The Anti-DEI Crowd Shows Their True Colors

It's White People Who Are Truly Qualified

The Chronicle of Higher Education provides its readers with a handy graphic (may be behind a paywall) on anti-DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) legislation operating in various states.

Twenty-two states plus the District of Columbia have not put forward any anti-DEI legislation at all. So the 82 bills have been introduced in 28 states. If you superimpose the infamous red-states/blue-states map, it comes pretty close.

Of the 82, 35 are currently blocked. A dozen have become law and another dozen have cleared the legislature but haven’t yet been signed by the governor. If my math is correct, there are another 23 bills somewhere in process.

Generally speaking, these bills ban state money from going to public institutions that have DEI offices or initiatives¹. Many seek to outlaw diversity statements as part of the hiring process.² Chief Diversity Officers, recently added to university cabinets, are to be let go.

This week, University of Texas-Austin announced that it was closing their Division of Campus and Community Engagement (formerly the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement). Sixty people will lose their jobs. As Inside Higher Ed reported yesterday:

The closure comes a week after Texas higher education leaders were warned by lawmakers that failure to comply with SB 17, the state's anti-diversity, equity and inclusion bill, could result in legal action or a loss of funding.

“While I am encouraged with the progress I have seen from many institutions of higher education in implementing SB 17, I am deeply concerned with the possibility that many institutions may choose to merely rename their offices or employee titles,” wrote Republican state Senator Brandon Creighton, who sponsored the bill. “This letter should serve as notice that this practice is unacceptable.”

This morning’s Inside Higher Ed presented an opinion piece by Ryan Miller, education professor at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. He observes that beyond the political grandstanding around DEI, there are actual people affected.

The spaces that have closed were unremarkable in the best possible sense—no one was forced to use the resources or denied from using them, but the spaces meant the world to many Longhorns over the last several decades. It wasn’t a problem to me or my peers that other students had spaces they cherished at UT that were similarly supported (and in many cases, supported much more substantially) with employees and budgets—think fraternities and sororities, student government, athletics and intramural sports, and the list goes on. There are not similar calls to ban or close any of these resources, nor should there be, despite the fact they primarily serve a subset of the UT population—like any other university department.

The programs targeted by anti-DEI initiatives tend to involve students of color, women’s studies programs and support centers, LGTBQ+ support programs, and efforts to help first-generation (who may disproportionately fall into these other categories). As I’ve written before, many of these initiatives were developed to increase the likelihood of retention, persistence, and completion for various subgroups (who are needed given the demographic changes afoot).

What is wrong with such programs? They are seen by the critics as providing supports on the basis of race, sexual orientation, or gender identity that are not available to those not in these categories.

Consider a bill currently sitting in the Kentucky legislature.³ Inside Higher Ed reported on Wednesday what is under consideration.

The latest version of Senate Bill 6 defined DEI “initiatives” as policies or practices that promote “differential treatment or benefits to individuals on the basis of religion, race, sex, color or national origin.” Other initiatives would include trainings, presentations and meetings that promote “discriminatory concepts.”

That’s yet another term of art in the bill that referred to, among other things, “presenting as truth, rather than as a subject for inquiry, that an existing structure, system, or relation of power, privilege, or subordination persists on the basis of oppression, colonialism, socioeconomic status, religion, race, sex, color, or national origin.” The bill further defined DEI “offices” as institutional units responsible for promoting these “discriminatory concepts” or DEI initiatives.

The first paragraph above makes clear that no program could benefit any student on the basis of race. If UNC’s Miller is correct (and he is) the impact will be a guarantee of a program that supports the predominant white population. When that is added to a denial of structural inequality, privilege, or power differentials, it works to retain the priority of white students.

We can also see this assumption of desired white preference (bordering on superiority) in contexts outside higher education. After last weekend’s collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore, conservative critics thought they were funny by arguing that black mayor Brandon Scott was a “DEI mayor”. The assumption is that “real” mayors are white and Scott has his position due to some weird affirmative action policy.

In a Washington Post editorial on Monday, Eugene Robinson quoted Mayor Scott: “What they mean by DEI, in my opinion, is ‘duly elected incumbent.’ We know what they want to say. But they don’t have the courage to say the N-word.”

Robinson writes:

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, also a Black Democrat, has also been attacked by the anti-DEI crowd for having had the temerity to appoint the first African American woman to serve on the Maryland Port Commission. “This is what happens when you have Governors who prioritize diversity over the wellbeing and security of citizens,” posted Phil Lyman, a Utah legislator who is running for governor of his state. “DEI did this,” posted Anthony Sabatini, a GOP congressional candidate in Florida’s 11th District, over a video clip of the bridge’s collapse.

Asked by CNN to comment, Moore said, “I have no time for foolishness.” He and Scott are rightly focused on clearing megatons of debris from the harbor channel, which will allow the Port of Baltimore to reopen, and eventually replacing the fallen span with a new bridge.

The rest of us, though, should take a moment to ponder the bridge the American right has crossed — a bridge leading to the Jim Crow past.

Brian Beutler wrote about the bridge collapse and the DEI claims in his Off Message SubStack over the weekend.

If you squint at the polls just so, you can find Republicans on the majoritarian side of narrow “DEI” controversies, just as you can find them on the majoritarian side of the narrow issue of trans high-school sports athletes. But Republicans plainly have no first-principles commitments on either matter. They dredged them up for the purposes of anti-black and anti-trans pandering. And so there’s no principle limiting the political appeals to the narrower issues. They aren’t really fixed solely on the merits of white-guilt seminars or the tiny number of trans girls outcompeting cis girls. And so, by picking these fights, they made it open season on whole races and genders.

Want another example of these DEI train whistles? Look at airplanes. After that Alaska Airlines Boeing-produced plane lost its door, Rolling Stone noted that the conservative commentariat suggested that maybe both entities were too focused on DEI efforts and that’s why the door fell off. I don’t know how to reconcile these claims with the resignation of the white Boeing CEO.

The Rolling Stone story includes comments from TPUSA’s Charlie Kirk: “I’m sorry. If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like ‘boy, I hope he’s qualified’”. Because, you know, REAL pilots are White Men.

Just today, there was reporting on a near-accident involving a Southwest Airlines flight that flew very close to the control tower at LaGuardia last month. If the pilots or the air traffic controller (who saved the day according to a report I saw from ABC last night) turn out to be other than White Men, you can be sure that the anti-DEI critics will pile on, arguing that this is what you get when you promote people using DEI guidelines.

Of course that’s not how anybody gets hired to be a pilot or air traffic controller. It’s not how someone is elected mayor or governor.

But the rhetoric works. Without ever saying you think white people should be in control of universities or airlines or cities, you can just make aspersions about DEI commitments. You’ll get your way without ever using the N-word or claiming that women are too emotional.

I hope we learn to pay attention and call this anti-DEI crusade out for what it is.

1. I’ve written on here before that if state schools are becoming unwelcome to students of color or LGBTQ+ students or women’s studies that Christian universities could pick up the slack.

2. I’ve never been a fan of these. It’s too easy to use buzz words in these statements in order to pass muster. It’s likely pretty rare that a search committee would pass on a candidate they liked just because of a weak diversity statement.

3. Not likely to be taken up this year because it doesn’t have enough support to override the governor’s likely veto.