Attacks on "DEI" Are The New Racism

There are legitimate criticisms of DEI programs, but increasingly it's become a catch-all racist epithet.

I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.

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The New Dog Whistle

Early morning on New Year’s Day, a man drove a truck down Bourbon Street, killing 15 people and injuring dozens of people before being shot by police. The scene had barely been cleared before conservative commentators and Republican members of Congress took to the airwaves to blame them on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives.

According to House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, "some of these agencies have gotten so wrapped up in the DEI movement" that they ignore security altogether. "Call it wokeness, call whatever you want, but where their main focus is on diversity and inclusion as opposed to security, and they're two very different things, and we've got to get back to that core mission."

New York Rep. Dan Meuser sounded a similar note:

“The priority of the last four years has been DEI, not IEDs. You talk to anyone willing to speak within these agencies; that’s what their focus has been … It’s not about DEI; it’s about the safety and security of the American people.”

At this point, there are just rote talking points from congressional Republicans. Everything is a nail, and attacking DEI is the hammer.

But when conservative commentators discovered that the lead FBI agent for the investigation is a young Black woman, the police chief in New Orleans is a woman, and the mayor is a Black woman, it unleashed a wave of nakedly racist attacks.

Not surprisingly, Robby Starbuck, a prominent anti-DEI activist, quickly jumped on the bandwagon.

He had plenty of company.

There is, of course, no evidence that DEI had anything to do with what happened in New Orleans or that the ability of city officials to prevent this horrific terrorist attack is because of their race and gender. The notion that the FBI was too focused on increasing diversity within its ranks to address potential terrorist attacks or that a white male police chief and mayor would have prevented this crime is basically the definition of motivated reasoning (and unambiguously racist).

Don’t get me wrong: there are legitimate complaints about DEI programs, but that’s not what is happening here. Instead, DEI has become an all-purpose epithet for attacking any person of color or woman who is in a position of responsibility. Lest we forget, Kamala Harris was routinely labeled a “DEI hire” during the presidential campaign, even though she’s spent more than a quarter century in electoral politics. By comparison, JD Vance had spent two years in the Senate (his first public service position) before Trump picked him as his running mate this summer.

But the use of DEI as an attack line goes beyond simply racist and misogynist attacks. DEI is now frequently tagged as a culprit whenever something bad happens in America. A container ship causes a bridge collapse in Baltimore’s harbor …. It must be DEI. A wheel fell off a plane in Atlanta …. It’s got to be DEI. The collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, the July assassination attempt against Donald Trump, and even a global tech outage … are all somehow the fault of efforts to increase diversity in the American workplace.

According to co-president Elon Musk, DEI is just another word for racism.” DEI “is a destructive ideology that breeds hatred and racial division,” says Vice President-elect JD Vance.

But, of course, the opposite is true. As the response to the tragedy in New Orleans makes clear, DEI is increasingly a stand-in for unambiguously racist attacks. If every bad thing that happens in America is because of too much focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, then clearly, the solution is to do away with racial preferences and efforts to diversify workplaces and give every position of responsibility to a white man.

DEI is becoming the new dog whistle — a catch-all epithet that allows the person wielding it to cloak their racism in euphemism. You see, Steve Scalise and Dan Meuser aren’t racists. They just want institutions like the FBI to work better, and that means focusing less on hiring and promoting people of color and women and more on their core competencies. However, the implications are not hard to suss out: diversity and employing people of color and women are the reasons these institutions are failing.

Make no mistake; if you’re blaming a terrorist attack on the diversification of federal and local law enforcement agencies, you might as well just come out and say that you think non-white men are inferior … because that’s pretty much what you’re saying.

What’s Going On

• This is a good NBC News piece about the attacks on DEI and the extent to which corporate America is backing away from the programs.

• This afternoon, the House failed to elect Speaker Mike Johnson on the first ballot. I assume he’ll eventually win, but this vote is yet another reminder that the House GOP caucus is fundamentally dysfunctional.

• For MSNBC, I wrote about the conundrum in assessing Joe Biden’s legacy — massive policy accomplishments combined with abundant political failures.

• I know this article on how no one buys or reads books is from April, but I came across it in one of those roundups of best articles of the year, and it’s definitely worth a read.

Musical Interlude

I’ve been listening to a lot of Stevie Wonder this morning. It’s easy to forget how insanely great he is as an artist. His four-album run in the early 1970s is nothing short of astonishing.