DEI — short for diversity, equity and inclusion — has become the latest dog-whistle term in the conservative war of words to frame basic egalitarianism as a net negative.
I totally blanked on that acronym. It was a few paragraphs in.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
It comes against the backdrop of huge row-back and assaults on bedrock civil rights measures after more than a half century of legislative and social gains, with Florida leading the charge of red states pushing bans on DEI efforts in higher education and public office.
“There’s always been this idea in societies that inherit from colonialism and slavery that opening up opportunities to those who are gravely marginalized incurs this kind of tax,” says Jamie Thomas, a linguistic anthropologist with a focus on race and pop culture.
For decades, says Ellen Berrey, a University of Toronto sociologist whose research explores the cultural dynamics of race and racism, law, organizations, and social movements, DEI was a safe word – “code for everybody.
Even “Baltimore” – which, as Thomas notes, “has such a history of anti-Blackness and racism and violence” – became a conservative metonym for a largely Black city with more problems than points of interest, resonating even more after Freddie Gray’s 2015 death in police custody.
But Baltimore mayor Scott provided the ultimate mic-drop response to the right wing’s coded attacks, one that revealed the gap between his would-be detractors and the three-letter insult that keeps crossing their lips.
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