As Trump and Musk continue to destroy the government agencies that monitor or prevent the illegal activities that enrich them, they’ve pursued an ancillary effort that lays bare the source of Trump’s narrow electoral win: MAGA’s war on “wokism” in general and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs in particular.
As I have previously noted, the animosity toward efforts to address social and legal discrimination are part and parcel of an unfortunate but persistent strain of American bigotry. To our shame, millions of Americans have defended slavery and Jim Crow, opposed votes for women, donned white sheets and marched with the Ku Klux Klan. Others–who were less virulent but no less bigoted–merely refrained from hiring or otherwise doing business with minority folks, and blackballed Blacks and Jews from their country clubs and other venues.
The current assaults, ironically, are evidence of the nation’s historic protection of straight White Christian males from the uncomfortable reality that they are not a superior breed. It turns out that intellect, character and ability–and absences thereof– are pretty equally distributed among all races, religions and genders.
For confirmation of that fact, we need look no farther than the collection of clowns, incompetents and sycophants Trump has installed in important positions, and compare them to the credentialed and competent “DEI hires” he ejected from those same positions. If we ever needed evidence that White skin is no guarantee of intelligence, integrity or competence, virtually all of Trump’s appointees provide that evidence.
Trump’s base undoubtedly approves of the ferocity with which the administration has pursued its assault on anti-discrimination efforts, but it turns out that Americans in general have moved on from the days when your police chief was a disciple of Sheriff James Clark and your friendly banker or dentist was a Grand Dragon of the KKK.
A recent article in the Atlantic looked at the survey research, and concluded that the extreme positions—and appointments—of the Trump administration are wildly at odds with the views of most Americans.
The extreme positions—and appointments—of the Trump administration are self-evidently at odds with Americans’ views in the main. Recently, Trump appointed Darren Beattie to a senior diplomatic position at the State Department. Beattie is notorious for making arguments such as “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” I don’t need to look at survey data to argue that this is a fringe position.
Earlier in the article, the author did look at survey data, and shared evidence of Americans’ views on DEI efforts in general.
Given the way this administration has targeted DEI and “woke” policies, you’d be forgiven for assuming that Americans were completely on board. Yet according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted right before the election, just one-fifth of employed adults think that focusing on DEI at work is “a bad thing.” Even among workers who are Republican or lean Republican, a minority (42 percent) say that focusing on DEI is “a bad thing.” In a January poll from Harris/Axios, a majority of Americans said DEI initiatives had no impact on their career; more respondents among nearly every demographic polled (including white people, men, and Republicans) said they believed it had benefited their careers more than it had hindered them. (The sole, amusing exception being Gen X.) A June 2024 poll from The Washington Post and Ipsos found that six in 10 Americans believed DEI programs were “a good thing.” And all of this was before any backlash to Trump’s presidency had time to set in.
An early signal that the administration is overreaching comes from a Washington Post poll on early Trump-administration actions, which found that voters oppose ending DEI programs in the federal government (49–46) and banning trans people from the military (53–42). When asked about one of Trump’s signature issues, deportation, the poll showed that, by a nearly 20-point margin, Americans do not want people to be deported if they “have not broken laws in the United States except for immigration laws.” It’s hard to imagine that those same Americans approve of sending a man to Gitmo for riding his bike on the wrong side of the street, or of calling a city’s administrator for homelessness services a “DEI hire” because she’s a white woman.
If there’s one thing Trump excels at, it’s demonstrating that White Christian men are not universally superior–and that those who most resent DEI tend to be both unintelligent and dangerously inept.
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