This Debate Isn’t About DEI -- it's About Power. Here's Why.
A historian unpacks the deeper forces at play.
In late January, a tragic mid-air collision between an American Airlines flight and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter over Washington, D.C. killed 67 people.
Who knew it would turn into a debate on diversity?
President Trump quickly speculated that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) might have been the cause of the crash.
Challenged by a reporter as to how he came to the conclusion with little evidence to go on, he shot back, “Because I have common sense. OK? And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”
"We want the most competent people. We don't care what race they are," the president said at a briefing. "If they don't have a great brain, a great power of the brain, they're not going to be very good at what they do and bad things will happen.”
When a journalist asked Trump if he was saying that DEI caused the crash, he replied, “It just could have been. We have a high standard. We've had a higher, much higher standard than anybody else.”
DEI has become a boogeyman in the federal government, often blamed for every ill. The truth is that it’s a smokescreen to justify efforts to undo decades of civil rights progress.
I have a PhD in US history with a specific focus on race, religion, and social movements. I’ve studied the origins of racism and white supremacy, and one clear pattern emerges: for every gesture toward racial progress there is a swift and angry backlash – or “whitelash.”
While DEI is the latest label, efforts to shut down programs that help historically excluded groups are nothing new.
It happened after Reconstruction during the Redemption era. It happened again when the Religious Right rose in response to the Civil Rights movement. And it’s happening now in retaliation against the first Black president, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the historic racial justice protests of 2020.
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