After the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge last month, it fell to Baltimore’s mayor, Brandon Scott, to explain the disaster and outline the next steps. But as online clips of the 39-year-old Democrat in his city of Baltimore varsity jacket began circulating, the conversation around the bridge collapse shifted from Scott’s emergency management strategy to his skin color. “This is Baltimore’s DEI mayor,” read one viral X post panning Scott, who is Black. “It’s going to get so, so much worse. Prepare accordingly.” Before long the Maryland governor, Wes Moore, and port commissioner, Karenthia Barber, were also attacked as DEI agents and blamed for what maritime authorities have repeatedly described as a shipping accident.
Despite the fact the FBI is now investigating this 'simple accident'. Who know what they'll find? I'm sure the truth is out there; big ships are very hard to control at times, after all..
“The far right has really taken these ideas to an extreme and are not really worried about seeming racist,” says Natasha Warikoo, a sociologist at Tufts University and researcher of racial and ethnic inequality in education. “They are loud and proud of their views.”
No-one's that worried about it any more, the word has been so debased by progressive ovverreaction that it's now almost entirely meaningless.
DEI – short for diversity, equity and inclusion (or as has been said on Twitter: "Didn't Earn It") – has become the latest dog-whistle term in the conservative war of words to frame basic egalitarianism as a net negative.
Or to usher in a world of race hustling.
The word DEI follows in the ignominious tradition of progressive vocabulary that has been weaponized against the left, with its original ideas and context replaced with a familiar theme – white replacement theory.
Progressive vocabulary doesn't really have a tradition to traduce, does it? Since it seems to be one long whine about 'unfairness'. And the effect it's having on those who gained their position through merit is undeniable:
“Ben Carson was one of the all-time great surgeons,” crowed Floyd Brown, Senate campaign chair for the Republican firebrand Kari Lake. “Yet now, because of DEI, when you see a Black surgeon, you get a question in your mind. What you want, is you want the Blacks that are on top, that do succeed, to be there on their merit.”
That's indeed what you should want. So why try to muddy the waters?
