I’m no fan of Trump by any stretch, and there are plenty of things he does that we should know about, but there have been so many times I would turn to CNN or MSNBC and find nearly every story was about Donald Trump. Trump said this. Trump said that. Trump fell asleep during his trial. Trump said a word that doesn’t exist.
I think what bothered me about it the most, beyond just the fact that left-wing news outlets were oftentimes ignoring most other issues in the world at the expense of Trump, is that they exaggerated what Trump said or did at least three times out 10.
Trump already has said and done enough bad things, so it was odd to me media felt the need to overstate things.
It was all compounded by social media churning out more and more anti-Trump information. Every. Single. Day.
It made efforts to combat Trump’s real racism fall on deaf ears.
DEI is now suffering from this same type of problem.
Anytime someone in the world of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion does or says something wrong, we know about.
Then it’s replayed over and over and over. The right-wing media outlets have become obsessed with opposing diversity and inclusion efforts. And then social media replays and feeds us as much information as possible to further those aims.
I still recall in 2021 when Coca-Cola hosted a diversity training which taught employees how to be “less white.” While right-wing media went into a frenzy and exaggerated the misstep, it nonetheless wasn’t the best way to promote diversity.
“Less white,” of course, was a bad choice of words. The phrase demeans white people and flies in the face of DEI’s very name — inclusion. The organizers’ blunder was unfortunate, yes. But it was an outlier. A rarity among the thousands of educational DEI trainings held annually. That didn’t stop the media from blasting it out as evidence of the program’s anti-white bias.
The United Federation of Teachers, the union that represents many New York teachers, was forced to cancel a workshop on the “harmful effects of whiteness.” The media predictably jumped on the poor choice of words and amplified them beyond the substance of the actual training.
Some DEI efforts on a dozen or so of the nation’s 5,300 campuses have used DEI as a paradigm for putting people in two groups. Oppressors and oppressed. That in turn has encouraged horrific antisemitism on some campuses where Jews are group-labeled the oppressors, resulting in violence and intimidation against Jews.
The head of DEI at one school where a cousin of mine attends was told that Jews were just a religion so my cousin could not participate in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs. Setting aside the ethnic identity aspect of Jews ignored by this DEI professional, is that really the kind of DEI we want?
These and other issues with DEI, so we’re clear, are abhorrent. They ought to be stopped. We shouldn’t accept anyone hateful or exclusive running diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
But these outliers are not representative of standard DEI programs across our nation’s companies and institutions. They are an aberration that gets amplified into propaganda.
Yet now, opponents of racial repair use every opportunity they can to blame DEI for our problems.
A bridge collapsed in Baltimore, so some blamed DEI, with scant evidence.
NPR’s decline, which is lengthy and complex, was blamed on DEI and wokeness.
Even when someone shot at Trump, numerous people blamed DEI. Nobody ever blames exclusionary policies when white people screw up.
A small group of people hell-bent on destroying real efforts of inclusion have actually made it a priority to dismantle the programs altogether.
According to an investigative report by the New York Times, a small group of billionaires is now funding these efforts.
But Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, at its core, isn’t about attacking. Or excluding people. Or about some replacement theory.
It’s about three things.
First, diversity. That means all of us. Our schools, companies and institutions have not always been so diverse. True diversity means a workforce that embraces all of our many differences. Race. Gender. Age. Geographical origins. Ethnicity. Disabilities. Etc. And yes, white people too.
It does not mean no whites allowed. Diversity by definition includes white people. We and our companies and institutions all benefit from a true diverse experience. It doesn’t mean hiring doctors who don’t have a medical degree. It doesn’t mean hiring firefighters who can’t lift a ladder.
Second, equity. Equity means fairness. It means attempting to to ensure equal treatment, access, opportunity and advancement for people. To identify and remove barriers that prevent some groups from fully participating. The more people who have the chance to succeed in society, the better our nation is for all of us. Efforts to fix a system that has not been equitable isn’t about harming people.
Equity doesn’t mean that white people no longer can succeed or advance. I’m not aware of any statistics that show DEI has caused some mass exodus of white people from the workforce or prevented some mass scale advancement by white folks. You don’t need a study. Look around.
Third, inclusion. As one university put it so aptly, “inclusion involves active, intentional, and ongoing efforts to create environments where all individuals are welcomed, feel a sense of belonging, and are respected, supported, and valued to fully participate. Inclusion means accommodating different needs and perspectives.”
Inclusion does not mean exclusion. It doesn’t mean excluding whites. It doesn’t mean excluding or putting down Jews. Or any other group.
Do we need to improve some of DEI programs? Absolutely. Many aren’t living up to their ideals for white or Black people.
Do we need to speak out when people abuse DEI to put down others? When Coca Cola or some other program gets it wrong? When Jews are harassed? Of course. We ought not let DEI programs be hijacked by world events. Or become programs we fear.
But to somehow take the need for improvement in DEI or use outlier problems as excuses to stop promoting diversity, equity and inclusion when society still reels from so much disparity seems like an excuse in itself to end and maybe even reverse years of racial progress.
We don’t need to live in an either-or world where we wholesale accept or wholesale oppose every DEI program.
Let’s improve the programs we need to and continue to support the necessary work of diversity, equity and inclusion programs so we can all create a more just and equitable society.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Jeffrey Kass' work on Medium.