beach. According to Blum, “SFFA's lawsuit has received overwhelming support from individuals and organizations across the country who share our belief in the importance of meritocracy and color-blind admissions policies”.
This is the main problem with Connerly and Blum's work. The US is not a color-blind society. It is a society that has white supremacist racism, patriarchal misogyny, and massive socioeconomic inequality encoded in its cultural DNA. Fighting for “fairness” and “meritocracy” and “colorism” policies only means that conservatives and far-rights like Connerly and Blum are fighting to end ramps sam existence for marginalized Americans toward social mobility through higher education and middle-class jobs. . And if the main ladders to create positive opportunities in a white (and male) society are destroyed, the basic option towards exclusion and segregation in higher education and the workforce is to follow. soon. The consequences of removing affirmative action are already visible in an underrepresented Black and Latinx university and get into medical school over the last 18 months, and will certainly affect recruitment and promotion practices as well.
But the truth is, no exclusion or separation ever goes away, not with more than 70 percent of Fortune 500 corporations with white men at the head. And certainly not with more than half of Black and brown children attend predominantly black and brown schools and 76 percent of white children attend predominantly white schools. Just like in higher education, employment and entrepreneurship, Connerly and Blum have made it their mission to end the small spigot that affirmative action and DEI programs have provided over the past six decades. went away But with 43 percent of students attending prestigious Ivy League universities are legaciesit would seem that affirmative action is always welcome for white Americans, even in Connerly and Blum's vision of a color-blind society.
As Duke University sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva points out in his book Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, “color-blind racism” includes “rational(ing) the contemporary status of minorities as a product of the market. dynamics, naturally occurring phenomena, and dark cultural boundaries”. People like Connerly, Blum, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are just using the narcissism that comes with their socioeconomic status, race and gender.
As is typical of this set, they place the blame for obstacles and failures on individuals, and not on systems that primarily reinforce white people and especially rich white men. . In reality, their excuses for attacking anything anti-racist, anti-discrimination and affirmative action related to affirmative action is a smokescreen for expressing hate -one's race and tacit acceptance of separation and exclusion over the difficult road to inclusion.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
