- Conspiracy 101: Why Do People Believe In Conspiracies?
- Conspiracy 101: The War On Woke
- Conspiracy 101: The Rise Of The “Radical Left”
- Conspiracy 101: What Is The Deep State?
- Conspiracy 101: The Anti-Trans Moral Panic
- Conspiracy 101: We’re All Going To Die Because of DEI
Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave over the past couple of weeks (and if you have, I can’t say I can blame you) you would have seen almost wall-to-wall coverage of the Trump Administration’s attacks on DEI.
From causing plane crashes[1]AP: Trump was challenged after blaming DEI for the DC plane crash. Here’s what he said to being “illegal and immoral discrimination programmes”[2]Whitehouse.gov: Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing, Trump has long had an issue with Diversity, Equality and Inclusivity (DEI) programmes and ran on its removal as a major campaign point.
Interestingly, Project 2025 also championed the removal of DEI from government at the Federal Level[3]Forbes: Can DEI Survive Project 2025? Three Strategies To Consider but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence, right?
Elon Musk also seems to have a major problem with DEI programmes and is convinced that they are killing people (spoiler: they aren’t).
Original Tweet from @ElonMusk on Twitter
Original Tweet from @ElonMusk on Twitter
Original Tweet from @ElonMusk on Twitter
Original Tweet from @ElonMusk on Twitter
Original Tweet from @ElonMusk on Twitter
Original Tweet from @ElonMusk on Twitter
Even computer games aren’t safe from DEI apparently:
Original Tweet from @ElonMusk on Twitter
The above is just a small sample of some of Musk’s tweets showing how much of an impact DEI seems to be having on him.
But what is DEI and why do Trump, Project 2025 and the Conservative Right seem afraid of it so much that they want to completely obliterate any mention of it from the Federal Government?
What Is DEI?
DEI stands for “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”.
Its three parts are tightly linked and can be defined in simple terms as:
Diversity: The embracing of differences and understanding that these differences can allow us to see other points of view. Diversity can include things like race, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability, religion and age.
Equity: This is making things equal for everyone. It means that just because you’re a certain ethnic minority or come for a poor background this isn’t a barrier to moving ahead in life – everyone has an equal chance at careers, education, healthcare and more.
Inclusivity: This means respecting everyone’s point of view, even if it’s not the same as your own. It is understanding that a wide variety of voices can help build a full and vibrant culture which furthers the American nation as a whole.
In simple terms, DEI means embracing our differences, making sure it’s an even playing field and that everyone has the option of being involved.
DEI’S A New Thing, Right?
No! Far from it!
DEI (as we would understand it today) came into being in the 1960s in order to help marginalised communities get a foot on the ladder to help them achieve equality with their white counterparts.
In 1964 the Civil Rights Act was signed into law which made discrimination based on religion, race, sex or ethnicity when it came to employment illegal[4]Forbes: The Little Known History Of DEI And Why It’s Critical To Its Survival.
This meant that companies and institutions would have to take what was called “affirmative action” in order to ensure that minority populations were being represented and had access to resources that might not necessarily be available to them due to their race, gender or other “diverse” characteristics.
The act was further expanded in the 1970s as the feminist movement grew and women moved further into the mainstream workforce. By the 1990s it became apparent that dedicated officers within companies could greatly improve diversity hiring, meaning that they would have access to a greater pool of candidates which in turn could improve their success rate and increase profits.
In the 2000s diversity training was being offered to highlight the importance of differing views and abilities in business and in 2021 Biden signed an Executive Order requiring Federal agencies to invest in DEI training [5]Executive Order 14035 Implementation: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility(DEIA) in the Federal Workforce – PDF and it is this order that Trump repealed with his own Executive Order snappily titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing“, followed up a day later with “Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-based Opportunity” which have rolled back DEI requirements meaning that minorities will no longer have access to career paths and funding that they would have had previously.
So just as “Woke” became a way to target people who are socially aware, “DEI” became a pejorative term to target people who are either part of a minority group (and I include women in that even though they’re 50% of the population), accepting of minority groups or actively helping to promote them.
It is a simple way to “other”[6]VeryWellMind: How Othering Contributes to Discrimination and Prejudice people and makes it easier to instil an “Us vs Them” mentality in your followers giving them a cause to rally behind.
Why Are People On The Right Afraid Of DEI?
Just to bring this over the pond to the UK, we don’t have DEI as such here, but most “protected characteristics” such as sexual orientation, age, race etc. are protected under law through the 2010 Equalities Act.
This differs to the US DEI policy as affirmative action is actually prohibited by law in the UK. Companies and institutions can use “positive action” such as providing mentorship schemes or education opportunities like scholarships, but a person cannot be refused a role based on a protected characteristic[7]Lexology: President Trump’s DEI orders: what do they mean for UK employers?, or not having a protected characteristic.
It’s this key difference – affirmative action – that has those on the right-side of US politics very anti-DEI.
Firstly, they see DEI as a direct attack on their American ideals: that being a CIS, white, heterosexual male isn’t enough for them to get ahead any more.
Because of DEI and affirmative action all of the immigrants (read: brown folk) are taking their houses, their jobs and getting free money from the government too thanks to DEI policies.
But it doesn’t stop there. They think that DEI policies have infiltrated their children’s schools spreading woke ideology, informing them about Critical Race Theory (which is actually a good thing), turning all of the kids Trans and generally eroding their core Christian beliefs.
