What has DEI accomplished? I mean besides equity.
Minorities and women cause plane crashes now, and who else needs a hug already
Note: I wasn’t going to write about politics. I would like to not! But 1.Whilst writing I have received messages from three friends saying “How are you holding up?/I’m not holding up so well.” 2. If you’re new here you might not know that I have a mixed race family, and this week felt like a lot.
And 3. I think we could use a reality check. And a hug. So here’s one from me.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about how the Hegseth hearings for Secretary of Defense were used by Republicans to bizarrely platform a myth that women—and people who are gay or trans, or people of color—have overtaken men’s spaces, including the military, and are pushing men out.
Hegseth and Republicans bemoaned feminism and “woke” policies as the real danger to this country, lowering standards everywhere for “equity” hires. (Definitely not a distraction from the fact that Hegseth is a serial cheater, is accused of documented harassment, and has been known for being drunk on the job at three different workplaces).
Right on cue, Zuck piped up the same week to let us know that workplaces have also been “neutered” and feminized, and also that he hunts pigs with bows and arrows (coolcool).
That seemed like plenty at the time, but ho! What a quaint time two weeks ago was!
The male grievance narrative was just a soft opening, apparently, for the full-blown flaming white male supremacy narrative that this administration has rolled out since then. From attempts to erase Civil Rights, to attacks on trans Americans and children, to ICE raids, the last two weeks have been, well, what one reporter called an “unprecedented barrage of barbaric policy moves and casual executive depravity.” Which sums it up pretty well.
This has all been deeply upsetting, even if all of it has not been totally surprising. I have to say though, one of the moves this week did surprise me with a claim that I did not see coming. That was the claim that the tragic plane crash over the Potomac earlier this week was caused by…DEI.
Minorities and women are now responsible for making planes fall out of the sky. (I mean, if only we had that kind of power!) In case there was any doubt, now you know that the next four years will be brought to you by straight white male supremacy. And not a subtle version.
As
described in The Ink:“That’s right, ladies and gentlemen: The plane crash, according to the president, was caused by…DEI.
Cool theory, bro. It is as if America is being governed by a manosphere podcast.” (It’s actually being governed by Musk, but I would prefer the Nelk Bros tbh.)
After the election, I tried to arm myself with the foreknowledge that the DUMBEST possible stuff would now be unleashed. I would not be surprised by it. I would still care about the harm that it does, but I would not be exhausted by outrage over it. No, not this time, not me.
As I said then:
And yet. I mean. I have to admit I didn’t think we would be having conversations about whether measures to [checks notes] **seek the fair treatment and full participation of all people, particularly groups who have historically been underrepresented**…cause plane crashes. You really got me there, guys!
Like, every time a person of color, woman, or queer person gets a promotion, a puppy dies. That’s what this administration is going with.
The problem with this discourse isn’t just that it’s so stupid and low and mean, which it is. It’s that now journalists and Dem leaders alike are having conversations about whether DEI can, in fact, cause plane crashes.
As
of The Ink put it here, in one of the best pieces I’ve seen on this: “Even well-meaning and thoughtful reality-based people were essentially having…a conversation about whether the miscegenation of the races is causing airplanes to drop out of the sky.The problem is not that Democratic Party leaders and media voices who were now responding to Trump’s hogwash were wrong. It was that they had been dragged into a conversation that was insane to be having.”
Giridharadas’s argument is that if you don’t control the narrative, Trump will (and that Dem leaders and the media are failing to do this utterly).
Also, I’ll add, apparently what will fill the narrative void is: irrational flaming bigotry. Aeronautical tragedy? DEI. World on fire? DEI. Your grandma has a hangnail? DEI. Stress nightmares about fascism that are like episodes of Severance, but Milchick has the dead blue eyes of JD Vance?? DEI!
As we head into this dizzying era of, well, bigoted nonsense, let’s pause for a another reality check—this time on the effects of policies that have been considered “DEI” over the years.
Have policies to promote diversity and equality “lowered” the standards in our country, have they somehow left us worse off?
Well, first let’s recall that policies that promote equality date back to the Civil Rights movement, founded in a radical notion that people should be treated equally under the law regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, sex, or sexual orientation. These have generally been celebrated not only as just, but as some of the best things to happen in this country.
Just to name a few, policies that have been considered “DEI” over the years include:
-School desegregation (1954)
-The ability for Black men to vote (15th Amendment in 1870)
-The ability for women to vote (19th amendment in 1920) [just 100 years ago, kinda wild!]
-Fair housing laws, that make it illegal to discriminate when renting, selling, or financing property. (1968)
You can also thank diversity and equity policies for:
-Making it legal for women to have their own credit cards without a man’s signature (1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act) 1974!!
-Allowing women to have their own bank account (again, 1974)!!
-Admitting women to Ivy League Colleges (Princeton and Yale began admitting women in 1969). (Columbia, my alma mater, held out until 1983! Michael Jackson was singing “Thriller” and girls could not go to Columbia, y’all!)
-Admitting Black men and Jews to Ivy League schools (Yale held out an informal policy restricting Jews to 10 percent; Yale College admitted its first significant group of Black men in the fall of 1964)
-Decriminalizing homosexuality (starting in Illinois in 1962).
