Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Deriding DEI is the right’s attempt at a polite way to attack civil rights

Man speaking at a podium

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott speaks at a prayer service to honor the victims of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore.

Michael A. McCoy for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Page is an American journalist, syndicated columnist, and senior member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board.

“DEI mayor.”

That’s how a troll on X, formerly Twitter, labeled a news clip of Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott delivering an update on the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge after it was struck by a massive cargo ship.

“It’s going to be so, so much worse,” the tweet concluded. “Prepare accordingly.”


I don’t know precisely what we are supposed to prepare for — and I imagine the troll doesn’t know, either. Some people, as I have learned on the receiving end of such bone-headed remarks in my own correspondence, don’t need to know what they’re talking about. They just want to vent.

But I was struck by the troll’s language. “DEI mayor”? So, that’s the latest way to call someone an “affirmative action” hire, meaning a way to insult someone as being unqualified for their position without using even more offensive language.

DEI is short for diversity, equity and inclusion, virtues that have become a vice in today’s discourse on the political right, just like the earlier label “affirmative action,” which the right casts as “reverse discrimination.”

No, mayors like Scott, 39, are elected, not employed under DEI hiring practices.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

“What they mean by DEI, in my opinion,” Scott quipped in a later MSNBC interview, “is Duly Elected Incumbent.”

But the initials have taken on a life of their own as code, dressing up other epithets that are even less polite while delivering the same vile message.

Shortly after the bridge collapse, the Twitterverse churned with nasty tweets that, without offering anything resembling actual evidence, nevertheless blamed DEI for the disaster in which six people died.

Weeks before the bridge disaster, former President Donald Trump lashed into DEI in a January campaign speech in Rochester, New Hampshire. “We will terminate every diversity, equity and inclusion program across the entire federal government,” he said.

Among his backers was a widely reported coalition of conservative groups, led by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has offered widely respected policy advice for conservative administrations since President Ronald Reagan’s years.

Dumping DEI is one of many policies included in Project 2025, a long to-do list of goals for Trump’s second term, should he win one.

So goes the persistent boom-and-bust cycles of racial politics — two steps forward, one step back throughout American history, but with an accelerating pace, it seems, since the 1960s.

Civil rights is a good example. Voting rights and other reforms that followed the Civil War were rolled back in Reconstruction and the decades after. In many ways, conservatives in this era have watered down or nullified the civil rights and voting rights breakthroughs of the 1960s, including affirmative action.

Most noticeable is the Supreme Court, which, among other examples, held last year that accounting for race in various stages of the admissions process at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Yet, as I have followed this issue over the decades, I have been encouraged at various times by the resilience of affirmative action in its various forms.

No, it is hardly a perfect remedy for the ills caused by historical racism. For example, I appreciate the aims of DEI, but I have sometimes been disappointed by shortcomings. Some DEI efforts, for example, have been more successful than others, partly because there is widespread disagreement over what works — and what could work better.

The business community, for example, is understandably cautious about wading into political controversies, yet there is ample experience to show that diversity programs broaden the pool of available talent and enhance productivity. “If we didn’t have a good diversity hiring and talent development program,” one senior executive told me,” it would be necessary for us to invent one.”

That’s what many companies are doing, whether to avoid lawsuits or, more happily, improve their recruitment and talent development.

Now, with the rise of the backlash from the right, much of it well funded, some companies have shied away from DEI or continued their efforts while keeping mum about them. We have yet to see whether diversity efforts in corporate America will succumb to the pressure exerted by ambitious politicians who view civil rights as a wedge issue to be exploited. Hopefully, this moment will represent just one step back before we again take two steps forward.

First posted April 3, 2024. (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Read More

An illustration of diverse people around a heart with the design of the American flag.
An illustration of diverse people around a heart with the design of the American flag.
Getty Images, wildpixel

The Next Hundred Days: America's Latest Test of Democracy

For decades, we have watched America wrestle with its demons. Sometimes, she has successfully pinned them down. Other times, the demons have slipped beyond her grasp. Yet, America has always remained in the ring. There is no difference right now, and the stakes couldn't be higher.

Across America, from small-town council meetings to state legislatures, there's a coordinated effort to roll back the clock on civil rights, geopolitical relations, and the global economy. It's not subtle, and it's not accidental. The targeting of immigrants and citizens of color has become so normalized that we risk becoming numb to it. For example, what happened in Springfield, Ohio, late last year? When national politicians started pushing rhetoric against Haitian immigrants, it wasn't just local politics at play. It was a test balloon, a preview of talking points soon echoed in halls of government and media outlets nationwide. Thus, this is how discrimination, intolerance, and blatant hate go mainstream or viral—it starts small, tests the waters, and spreads like a virus through our body politic and social system.

Keep ReadingShow less
Two groups of people approaching each other over a chasm, ready to shake hands.

Two groups of people approaching each other over a chasm, ready to shake hands.

Getty Images, timsa

The Impact of Trump’s Executive Actions: Efforts To Eliminate DEI

This essay is part of a series by Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD) explaining in practical terms what the new administration’s executive orders and other official actions mean for all of us. Virtually all of these actions spring from the pages of Project 2025, the administration's 900-page blueprint for government action over the next four years. The Project 2025 agenda should concern all of us, as it tracks strategies already implemented in countries such as Hungary to erode democratic norms and adopt authoritarian approaches to governing.

Project 2025’s stated intent to move quickly to “dismantle” the federal government will strip the public of important protections against excessive presidential power and provide big corporations with enormous opportunities to profit by preying on America's households.

Keep ReadingShow less
Future of the National Museum of the American Latino is Uncertain

PRESENTE! A Latino History of the United States

Credit: National Museum of the American Latino

Future of the National Museum of the American Latino is Uncertain

The American Museum of the Latino faces more hurdles after over two decades of advocacy.

Congress passed legislation to allow for the creation of the Museum, along with the American Women’s History Museum, as part of the Smithsonian Institution in an online format. Five years later, new legislation introduced by Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) wants to build a physical museum for both the Latino and women’s museums but might face pushback due to a new executive order signed by President Donald Trump.

Keep ReadingShow less
Fairness, Not Stigma, for Transgender Athletes

People running.

Getty Images, Pavel1964

Fairness, Not Stigma, for Transgender Athletes

President Trump’s campaign and allies spent $21 million of campaign spending on attack ads against transgender people. With that level of spending, I was shocked to find out it was not a top concern for voters of either party, but it continued to prevail as a campaign priority.

Opponents of transgender participation in sports continue to voice their opinions, three months into the Trump presidency. Just last month, the Trump administration suspended $175 million in federal funding to Penn State over a transgender swimmer. $175 million is a bit dramatic over one swimmer, or in the case of the entire NCAA, fewer than 10 athletes. Even Governor Gavin Newsom was recently under fire for sharing his views on his podcast. Others, like Rep. Nancy Mace, have also caught on to the mediagenic nature of transphobia right now. “You want penises in women's bathrooms, and I'm not going to have it,” she said in a U.S. House hearing last month. I had no clue who Nancy Mace was prior to her notorious views on LGBTQ+ rights. Frankly, her flip from being a supporter of LGBTQ+ rights to shouting “Tr**ny” in a hearing seems less like a change of opinion and more of a cry for attention.

Keep ReadingShow less