Today’s 3 Letters of Bigotry
The right wing tries, again, to repackage old discrimination in new words
This installment will be a short one because the idea is pretty simple: The right wing is based on anti-anti-discrimination, but coming out and saying that they’re “pro-discrimination” makes them look bad, so they have to find different ways of communicating their stance, and today’s iteration is railing against diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, also known as DEI.
It’s bigotry with a mask on.
Unfortunately, the mask lets the bigots look at themselves in the mirror and not see who they really are, and this lets them act out their bigotry in public with confidence. The mask also confuses people who don’t understand what’s really going on.
We have an obligation to pull the mask off when we see it.
The 2 Bigoted Myths Behind the DEI Attacks
How nefarious the attacks on DEI really are is not even that complicated. All you need to know is what DEI actually means, and then unpack the criticism of it.
DEI uses training and organizational policies, practices, and culture to ensure better representation for all backgrounds in order to promote justice and make everyone feel included. Companies and other institutions use DEI to create and build a better workforce and a more accommodating workplace.
It’s just anti-discrimination and, while it can be difficult to quantify its benefits, evidence does indicate that companies that use it do better.
In the Right Wing Alternative Reality, however, DEI fills workplaces with less qualified workers. No evidence is presented to back this up, but everything, and I mean literally everything, that goes wrong gets chalked up to DEI:
Fox News: When Secret Service puts DEI first, its protectees are endangered
Republican lawmakers and pundits: Kamala Harris would be a DEI hire
General right wingers: Harvard’s poor handling of the campus protests was because of DEI
Elon Musk: The door blew out because Boeing prioritized DEI over safety
Right-wing mouthbreathers online: The ship captain hit the Baltimore bridge because of DEI and Silicon Valley Bank went broke because of DEI
Why even mention what right wingers are saying on Twitter?
Because they live in the alternative reality that the right-wing news ecosystem has created for them. Blaming DEI is their culture.
It is all just bigotry hiding behind a single onion skin: If representing minorities in the workplace makes for worse outcomes, the implication is that whites, and males, are inherently superior to other workers.
If someone is attacking DEI, then that is what they think: White males are inherently superior. They just know that they can’t say it out loud, so they attack DEI instead. It sounds different, but it’s the same thing.
If someone is blaming DEI for affecting their professional life, then that is what they think: Whites and males and inherently superior, so any setback that they have had is due to workplace diversity costing them an opportunity that they were entitled to receive because of who they are.
If someone is blaming DEI for a company’s failure, then that is what they think: It happened because the decision wasn’t made by a white guy.
DEI Attacks Have Gained Traction
The problem is that, for lots of bigots, the flimsiest pretext is enough for them to act on those hurt feelings. Since 2023, over 84 anti-DEI bills have been introduced in 28 states. 12 of them have become law and 13 are about to. The House of Representatives scrapped its Office of Diversity and Inclusion. The Supreme Court overruled affirmative action on the grounds that accounting for race violates the Equal Protection Clause, even though the Equal Protection Clause was added to the Constitution precisely to ensure that Black people weren’t discriminated against. Yes, the right-wing mantra about equality being anti-white racism is the law with this Court.
To make matters even worse, companies in industries that are overly saturated with bigots have to decide whether to risk inciting their customers’ ire, or to cut their DEI programs. John Deere, for example, sided with its bigoted customer base.
For lots of people, bigoted feelings have become facts.
We’re About to See Anti-DEI a Lot in This Election Campaign
Understanding what DEI means and what it actually means when the right wing criticizes it is going to be very important for the next 99 days. The right wing has gone all-in on labeling presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris a “DEI candidate.”
What they’re really saying is that she can’t be a good candidate because she’s not a white man.
In today’s culture, saying the N-word is not acceptable, the gender pay gap is a problem to be fixed, and there is no superior race. The right wing disagrees with all of those things, but it knows that saying this out loud would make them look bigoted, which can lose them popularity, which can lose them political power. Therefore, the right wing has to use different words.
“DEI” is today’s N-word, B-word, C-word, and any other derogatory slur that has no place in decent society.
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