Donald Trump’s second act as president has begun with so many unthinkable policies — from seeking to eliminate birthright citizenship guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment to pardoning January 6 rioters who attacked police officers — that it is tempting to assume that his moves to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies can easily be dismissed as wrongheaded.
The manner in which Trump has gone about his assault on DEI further enhances the impulse for Democrats to push back very hard. After a tragic airplane crash, at a moment when the president
should have been consoling the country, Trump cast blame on DEI policies despite lacking any evidence. The administration also hired an acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy who wrote in October, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.” As outlined below, Trump issued anti-DEI executive orders that were vague, and his purge of DEI staff in the federal government swept up some people who had merely attended DEI sessions. He has targeted for elimination not only racial preference polices, but also President Lyndon B. Johnson’s requirement that, before firms evaluate candidates in a race-neutral fashion, they engage in outreach efforts to make sure a diverse group of applicants are aware of opportunities. Trump has claimed to defend “merit” and then appointed cabinet members who are utterly unqualified. In short, if one wanted to find someone to make a principled case against DEI excesses, it is hard to think of a worse candidate than Donald Trump.
Furthermore, it is enticing to defend current DEI policies because the goals are noble. America’s ability to draw diverse populations from all over the world is undoubtedly one of the country’s great strengths, the nation’s “superpower.” Genuine equal opportunity and nondiscrimination are cherished values. And educational institutions and employers should foster inclusive environments that are welcoming to people of all backgrounds. Thought of in those terms, lower-case diversity, equity, and inclusion values can be considered outgrowths of the nation’s heroic civil rights movement.
Having said all that, it would be an enormous mistake for Democrats to launch a strong defense of existing DEI programs whose means to achieving positive goals are deeply problematic. To begin with, Trump has laid a political trap. He would love nothing better than for Democrats to spend a lot of time and energy supporting politically toxic DEI policies that have alienated large numbers of voters, especially those from working-class backgrounds.
Moreover, on the merits, many DEI policies and practices in education and employment have become frighteningly illiberal and stand as a counterpoint to the historic fight for civil rights. At their worst, DEI policies have promoted mandatory ideological indoctrination about how people should think, backed up by an enforcement mechanism to make sure students, educators, and employees suffer consequences if they don’t adopt the “right” views. Too many DEI programs have oversimplified complex controversies into Manichean struggles between “oppressors” and the “oppressed,” and have advanced race essentialist thinking that equates skin color with certain sets of values. These poorly thought-out programs have been shown to sow division and resentment, and they have promoted a troubling victim mindset that is disempowering to the very populations DEI is aimed at assisting. DEI programs have often pursued rigid equality of racial group results by fiat, imposed illiberal loyalty oaths in college faculty hiring, curtailed free speech rights, and denigrated merit. With a singular focus on race, they have too often ignored pressing issues of economic inequality and the benefits of ideological diversity. They have diverted precious resources, often proven ineffective and counterproductive and, in some cases, fed antisemitism. For all these reasons, these policies, often enforced by coercive DEI bureaucracies, have hurt Democrats politically, particularly among working-class voters, and helped to fuel Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
In turn, Republican responses to DEI, including Trump’s, have often themselves been exceedingly illiberal. Bans on DEI in states such as Florida and Iowa, have trampled on academic freedom by barring professors from discussing certain forbidden topics. In some red states, anti-DEI policies have led schools to pull books from libraries, including volumes about Roberto Clemente, Anne Frank, and Ruby Bridges. Reducing access to these materials is a close cousin of the “book bans” that authoritarian countries have implemented. In some states, such as Texas, educators cannot teach topics that might cause “discomfort” or arouse feelings of guilt among some white students. Some anti-DEI policies have taken on a punitive approach toward higher education generally, which Vice President J.D. Vance has described as “the enemy.”6 Finally, some right-wing attacks on DEI look suspiciously like assaults on the goal of diversity itself. Whereas conservatives used to oppose racial preference programs but support efforts to uplift economically disadvantaged students of all races, some now claim that even race-neutral programs are a form of “proxy discrimination,” if racial diversity is one of their goals.
When both sides in the DEI wars suppress free speech and try to police how citizens think, what is the way out? This report lays out a completely different vision that would end troubling DEI bureaucracies and replace them with new forms of civic education that seek to bring people of different backgrounds together and emphasize what they have in common as Americans. New policies would benefit economically disadvantaged people of all races, including those whose prospects have been stunted by the economic legacy of racial discrimination. The animating vision of these policies would embrace the wonderful diversity of the United States and honor people of all backgrounds as fully American but also recognize that the genius of liberal democracy is to transcend tribalism to create a shared American identity centered around fundamental principles.
