“DEI” has stood for diversity, equity and inclusion. Then the Trump regime declared war on all that. So now DEI is transmogrified into discrimination, exclusion and inequity.
We had improved so much, growing as a more open, welcoming, humane society, with ever more fairness and opportunity. Now we’re rushing away from that — becoming a nasty, cruel, less just society.
It’s actually ironically happening in the guise of fairness, non-discrimination, and color-blindness. Yes, DEI was sometimes overdone, like at universities, even requiring teaching applicants to submit smarmy essays swearing allegiance to DEI ideology. And eliminating affirmative action’s reverse discrimination might have been justifiable. But this regime is exploiting all that as a shameless pretext for the most blatantly racist, sexist, exclusionary policy.
Look at the expulsion of trans people from the military. The supposed rationales insult our intelligence. It’s unjustly demonizing human beings for who they are. Barely a step away from banning Blacks from serving. Indeed, their contributions have already been systematically scrubbed from government websites.
As was the plane dropping the first A-bomb — the “Enola Gay.” That had nothing to do with homosexuality. Which those Trump regime fools didn’t even realize. This would be hilarious if it weren’t downright sick.
Not just “gay” but the very words diversity, equity and inclusion have perversely become shibboleths. So toxic in Trumpist eyes that schools, corporations, government entities, institutions across society, have been terrorized into avoiding anything that might be construed as uplifting minorities. The result is the inversion of affirmative action — it’s turned into affirmative discrimination against Blacks and other minorities. A new Jim Crow.
Here’s one example of how this is going down. My wife and I have supported a Somaliland education project. Many of its students had gained admission to top U.S. schools. Not as DEI cases, but because of tremendous qualifications. Meeting them, I was struck by a wish that American education could produce such wonderful people.
But suddenly now the U.S. school admission numbers for the Somalilanders are way down. They’re not being accepted any more. The cause is obvious. Regardless of their qualifications, admitting such students would smell too much like DEI. The horror! Schools want to avoid that, to avoid being targeted and penalized by the racist Trump regime.
How racist are they? The military base names that were changed from honoring Confederate “heroes” — traitors who fought to preserve slavery — have now been changed back! What a kick in the teeth of every Black American. Moreover, it’s done dishonestly: Hegseth and company claim to be re-renaming the bases for obscure soldiers whose last names happen to match the previous Confederates ones. Real cute, eh? Who do they think they’re fooling?
This is the toilet into which the U.S. government has plunged.
