DEI means Black, but African-Americans aren’t the only ones in the crosshairs

The coded language might change, but the attempts to impair anyone who isn’t a white male remain.

By Carron J. Phillips

When you can’t say the N-word you have to find a substitute, so disguising your hate with a three-letter acronym is the perfect con.

BLM.

CRT.

DEI.

And don’t forget about trigger words such as thug, classless, and woke.

People who support oppression are like car manufacturers who update models annually. And the terms and phrases they use are all dog whistles for “Black.”

“The term ‘DEI’ or ‘DEI hire’ is not just being used to undermine the qualifications, the capability, and the readiness of Black people, of women, and other people in all of these different sectors,” Van Lathan recently explained on his podcast. “It’s not just minimizing them. DEI is placing the blame of all of society’s ills at the feet of these people....

“The belief that every single thing that goes wrong in American or world society is because white straight males aren’t in charge is a religious endeavor. It takes faith and belief and total capitulation to white supremacy to believe that.”

That mentality is why a white woman—who at the time had the best resume of anyone who’s ever run for president—lost an election to a reality TV star with no political experience. It’s why a Black woman—who might have had an even better resume—lost to a candidate who was impeached twice and is a convicted felon. And it’s why when the first of multiple plane crashes occurred, DEI was immediately discussed as being a potential cause—despite that a number of FAA employees had been recently fired.

“The NAACP is disgusted by this display of unpresidential, divisive behavior,” Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, told reporter April Ryan in a statement via text message. “The president has made his decision to put politics over people abundantly clear as he uses the highest office in the land to sow hatred rooted in falsehoods instead of providing us with the leadership we need and deserve.”

And it’s just wrong. A screenshot from a past episode of MSNBC’s “The Reid Out” that recently made the rounds on social media showed the stats from the FAA’s diversity breakdown in 2022: 94 percent of pilots, 84 percent of mechanics/technicians, 83 percent of engineers, and 78 percent of air traffic controllers are white.

You can’t keep blaming a certain segment of the population when things go bad if that segment of the population has historically and systemically been kept out of those professions. But, these cult-like political ideologies work by falsely stereotyping people to be something they’re not. They’re always looking for an eternal culprit. It’s why Medicaid could be hit with billions of dollars of cuts, as it’s believed that a “certain” group of people is “leeching” off the government. Or why schools and universities have days to eliminate DEI initiatives or risk losing federal funding. It’s also the same reason why the Defense Intelligence Agency paused all activities and events connected to Martin Luther King Day, Black History Month, Juneteenth, LGBTQ Pride Month, and Holocaust Remembrance Day. But a bill has been introduced to make Donald Trump’s birthday a federal holiday.

“Don’t tell me you reject DEI when you live in a White House built by Black hands,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) said recently. “The White House is a DEI house built by slaves who worked without the benefit of compensation.”

The kicker is that though DEI is most often aimed at Black people, just like affirmative action, we were never the ones who benefitted from it the most. “White women today are more educated and make up a bigger slice of the workforce as a result of decades of affirmative action policies, scholars say,” USA Today reported in 2023. “White women have also made inroads into corporate leadership that people of color and women of color have not.”

“While many white women have made gains in American workplaces, the gains for racial and ethnic minority women haven't been as significant,” Michelle Penelope King, wrote in Forbes in 2023. “According to another McKinsey study, white women hold nearly 19 percent of all C-suite positions, while racial and ethnic minority women only hold 4 percent. Overall, white women have benefited disproportionally from corporate DEI efforts.”

The face of DEI is always portrayed one way, but that picture never quite lines up with who is helped the most by it. The attacks on DEI aren’t just about Blackness, either. The physically and mentally impaired and those with special needs are also in the crosshairs, along with white women and anybody else who isn’t a straight white male.

The comedy in all of this is that DEI shows up in the most uncommon places. Is it DEI when the white guy who isn’t good enough to stay on an NBA roster turns out to be the league’s slam-dunk champion? Or when one of the two Philadelphia Eagles’ white starting defensive backs scores a touchdown?

In 2013, in the opening episode of the third season of the ABC hit series “Scandal,” Olivia Pope’s father told her, “You have to be twice as good as them to get half of what they have.” It was an ideology and life lesson that African-Americans have taught each other and lived by for decades. It was a cultural secret that the rest of the world was allowed to hear, disguised as a wake-up call that far too many other minorities hit the snooze button on. The past month has been a revelation of what happens when you oversleep.

Carron J. Phillips is an award-winning journalist who writes on race, culture, social issues, politics, and sports. He hails from Saginaw, Michigan, and is a graduate of Morehouse College and Syracuse University.

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