It’s hard to picture Donald Trump as a civil-rights hero in the mould of Abraham Lincoln or even Lyndon Johnson. Yet through his orders to dismantle the ubiquitous regime of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), he may have accelerated America’s evolution into a post-racial society.
DEI ideology has been around for years, but it was given a significant boost after the police killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. In response, many government and business leaders chose to embrace DEI as means to placate those calling for a new American regime in which people would be divided and advantaged according to race.
But DEI initiatives have been flailing recently – even before Trump’s election. Indeed, think-tank research from last year showed that over half of company executives were already anticipating pushback against DEI initiatives. Among the firms to have recently stepped back from DEI are Boeing, John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Black + Decker, Target and, the biggest of all, Walmart. Over the past two years, corporate DEI departments have been slashed, with one third of DEI professionals losing their jobs in 2022 alone.
Trump’s dismantling of DEI in the federal government no doubt thrills the various factions who support him, from the libertarians to the traditionalist conservatives to the white-nationalist fringe. Yet over time, perhaps the biggest winner from the dethroning DEI may be ethnic minorities themselves.
Drawing in part on critical race theory, DEI advocates maintain that racial characteristics largely determine people’s lives in America. These new racialists claim that any shortfalls in income, status or professional credentials stem from racial discrimination. In response, they call for ‘people of colour’ to work together to relentlessly undermine so-called white privilege.
Rather than seek greater integration, as was the cause of the old civil-rights movement, these racialist radicals embrace a kind of re-segregation. This can be seen from their involvement in schools. There they advocate indoctrinating young children in DEI ideology. On occasions, they have been known to get third-graders (eight- to nine-year-olds) to separate themselves by race and ask them to rank their ‘privilege’.
In attacking DEI, Trump is taking a widely popular position. The idea that, say, President Obama’s children should be given an edge against someone from a poor Appalachian hollow seems unjust to the vast majority of Americans of all races.
In thrall to the racial identitarianism of the DEI crowd, Democrats hoped that working-class voters would turn their way as more became increasingly non-white. After all, minorities currently make up over 40 per cent of America’s working class and will likely constitute the majority by the next decade.
But many minorities, including the young, seem more concerned with their immediate economic prospects than gaining unearned advantages through DEI programmes. Indeed, minority and poor white Americans are mainly concerned about inflation, rising crime, poor schools and the threats to their livelihoods posed by draconian green policies. Little wonder nearly half of all Latinos voted for Trump, as did growing numbers of Muslims and black males. Asian voters’ support for Trump rose from 27 per cent in 2016 to roughly 40 per cent this year.
Today’s racialist ideologues face another problem, too. America is becoming even more diverse in its diversity. The era when the black descendants of slaves dominated America’s non-white population is well over. As minorities grow towards an absolute majority by 2050, the Hispanic population will swell to 30 per cent of the total population, more than twice the black share. Asians, meanwhile, will have grown from barely 12million in 2000 to more than three times that number by the middle of this century. Taken together, Asians and Latinos will account for 40 per cent of Americans, and the vast majority of non-whites.
These trends undermine the racialist meme that sees all people of colour through the lens of black slavery and white racism. In reality, there are vast differences in experiences, attitudes and outlooks among the main racial minorities. Asians generally achieve more academically and have higher incomes than the white majority. There are gender differences, too. Among immigrants from Africa, females already do better than whites in general, according to one recent study.
Unlike African Americans, most of whose ancestors were forced to come to the US, today’s newcomers have migrated voluntarily, though often in difficult circumstances. They tend to be, at best, indifferent to racial quotas. Asian parents, in particular, have reacted negatively to DEI-inspired attempts to lower admissions standards for certain minorities applying to academic high schools. Those behind such moves have claimed that successful Asians have adopted ‘white-supremacist thinking’, as one San Francisco school-board member put it.
Cultural factors are also critical to the turn against DEI and racial identitarianism. Overall, according to one recent survey, immigrants are twice as conservative in their social views as the general public. They also overwhelmingly reject identity politics.
Racial identitarianism and DEI may excite ‘radicals’ on university campuses, but they simply does not work in the real world. Racial ideologues have insisted that minorities should reject qualities and ideas associated with being ‘white’, such as ‘hard work, punctuality, individualism and family’. And they have even presented streaming students according to their ability in maths and science as racist.
These approaches cut against what drives immigrants and many minorities. Recent immigrants often show a greater proclivity to start businesses than American-born citizens. Under 14 per cent of the US population is foreign-born, yet immigrants represent over 20 per cent of the self-employed workforce and 25 per cent of start-up founders. In Silicon Valley, nearly three-quarters of the tech workforce is foreign. Many came to the country on H-1B visas.
Advocates of DEI tend to be blind to the multiracial reality of urban America. In the 53 metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 residents, more than three-quarters of black and Hispanic residents live in racially and ethnically diverse suburbs, ranging from 20 per cent to 60 per cent non-white. They also are moving away from those places like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland, where DEI and racial quotas are sacrosanct, and moving instead to red-state metros like Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Boise and Las Vegas.
This process of integration and acceptance is largely ignored by DEI and racialist ideologies. Yet the progress over time has been remarkable. African Americans have served now in virtually all the highest offices, including as president and vice-president. They have doubled their numbers in Congress since 1991. Black culture has had a profound influence on American society – indeed, in much of the world, black culture is synonymous with American culture, from hip-hop and jazz to fashion and art.
The neo-segregationist approach of the left misses America’s growing integration. Gallup has found that approval for interracial unions has risen from four per cent in 1958 to 94 per cent today. The fastest-growing racial category in America right now is mixed – one in 10 babies born in the US have one white and one non-white parent.
Given these changes, it is hardly a surprise that attempts by ‘experts’ to address race are worse than useless. Indeed, there is a growing literature that shows that DEI policies actually increase racial tensions rather than soothe them. Moreover, DEI and its derivatives may do more harm than good to the very people they are meant to serve. Rather than address ‘socially mediated behavioural issues’, notes economist Glenn Loury, DEI and affirmative-action programmes undermine minorities’ agency, leaving their salvation, ironically, to the supposedly intrinsically racist whites.
The demise of DEI represents an important step toward fulfilling what the Swedish sociologist, Gunnar Myrdal, once called ‘the American creed’ – that is, ‘an abiding sense that every individual, regardless of circumstances, deserves fairness and the opportunity to realise [their] unlimited potential’. America’s struggle with regional and racial disparities can be best addressed by focussing not on unalterable division, but on what unites us as a people.
Critically, DEI and its ideological menagerie do little to turn around conditions in barrios or ghettos. Instead, minorities enter American society through what my old friend, Sergio Munoz, calls ‘the multiculturalism of the streets’ – those unscripted interactions that take place in public spaces, from markets to dating sites to cafeterias.
Last year, 840,000 green-card holders became citizens, the most in a decade, with all of the 10 leading countries home to ‘people of colour’. Over 10 per cent of the American electorate at the last election was born elsewhere, the highest share in half a century. These new citizens want a better life, not ‘the end of white America’ that the racial identitarians argue for.
Rather than help the upper echelon of minorities to supercharge their careers, steps need to be taken to address the needs of those who are struggling. That means growing the economy, improving education and providing better housing. This should be the focus of both the left and right, with each arguing the merits of their approach.
America does not need more division. It needs to focus on lifting up all those still left behind, from the young Appalachian to the low-paid Latino to black descendants of slavery. The end of racial identitarianism could put us on that path.
Joel Kotkin is a spiked columnist, a presidential fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University in Orange, California, and a senior research fellow at the University of Texas’ Civitas Institute.
