After spending most of my last thirty years in government service and a significant amount of time since my retirement in 2012, pushing to get the federal government, and in particular my former agency the US Department of State, to do more on diversity, equity, and inclusiveness, or DEI, to ensure that every American has an equal shot at serving his or her country at all levels of government, and seeing some progress made, I am now aghast, in a state of shock, at what’s happening in my country. Programs to help minorities, women, and people with disabilities reverse the decades (in some cases centuries) of exclusion and unfair treatment are now under attack across the country.
In our so-called red states, those states where the leadership is in Republican hands, laws have been passed and regulations issued making it illegal in some cases to even talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion. This, by the way, goes along with efforts to ban certain books that address subjects that make some people ‘uncomfortable.’
For example, history books that address the period of American history when people of color were treated as less than human (and that, by the way, was a condition that lasted long after slavery was abolished) are considered too divisive to be in classrooms. Classic books are being removed from school library shelves, and efforts are also underway to remove them from public libraries, because someone objects to the subject matter, or how the subject is treated.
In some of these states, colleges that for two centuries had denied entry to minority students, but over the past three or four decades had put in place mechanisms to make up for that, are now being frightened into eliminating their DEI programs and discharging all staff associated with these programs.
In one state, an organization that was created to provide business support to minorities was told that it must provide the same support to those who in the past were the only ones who ever got any kind of support in the first place—in the interests of equity, those at the head of the list must now be included along with those who, in the past, weren’t even allowed to get in line.
This war on diversity has gone so far as to banning education that touches on such things as critical race theory or address ‘radical’ feminist or gender theories. The attitude seems to be to keep students ignorant of such things and to take us back to a time when women were not allowed to vote or have their own bank accounts, and minorities could be lynched for the most trivial of offenses.
What is disturbing is that this trend doesn’t seem to be restricted to the United States. Political and social illiberalism seems to be infecting societies around the globe.
I’m not one who likes to use the term war or fighting loosely, like the war on drugs, or the war on poverty. My two decades in the military gave me more than enough war. But, I’m stepping up and volunteering to be the first soldier in a counter attack against this war on decency and fairness.
The world needs us to fight back against this lunacy. | NWI
