New Orleans        DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion, has become a contentious piece of language welded to the conservative attack on “woke” culture.  It’s a hard flag to fly right now, and hasn’t been easy in the past either.  As a rough substitute for “affirmative action,” which was even more controversial and didn’t fare well legally, it worked for a while as a placeholder, but could never stand for what America should be about, which is equality, plain and simple, for all of its people.

Now, under the new administration, the attack on DEI within the government is wide and deep.  Offices that examined these issues, along with workers directly or even tangentially involved with them, are being shuttered and cast off.  The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has been crippled and continues to be under attack and rendered dysfunctional.  Units within existing federal agencies are also being attacked or closed.  In a bizarre twist, President Trump even blamed a plane crash in Washington, D.C. on DEI.

The assault doesn’t end within the federal government and its workforce.  Public power is also being used to surveill nonprofits to determine the scope of their activities in this area.  Private businesses and nonprofits with government contracts are being interrogated and threatened about any of their commitments in this area.  In the private section, companies are folding these efforts like cheap suits.  Meta, Walmart, Google, banks, Target, and an endless list of others have been quick to announce their capitulation, proving their commitment in this area was at best situational.  Costco, which refused to abandon this field, is now under attack.

There’s too much smoke to not try to understand the fire.  There can’t be much doubt at this point that what’s really going on is that the administration and its allies are trying to resegregate the country.  Whether they are claiming there is a concerted white replacement effort or are just plain stone-cold racists in suits and ties, it adds up to the same thing.  It’s hard not to see this program as intended to achieve anything other than a return to some kind of Ozzie and Harriett 1950’s America.

The poster child for the clarity of purpose for the Trump team is “Darren Beattie, who was just named an acting undersecretary of state: ‘Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” he wrote on X — not 10 years ago but in October.’”  This was from a column by Karen Attiah in the Washington Post, but this was not the only voice in the current wilderness.  The fact that Attiah is Black might lead these folks to ignore her frank appraisal of the facts, but she’s not alone.  David French, the white, conservative columnist for the New York Times, expounded on this with the fuller quotes, doubling her ante, and writing:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio just hired a man named Darren Beattie to serve as his acting undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. Beattie has a horrific record of overt racism. On Jan. 6, 2021, he tweeted at multiple Black lawmakers and public figures, telling them to “learn their place” and “take a knee” before MAGA.  In October, he posted on X, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”

We need to stop mincing words about all of this, and call racism what it is. This is not about some “woke” mess.  That’s just a convenient whipping boy for an all-out effort to resegregate America, let white supremacists run free, and in Beattie’s words, “be in charge.”

This is getting very ugly and has to be opposed by all of us regardless of political affiliation or ideological preference.