Diversity initiatives are the epitome of patriotism. The GOP’s disdain for them is pure racism.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” -Declaration of Independence

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” -Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America

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Nikki Haley’s refusal to acknowledge America’s racism is exactly why schools need to teach about it

We don’t need any more miseducated and morally questionable residents of our great nation.

Grade school teachers in the United States have required students to memorize these lines for centuries, for they reflect the noble principles and values on which our framers founded this great nation. But if we are truly honest with ourselves, we understand that we still have a long voyage yet to travel in working for all of our people to attain their “unalienable Rights” in our quest for “a more perfect Union.”

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The strategies individuals, groups, organizations, and institutions have deployed to attain our national goals have varied widely.

We have incorporated amendments into our Constitution, passed targeted legislation and judicial reform efforts, fought a Civil War and attempted a Reconstruction, engaged in a global outlook in working for “unalienable Rights” internationally, supported progressive social movements domestically and abroad, signed onto the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and implemented Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in educational and corporate institutions.

To paraphrase the National Association for Multicultural Education: DEI is a philosophical and educational model founded on principles of freedom, justice, equality, equity, and the empowerment of human agency, integrity, and dignity. DEI affirms a standard of governmental, educational, and business policies and practices in organizing and sustaining positive, warm, and welcoming places essential in a democratic society. It values social and cultural differences and prizes the pluralism all people bring.

What is more “pro-American” and “patriotic” than programs and people who are attempting to bring about the promise of our founding documents?

As with most social change efforts, however, opposing forces have launched a fierce and sustained backlash toward DEI initiatives.

Who’s afraid of DEI?

In September 2020, then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning DEI programs in government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and other institutions that held or applied for federal contracts. The stated purpose of the order was to “combat offensive and anti-American race and sex stereotyping.”

And in his ruthless campaign to turn Florida into the place “where WOKE goes to die,” Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has launched a frontal assault on DEI initiatives in the state and is working to place the final nail in the coffin of Affirmative Action in higher education stemming from the recent Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA) v. President & Fellows of Harvard College (Harvard) and SFFA v. University of North Carolina.

On Fox, host Laura Ingraham blasted DEI – and in particular so-called “diversity hires” – for causing the recent Alaska Airlines incident where a door panel blew off the fuselage of a plane at 16,000 feet, which terrified passengers and forced the pilots to make an emergency landing.  

Though acknowledging that she had no proof that DEI programs at Boeing, a private company, led to the near disaster, her implication was clear: “We can’t link the diversity efforts to what happened, that would take an exhaustive investigation,” she admitted. “But it’s worth asking at this point, is excellence what we need in airline operation, or is diversity the goal here?”

Here she implies that diversity efforts are more related to “wokeness” than to hiring highly qualified employees. Ingraham and others on the political right are sending the not-so-subtle message that quality and diversity in hiring are mutually exclusive and that companies are prioritizing diversity over safety.  

Going far beyond Ingraham’s racist dog whistle, Elon Musk, by comparison, shouted from the rooftops into his high-volume microphone on X his disdain for DEI efforts by promoting a post arguing that graduates from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have IQs nearing “borderline intellectual impairment.” This comes on the heels of the billionaire broadcasting another post asserting that Jews push “hatred against whites.”

Musk promoted the post of a popular user called @eyeslasho that argued the United Airlines program of hiring traditionally underrepresented employees such as people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, and others, some from HBCUs, is dangerous because graduates from HBCUs are not intelligent, and, therefore, not qualified to fly a plane.

“The mean IQ of grads from two of those United Airline HBCU ‘partners’ is about 85 to 90, based on the average SATs at those schools. (The SAT correlates reasonably well with IQ.),” @eyeslasho wrote. “The HBCU IQ averages are within 10 points of the threshold for what is considered ‘borderline intellectual impairment.’”

Musk added: “It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE,” Musk responded by rearranging the letters of the DEI acronym.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were established prior to the momentous Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the United States. They exist as both public and private institutions of higher education. Today, there are about 107 of these institutions.

Before 1865 and the abolition of slavery, a series of anti-literacy laws prohibited enslaved and also free Black people from receiving an education. Often on the plantations, owners and their overseers enacted harsh penalties such as severe lashings or death to any enslaved African who was found with a book or who was attempting to learn to read. Even within this backdrop, by 1860, approximately 5% of enslaved plantation workers had some degree of literacy.

Plantation owners and other anti-abolitionists feared that if enslaved and free Black people became literate and obtained even a small amount of education, they would no longer be able to maintain control over them as their property. They believed that without this control, enslaved people were more prone to rebel and, in turn, the plantation economic system would collapse.

