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WHAT REPUBLICANS REALLY MEAN WHEN THEY BLAME ‘DEI’  
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Mehdi Hasan
February 11, 2025
The Guardian
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_ Referencing DEI is the new rightwing abstraction deployed by
Republicans to conceal their anti-Black racism _

‘DEI is a racist dogwhistle. Blame Black people is the not so
unsubtle message.’ , Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP

 

In 1981, Lee Atwater, the most influential Republican party strategist
of the late 20th century, sat down for an off-the-record interview
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the political scientist Alexander P Lamis. At the time, Atwater was a
junior member of the Reagan administration, but he would later go on
to run George HW Bush’s presidential campaign
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1988 and then become chair of the Republican National Committee in
1989.

In perhaps the most revealing, and most infamous, portion of the
interview, the hard-charging Republican operative explained to Lamis
how Republican politicians could mask their racism – and racist
appeals to white voters – behind a series of euphemisms.

You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘[N-word, N-word, N-word]’. By
1968 you can’t say ‘[N-word]’ – that hurts you, backfires. So
you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that
stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about
cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally
economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than
whites … ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even
the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than
‘[N-word, N-word]’.

Got that? No need to utter the N-word out loud as there were plenty of
other “abstract” ways to say it.

Today, more than four decades later, DEI has become the new N-word;
the new rightwing abstraction deployed by Republicans
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anti-Black racism. DEI – short for diversity, equity and inclusion
– is thrown around by high-profile conservatives, from the president
of the United States downwards, for the express purpose of undermining
Black people in public life.

Don’t believe me? In a recent interview
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White House counselor and former Trump lawyer Alina Habba declared
that the administration’s 27-year-old press secretary, Karoline
Leavitt, “is overqualified, brilliant and was well-versed and ready
… she didn’t need a thick binder ... unlike our last press
secretary who was put in there for … DEI reasons”.

For the record, the “last press secretary”, Karine Jean-Pierre, is
the Black daughter of Haitian immigrants. Is she less qualified than
her successor? Well, let’s compare résumés, shall we?

Neither Habba herself, nor Leavitt, are Ivy League grads.

Jean-Pierre is.

Neither Habba herself, nor Leavitt, worked in two different
administrations before securing their top White House positions.

Jean-Pierre did.

Neither Habba herself, nor Leavitt, has served on three different
election-winning presidential campaigns across three different
decades.

Jean-Pierre has.

So when Habba says Jean-Pierre was appointed White House press
secretary for “DEI reasons”, what else could she be alluding to
other than that she is a Black woman?

When the Republican congressman Tim Burchett called
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Harris – the then sitting vice-president, former senator and former
attorney general of the country’s most populous state; a woman who
would have entered the Oval Office with a longer record in elected
office than Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump
– a “DEI hire” within 24 hours of her becoming the Democratic
presidential nominee, what else could he have been referring to other
than that she is a Black woman?

When a viral tweet (26m views
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counting) from a popular far-right account (that is also amplified
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Elon Musk) referred to Brandon Scott – the mayor of Baltimore who
was elected with 70% of the vote and previously served eight years on
the city council, including a stint as city council president – as
the city’s “DEI mayor”, what else could it have been trying to
point to other than that he is a Black man?

DEI _is_ the new N-word. In fact, the Black podcaster Van
Lathan argues
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now “worse than the N-word” and has become “the worst slur in
American history”. The term “DEI hire”, he explains, “is not
just being used to undermine the qualifications, capability and
readiness of Black people … DEI is placing the blame of all of
society’s ills at the feet of these people.”

Plane crash? Blame DEI
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Wildfires in LA? Blame DEI
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Bridge collapse? Blame DEI
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DEI is a racist dogwhistle. Blame_ Black people_ is the not so
unsubtle message.

You now cannot turn on the television or log on to social media
without coming across a prominent conservative blathering on about the
evils of DEI. To quote
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loathsome Fox host Greg Gutfeld, DEI “can be used to explain
everything … except, unlike racism and climate change, which the
left found under every rock, every issue, DEI is, indeed, under every
rock because the Democrats put it there.”

This isn’t a good-faith critique of diversity programs or policies
– whether they actually work or not
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whether they restrict free speech
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are corporate box-ticking exercises
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No, this is the weaponization of a three-letter term to denigrate
Black people and pretend the political and economic advancement of
minority communities over the past 60 years was a mistake. (“If I
see a Black pilot, I’m gonna be like, ‘Boy, I hope he is
qualified,” the rightwing activist and top Trump ally Charlie
Kirk casually remarked
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So why on earth is our “liberal” media credulously giving
Republicans the benefit of the doubt on this? Treating their obsession
with DEI as anything other than what it is? Anti-Black racism. The new
N-word. A three-letter slur that seeks to, once again, mainstream
bigotry and discrimination in the United States. (“DEI halftime
show,” tweeted
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influencer Jack Posobiec during the Super Bowl on Sunday night.)

For years, Donald Trump has been plagued by allegations that he used
the N-word while filming The Apprentice. In 2024, a former producer on
the NBC reality show claimed
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used the racial epithet in 2004 to describe Kwame Jackson, a Black
finalist on the first season of The Apprentice. In 2018, the former
White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman claimed
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her book Unhinged that Trump was caught on tape during the making of
The Apprentice saying the N-word “multiple times”, according to
three of her sources.

At the time, Trump vociferously denied
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he had ever used the N-word: “I don’t have that word in my
vocabulary, and never have.”

But the awful truth is that, these days, he doesn’t even need to
have such a word in his vocabulary. He and his acolytes have another,
more insidious one that serves a similar racist purpose: DEI.

*
_Mehdi Hasan is the CEO and editor-in-chief of the new media
company Zeteo [[link removed]]_

* DEI
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* Racism
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* Dog Whistle
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