By Christopher Young ,
Contributing Writer,
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, actions, and programs are about promoting opportunity for people who are historically marginalized in our country. It doesn’t take long to figure out who opposes increasing opportunity toward a level playing field – it’s always the same majority group – white Republicans – that want to try to convince others that there is no discrimination in the land of the free, the home of the brave.
In June 2024, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance and Texas Representative Michael Cloud, both Republicans, introduced the Dismantle DEI Act. The legislation passed out of committee on November 20, 2024, with a party-line vote of 23-17, yet died – for now – due to the conclusion of the 118th Congress on January 3, 2025.
Last year a major blow was dealt to those seeking to level the playing field by none other than the U.S. Supreme Court, who ruled against race-conscious admissions – eliminating affirmative action in college admissions. The main cases – University of North Carolina and Harvard – were decided by 6-3 and 6-2 votes, respectively. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, “the decision sees the universities’ admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called the decision, ““truly a tragedy for us all.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent, “rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress.”
We remember that in June 2013, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, gutted key parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, with Chief Justice John Roberts explaining, “our country has changed for the better. Deplorable conditions that spurred Congress five decades ago to require certain parts of the United States to preclear changes to voting laws no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions,” per CNN. This was the core decision that opened the most recent door for white Republican elected leaders to pounce. Last year’s decision ending affirmative action in college admissions just made it even easier for them. Supremacy can’t be maintained without knocking down all attempts to challenge it. Their spoken justification is that affirmative action and DEI programs are racist and discriminatory toward white people. It’s a bizarre position to take; brazen and cruel. White people in America claiming discrimination is downright laughable, right up until it makes you sob – knowing the lengths they will go to preserving their supremacy.
Pennsylvania Representative Summer Lee doesn’t fumble her words. Speaking before a House Oversight Committee about the Dismantle DEI Act, “I’m not in favor…it maybe would be more aptly called the dismantling any semblance of support or opportunity for certain Americans act. And we know who those Americans are, Americans who have not enjoyed centuries of unfair advantages. By keeping others enslaved or segregated or disenfranchised or incarcerated or red lined or gerrymandered or excluded by law…this is just the final piece of a decades long obsession with targeting and dismantling anything that might give marginalized people a fair shot…after centuries of efforts to keep us out of schools and universities, from jobs, and elected offices, Republicans targeting these policies are no accident. Who? Predominantly conservative white men believe that the success of a black person or the opportunity or access of a black person is an existential threat to them…contrary to Republican conjecture, remedying past discrimination is not, in turn, a discrimination. And we’re not going to sit here, and pretend racism is over just because one black person on the Supreme Court agreed that it should be…”
Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett’s statements hold nothing back either. Following remarks by Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins stating that DEI policies are oppression, Crockett responded, “There has been no oppression for the white man in this country. You tell me which white men were dragged out of their homes. You tell me which one of them got dragged all the way across an ocean and told that you are going to go and work…It is white men on this side of the aisle telling us, people of color on this side of the aisle, that y’all are the ones being oppressed, that y’all are the ones being harmed? That is not the definition of oppression,” per USA Today on November 21, 2024.
How can reasonable people surmise that we live in a post-racial society? Let’s get some field trips set up for the six conservative members of the Supreme Court of the United States. They can begin in any of the nine entire states that were on the Voting Rights Act section five preclearance list – Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. These states were not on the list by accident. Has change occurred? Certainly, it has. But a stop in a diner, even in metropolitan areas like Jackson, Mississippi, for a coffee and a dish of peach cobbler, will have you convinced that we have a long way to go toward equity for all – and the southern states continue fierce gerrymandering practices. Let the Supreme Court be reminded that in FY2023, the state of Mississippi awarded contracts for goods and services to the tune of $3.3 billion, and over 99% of expenditures went to white people, in a state with a 44% minority population.
The 119th Congress began on January 3, 2025. Under a new title and a new number, we can bet that a new “anti-DEI” bill will be introduced by Republicans, probably some of the same ones that called Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson and Vice President Kamala Harris DEI hires. Liberty and justice for all, well, they’re just words to some people.
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