On today’s edition of The Editors, Rich and Co. discuss the major impact Trump’s DEI-dismantling executive order will have on countless areas of American life. Rich calls the move “massive,” and Michael agrees.
“It is potentially massive. It’s potentially bigger even than the Supreme Court decision, what was it, two years ago, to move to get rid of these kinds of things in college admissions, which colleges have found a way around already. This is much harder to evade and avoid — although I won’t say it’s impossible yet; people are inventive. But this is a consequence of Donald Trump winning the largest share of non-white voters that a Republican has won going into his presidency in living memory,” he says.
Phil comments on the lack of pushback, at least from corporations. “Since Trump’s election,” he says, “you’ve had all of these companies announcing that they’re going to scale back or end various DEI initiatives. . . . For a lot of these companies, they didn’t necessarily want to go on board with this stuff initially. They felt like they needed to get in the graces of where the cultural tide was going. . . . And so they thought they kind of needed to do all this stuff, and then Trump wins.”
Charlie thinks “this order is terrific.” Why? “Because it diminishes the amount of racial discrimination that is necessary. Now, if people disagree with that, that is fine. If you are of the view that because America has historically discriminated against non-white people, particularly African Americans, which it has, then we need some sort of ongoing system to redress the balance by discriminating back, own it, say it, argue it. There will be 20 to 30 percent of Americans who agree with you. But please do not pretend that those who disagree with you are the ones arguing for discrimination.
“It takes chutzpah of the highest order to point the finger at the classical liberal critics of DEI, affirmative action, and racial discrimination and say, ‘You are the ones who want to discriminate.’ We absolutely do not.”
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