If you read this blog regularly, you know that I am often critical of some of the stuff associated with the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” industry. (See, for example, recent Commonplace Book entries on Musa Al-Gharbi’s We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite.) But, as David French writes, Trump’s “banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government do far more than simply ban illegal or irrational D.E.I. excesses. Instead, they block the government from lawfully and fairly seeking to increase the representation of historically marginalized people in the federal government and–critically–threaten to undermine compliance with the federal civil rights laws they purpose to uphold.”
Here is a taste of French’s New York Times op-ed:
…it’s foolish to ignore the cultural and political context of Trump’s orders. The MAGA right is in the grips of anti-D.E.I. hysteria. The confusion over whether Trump’s order banned an Air Force video about the Tuskegee Airmen — Black pilots who served courageously in World War II in a still-segregated military — is emblematic of the problems caused by the combination of broad language and intense fear.
How committed is the Trump administration to the meritocracy, really? No one should look at Pete Hegseth or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Tulsi Gabbard or Kash Patel and think that Trump has scoured America to find the best and brightest to lead his new administration.
The contrast between Hegseth and Joe Biden’s outgoing defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, is profound. Austin, who is Black, served as a battalion commander, a brigade commander, a division commander and CENTCOM commander before he was selected to lead the Pentagon.
Of course, those qualifications are no guarantee that a person would be an effective secretary of defense, but Austin is vastly more qualified than Hegseth, who was barely confirmed after three Republican senators voted against his nomination. No one should denigrate Hegseth’s service. He served his country honorably in combat operations overseas. But so have hundreds of thousands of other Americans.
If we’re applying the colorblind analysis that Trump allegedly demands, he just downgraded our secretary of defense. He’s promoted an unqualified man to one of the most powerful and important jobs in the United States.
Trump’s cure for D.E.I. isn’t a true meritocracy, but rather affirmative action for the MAGA movement. Providing preferences for populists might be a natural consequence of Trump’s political victory, but it is not an improvement on the status quo.
Read the entire piece here.