A section of society (read: rich white men over 40) thinks that DEI is actually a violation of anti-discrimination laws [8]Fast Company: This is exactly how Project 2025 plans to gut DEI in that they themselves aren’t allowed to discriminate against someone they don’t want to employ because they don’t agree with a protected characteristic.
In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that “race-conscious college admissions were unconstitutional”[9]CNN: What is DEI, and why is it dividing America? meaning that a whole slew of minorities had access to higher education taken away as colleges were now free to simply take in those who could afford to pay the most.
And we’ve seen countless examples of people refusing to marry gay couples[10]Advocate: A New York judge refused to marry a lesbian couple. The community wants her to resign, bake gay couples a wedding cake[11]BBC News: US Supreme Court backs Colorado baker’s gay wedding cake snub or even build gay people websites[12]BBC News: US Supreme Court rules website designer can refuse to serve same-sex couples.
It’s not just refusing education or services to people, DEI has been blamed for: the Silicon Valley Bank collapse[13]AP:FACT FOCUS: Claims blame ‘woke’ policies on bank’s demise; Boeing’s safety problems[14]The Dallas Express: Is Boeing Prioritizing DEI Over Safety? (although the company has since shelved its DEI initiatives[15]Simple Flying: Why Did Boeing Sunset Its Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Department?); the Baltimore Bridge collapse[16]Fast Company: It took a matter of minutes for people to blame DEI for Baltimore’s bridge accident; and even the assassination attempt on Donald Trump was all DEI’s fault[17]Time: What to Know About Women in Secret Service as Critics Blame ‘DEI’ for Trump’s Shooting.
None of this is true of course. Each of these events had very real-world causes and it wasn’t because of some inclusivity policy the organisation may have had. That didn’t matter though, there was something that those on the Right could blame for everything that was wrong with America.
The reason they couldn’t get a job was due to DEI.
The reason they couldn’t be racist online was due to DEI.
The reason their kids hated their parents religion or politics was due to DEI.
And Donald Trump, in saviour mode, was there to remove the problem with a swift wave of a pen and save the American people from wokeness.
Now, with the removal of DEI protections, things will get a lot worse for a lot more people – and not just in terms of job opportunities or education.
What Does Removing DEI Mean For The Future Of America?
You can expect to see less women in prominent roles, no matter their race, ethnic background or skin colour.
You’ll also have less people from non-white backgrounds in boardroom positions, on TV, in films – the list is almost endless.
Why?
Simply because they’re not straight white men.
People from poorer backgrounds will be denied education opportunities simply because they can’t afford to access it.
Banks will now be free to refuse loans based on any criteria they like, meaning that America could see a return to Redlining[18]Wikipedia: Redlining again.
Businesses can refuse to hire anyone they want, again based on any criteria they like, meaning that there could soon be a defined class system forming in the US even more prevalent than it is today – and with Trump aiming to slash benefits and cut the size of the government there will be little support for those unable to find work or afford housing.
And it’s not just employment or education that will be affected too – the health of the world is at stake.
What Does Removing DEI In The US Mean For The Rest Of The World?
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has been tasked with removing an ever-growing list of DEI keywords from research papers. These papers can no longer contain words like “LGBT”, “female” or “disability”[19]Gizmodo: The List of Trump’s Forbidden Words That Will Get Your Paper Flagged at NSF. The CDC has also been told to remove words like “Transgender” from its website too[20]Gizmodo: CDC Ordered to Scrub Website of Words Like ‘Transgender’ and ‘LGBT’ .
Removal of terms from grants just so they can appease the Trump Admin’s anti-woke rhetoric will mean that grants can be refused or expire[21]Science: Trump executive order puts STEM diversity efforts on hold and this will also make collaboration between scientists in different countries much more difficult, if not impossible.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, helping research into diseases that affect billions of people around the globe[22]National Institutes of Health: Grants and Funding. With these new DEI rules in place, it might be impossible for people to get grants for funding putting the lives of millions at risk, even though they’re not even covered by American law:
“There’s also this aspect of research that funds specific studies in specific populations that are now being deemed DEI… [s]o, like HIV research in Africa may be deemed DEI, malaria research, which also happens in low and middle income countries, may be considered DEI. And these are really important diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of people every year.”
Kendra Dahmer, postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley[23]AP: Trump’s DEI order leaves academic researchers fearful of political influence over grants
A Poorly Thought Out Soundbite
While you could argue that Trump is in fact following through on his campaign promise of eradicating “woke DEI policies”, I really don’t think he (or the Project 2025 team) thought through the full ramifications of these actions.
Yes, Trump is aiming for an “America First” policy but the United States relies on the rest of the world for science and innovation in spite of what American Exceptionalism[24]Yale University Press: A Brief History of American Exceptionalism might lead him to believe.
While certain terms might be eradicated from legislation and websites, it won’t stop people from using them or identifying as them.
Just because you no longer have the phrase “gender” in a school textbook doesn’t mean that gender ceases to exist as a concept. And while they can ban all of the books they want, people will still be exposed to Trans people, to Queer people, to Non-Binary people, to other races, cultures and ideals because they are real.
They exist.
That is, unless the American government adopts the same approach as the Chinese and shutters the country away from the wider internet and other cultures which I fear could be a very real possibility in the coming years given the people involved.
But what do you think? Do you think that Trump was right to rescind all DEI policies or do you think a more targeted approach was in order? Let me know in the comments below.
Katy is the editor-in-chief of FlippingHeck.com a blog about Self-Improvement, Productivity and Small Business Tips. When she’s not working, she enjoys gaming, making music and Reviewing Things.
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