Even in states where slavery was abolished, free people of color who were admitted to primarily white universities faced overt forms of racism by white students and faculty. In addition, they tended not to succeed at high rates because of the wide gaps in their prior academic readiness due to the segregated and inferior primary education they received.    

The first school that would become a historically Black college was founded by Richard Humphreys in 1837. Humphreys was a Quaker philanthropist who named the college the Institute for Colored Youth, located in Cheyney, Pennsylvania and dedicated to educating those who were formerly enslaved. Gradually, more institutions were established following the passage by Congress of the Second Morrill Act of 1890. The act mandated states that continued the practice of educational segregation to establish and fund public institutions for Black students.

This led to more Black people attending the growing number of Black colleges. While opportunities have opened up somewhat for people of color at primarily white universities since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, hundreds of thousands of people attend HBCUs today because of the high-quality education, stimulating atmosphere, diversity in the student and faculty population, and cultural sensitivity in pedagogical methodologies. In addition, by 2018, non-Black students comprised 24% of enrollment at HBCUs.

Esteemed graduates from these institutions include Thurgood Marshall, Spike Lee, Toni Morrison, and Vice President Kamala Harris, among many others.

The myth of meritocracy

The continuing and perennial need for DEI programs in schools and industry lays bare the lie that the United States stands as a meritocratic nation built on the dream and practice that hard work, talent, and ambition are the sole tickets to success, regardless of one’s background or identity.

The story goes something like this: For those of us living in the United States, it matters not from which station of life we come. We each have been born into a system that guarantees equal and equitable access to opportunities.

Success is ours through hard work, study, ambition, and through deferring gratification to later in our lives. We will succeed if we “keep our nose stuck to the grindstone” (ouch!) and “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” (without falling over on our faces).  

This concept of “meritocracy” is founded on “personal responsibility,” and those who do not achieve success must accept responsibility for their failures. Maybe they did not try hard enough. Maybe they failed to scale any barriers that could have been placed in their way because they did not have enough self-control, fortitude, intelligence, or character, or because they simply made bad choices.

While of course, we are all accountable and liable for our actions, what impact do the systemic conditions of our nation have to do with personal success?

This concept of meritocracy fails to consider the long legacy of differentials of power and privilege based on the social identities of race, socioeconomic class, gender and gender identity, sexual identity, ability, age, and more.

Ruthless Americanization

Immigrants who enter the United States are pressured to assimilate into a monocultural Anglo-centric society (thinly disguised as a “melting pot”), and to give up their native cultural identities.

Referring to the newcomers at the beginning of the 20^th century CE, one New York City teacher remarked: “[They] must be made to realize that in forsaking the land of their birth, they were also forsaking the customs and traditions of that land…”

An “Americanist” (assimilationist, nativist) movement was in full force with the concept of the so-called “melting pot” in which everyone was expected to conform to an Anglo-centric cultural standard with an obliteration of other cultural identities. 

President Theodore Roosevelt (1907) was an outspoken proponent of this concept:

“If the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else,” he said. “But this [equality] is predicated on the man’s becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American… There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American but something else also, isn’t an American at all… We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we want to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house.”

Many members of immigrant groups oppose assimilation and embrace the concept of pluralism: the philosophy whereby one adheres to a prevailing monocultural norm in public while recognizing, retaining, and celebrating one’s distinctive and unique cultural traditions and practices in the private realm.

The Jewish immigrant and sociologist of Polish and Latvian heritage, Horace Kallen, coined the term “cultural pluralism” in 1915 to challenge the image of the so-called “melting pot,” which he considered inherently undemocratic. Kallen envisioned a United States in the image of a great symphony orchestra, not sounding in unison (the “melting pot”), but rather one in which all the disparate cultures play in harmony and retain their unique and distinctive tones and timbres.

Social theorist Gunnar Myrdal traveled throughout the United States during the late 1940s examining U.S. society following World War II, and he discovered a grave contradiction, which he termed “an American dilemma.” He observed a country founded on an overriding commitment to democracy, liberty, freedom, human dignity, and egalitarian values coexisting alongside deep-seated patterns of racial discrimination and white privilege.

Today, the United States stands as the most culturally and religiously diverse country in the world. This diversity poses great challenges and great opportunities. The way we meet these challenges will determine whether we remain in the abyss of our history or whether we can truly achieve our promise of becoming a shining beacon to the world.

When deployed effectively, DEI programs can give us all the opportunity to shine to the outer limits of our potential.