(ThyBlackMan.com) President Trump and much of the GOP’s growing fixation on diversity, equity and inclusion programs — often referred to as DEI — has become a flashpoint in the nation’s politics that threatens to derail the essential project of becoming a more just and inclusive multiracial democracy.
On his first day back in office, Trump issued an Executive Order that banned DEI programs across the Federal government, followed by a personnel memo requiring civil servants to report on their colleagues if they are engaged in anything that even hints of DEI or face consequences, an alarmingly McCarthy-like command. Trump’s obsession reached a new low when he made a cruel and baseless claim that DEI programs were to blame for the horrific plane crash near Reagan Airport that cost 67 lives.
This is just the latest example of how DEI has been turned into a convenient scapegoat — a manufactured boogeyman used to stoke fear, fuel division, and justify rolling back hard-fought progress on racial justice.
But these attacks are not simply limited to the government. Many major corporations such as Target, Google, McDonalds, and Meta have already pulled back or ended their DEI programs, sending a clear message that even institutions that were once committed to diversity are caving to political pressure. As history has shown, when the private sector pulls back, the ripple effects extend far beyond Wall Street, creating a chilling effect on the nonprofit sector, where DEI initiatives are often critical to fulfilling missions of social good.
Organizations, including the organization I have the honor of leading, must remain steadfast and more persuasive in making the case for DEI from both a moral and practical perspective. For anyone who cares about fairness and justice for all, we must pay attention to the underlying agenda at play, which is rooted in a backlash against efforts to address systemic racism and sexism.
In order to justify this dismantling of DEI, the Trump Administration claims they are simply trying to reshape government and, by extension, our society into one that is based “solely on merit” and that is ‘color-blind.” At first glance, these slogans may sound appealing. After all, a society based “solely on merit” and “color-blind” policies suggests fairness.
But the appeal that we are or should be a color-blind society ignores the ways in which opportunities and privileges are still so often granted or denied based on someone’s race, gender, ableness, and other types of human diversity. Rather than trying to erase the many positive ways our race and ethnicity shape our identity, we should embrace E Pluribus Unum: that out of many, we form one nation.
In response to the current assault, we need a three-pronged strategy that separates DEI facts from fiction, reframes DEI through lenses of fairness and justice, and builds a broad coalition that can persuade the American public that the work behind DEI ultimately benefits everyone.
The first challenge requires that we break down what DEI stands for. Diversity is about combatting discrimination in the hiring and recruitment process, proactively finding the best talent, and creating the conditions where talent can stay and thrive. Equity is possibly the most controversial and complex aspect of DEI. However, despite many misleading caricatures, equity is about making a workplace fair for everyone — by ending pay discrimination, favoritism in promotions, retaliatory firing, bullying, and harassment. Finally, inclusion is really about creating a workplace culture where everyone is valued and respected — able to bring and contribute their best.
Second, we must be committed to far more than an acronym: we must fiercely and persuasively defend the work yet to be done behind each of the words. The case for DEI is not just a moral one, it’s also highly practical. Studies consistently show that diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones, leading to stronger workplaces, higher retention rates, and better decision-making.
But beyond the data, the principles behind DEI are deeply embedded in the core values of many faith traditions, including Christianity, which holds that every individual is created in God’s image and is deserving of dignity, respect, and opportunity.
Without these initiatives, we risk reverting to environments where homogeneity is the norm, bias and discrimination go more unchecked, and the status quo remains unchallenged, where our nation will increasingly default to the belief that competence and privilege lie first and foremost with white men, a belief and practice that has defined much of our history, contradicts our best civic and religious values, and makes our workplaces less competitive.
If we allow this coordinated attack on DEI to succeed, we risk entrenching the very inequities that have long plagued our nation — undermining not only our moral integrity but also our collective progress towards a future where we can more fully realize the Constitutional promise of liberty and justice for all.
Written by Reverend Adam Russell-Taylor
Official website; https://x.com/revadamtaylor