-Removing homosexuality from APA’s list of “mental illnesses” (1973)
-The Americans with Disabilities Act that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in employment, transportation, and provides public accommodations. (1990)
-Sexual harassment in the workplace is deemed illegal (1980)
This is, of course, just scratching the surface! Not meant to be a comprehensive list. If you’ve benefitted from elevators in public spaces for wheelchairs and strollers, been able to breast pump at work, not been fired because you’re pregnant or gay or not white, been able to own property or your own money while not male or white, or been able to call HR when someone grabs ass in the break room, you’ve benefitted from diversity and equity policies!
I want to use this list to point out that many of these policies merely expand spaces, opportunities, and safety that had been afforded to wealthy white men (or hoarded by them). Of course an admin of sexual harassers and power-hungry broligarchs would love to attack DEI to take back even more power and more money.
Is that good for everyone else? Um, no.
Despite billionaires’ weird whining that workplaces have become “neutered,” and “feminized”, according to a 2012 McKinsey study, US companies with diverse executive boards had a 95% higher return on equity than those that lacked diversity.
The same report finds that DEI initiatives help organizations eliminate or reduce policies, practices, and behaviors that are biased. It can help organizations identify unconsciously biased policies, making them less susceptible to the toxic behaviors. Unconscious bias costs US businesses $550 billion annually, a point that is rarely mentioned in the debate over the effectiveness of DEI initiatives.
It’s also nice to live in a country that feels more just and less toxic, ya know? The psychic weight of it all.
It’s also worth pointing out from this timeline that our current president was 9 years old approximately when schools were desegregated (legally at least, many schools are still plenty segregated), was in his twenties when women and Black men started attending Ivy League colleges in significant numbers, and was well into his thirties when workplace sexual harassment was made illegal (not that it stopped him!). So when he says MAGA, it’s pretty clear what he’s referencing.
In case you doubt there’s a connection between Civil Rights and the current DEI attacks, consider that this week the president rescinded a bedrock executive order, dating to the Civil Rights era, mandating non-discrimination by government contractors. And let’s not forget that Trump Inc has been sued for documented housing discrimination by refusing applications from Black renters.
Finally, I want to point out that this list of diversity and equity policies have contributed directly to the very gains that sexists and racists would find most troubling, and are right now having paroxysms over.
Specifically: In 1964, women and people of color start attending Ivy League colleges in significant numbers, and 17 years later Sandra Day O’Conner is the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, followed by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993.
Princeton admits women and people of color in significant numbers in the 1960’s and 70’s, and in 1981 a young woman named Michelle Obama begins her freshman year.
In the 1980’s Columbia University admits women and people of color in large numbers and in 1983 a young man named Barack H. Obama graduates from Columbia, bound for Harvard law school.
He will go on to become the first Black President of the United States.
(Which will then cause an upswell of backlash that is our current predicament, welp.)
The good news is, we’ve been here before and we have overcome. These policies may not be popular with billionaires and power-hungry autocrats, but over time they have become quite popular with American people who enjoy basic rights and living in a country that’s more just and less toxic. (Unfortunately, many white Americans have been brought along to many of these policies kicking and screaming, see Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us: How Racism Costs all of Us).
I’ll leave us with that, and a hug, and a quote from Obama that he made before all this was unleashed, but that feels very relevant now:
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
Part of the grief that we are feeling, I think, is that we thought all this stuff had been handily won. We thought we lived in a time and place where justice and humanity were enshrined and we could look forward to enjoying a safe and peaceful present and future. We are finding out that’s not the case—we are living through a historic time.
It’s our turn.
If you’re loving MR, give us a like and leave a comment so new readers can find us!
Or upgrade to a paid subscription to support our independent journalism and writing that helps keep us sane(ish) in these times. Thank you for being here.
Related reading and sources:
is great resource for trans readers/parents/allies to get trans news from a trans journalist (per ): find the Substack here“What Racism Costs All of Us” review of Heather McGhee’s book, “The Sum of Us.” This book unpacks how racist policies have made it so that all of us can’t have nice things (ex. why public pools disappeared in the US), and I think about it at last once a week!
“JD Vance and the pro-slavery new right” by Meg Conley at Pocket Observatory, and pretty much everything Meg has written for the last six months. Meg is always two steps ahead and she’s been writing about the underpinnings of all of all this with incredible foresight and analysis.
“We protect us: there is no them, only us” by
“Shock and Awe: Trump’s first 10 days back in power” in Rolling Stone.
I love this post so much because, once again, you have done the actual research into the absolute fact-based reality. You are so spot on with every single thing here. One thing I’ve been wondering about, apropos of Trump controlling the narrative, is that everytime he says something about DEI, is whether we should just respond as though he was speaking some kind of nonsense language or saying something about cauliflower. Like how do we respond without becoming exhausted arguing with all his hate?
The stretch in logic to believe that DEI caused a plane crash is abhorrent! And yet... we know there are people that believe this pandering nonsense. Thank you, as always, Lane, thank you.