September 25, 2023, and September 26, 2024

A backlash to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion was inevitable, much like the backlash to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s. Indeed, the Civil Rights Movement utilized that backlash to prove its point: the non-violent exercise of constitutional rights of speech, assembly, and petition met by violent repression from officials, paramilitaries, and mobs pricked the conscience of decent Americans and demonstrated the urgent need for civil rights legislation. The key elements of non-violence and the ability of Americans to see the truth for themselves on television won the day. DEI, however, doesn’t have the kind of rock-solid leadership that could control a mass movement of thousands of disparate elements. Also, the delivery isn’t live on television for all to see, but in classrooms and meeting halls, and the reporting is done by anyone with access to the internet rather than by professional journalists. Thus, real flaws in delivery are combined with skillful propaganda in a shockingly successful reversal of the Civil Rights Movement.

Thirty years ago I was a newly minted college lecturer teaching Ethnic Studies, Race and Ethnic Relations, and Psychology of Prejudice. I was also going on the road with an older mentor, doing those workshops we’re now all too familiar with, explaining the various “isms” and trying to help people grasp their impact on society and everyone in the room.

Our workshop was our own, but we were working with a model that predated us by a decade, one element of which was the crossing the line exercise—“cross the line if you are (insert downtrodden demographic group)”—at which point we’d read a short blurb about the downside of being a member of that group. Everyone reading this has probably done this exercise multiple times. The original model had the people look back at their oppressors: we modified this to potential allies because our goal was to have people see the many ways we are divided by society, but emphasize that this need not be the case. Thus, we always ended with “cross the line if you were ever a child” so that everyone ended up on the same side of the line hearing about our shared experience of being young in an adult world. These sessions, like my academic courses above, tended to end the same way: with attendees saying, “This should be required in every high school.”

The reality of DEI instruction is that including diverse perspectives and information previously withheld from students is simply good education. Telling students that Columbus was a great sailor who discovered America and stopping there is both incomplete and inaccurate. That the topic was taught this way with the intention of making some ethnic groups feel good makes it propaganda. Including the genocide of the Arawak in the teaching of the Columbus story is the only way to depict these events accurately. That some people end up feeling bad is the unfortunate consequence of having used education as a propaganda tool to promote the superiority of the victorious over the victims. Telling the truth about genocide may well leave everyone feeling sad, but no one needs to feel bad—as long as we all end up on the same side. These are events that happened long ago and acts committed by people who aren’t us. White skin didn’t make Columbus a mass murderer, indeed much of his crew were Africans. Dark skin didn’t make the Arawak victims.

Until recently, discussion of social injustice inevitably included the phrase “black-on-black violence” to imply the innocence of white people and allude to the savage brute stereotype of Black people. History is replete with what we could call white-on-white violence (countless wars in Europe from the Romans to the wars of religion to the American Revolution and our own Civil War). However the phrase “white on white” was never used, and discussions of ethnicity in history were rarely used but to differentiate for the purpose of denigration or elevation of one group over another. As a result, it is unfortunately necessary to include ethnicity in the discussion of some topics. Slavery is as old as human civilization, but in America, indentured servants were divided by color so that it quickly became an institution based on “race.” America’s peculiar institution gave white meaning that it never had by giving people so defined privileges and status that they previously lacked. There is no way to discuss American slavery without discussing race.

It is extremely difficult to talk about a history of denigration of different demographic groups without seeming to or actually denigrating people from different demographic groups. But teaching history offers us the opportunity to discuss how the concepts of race and racial superiority were a psychological necessity for people doing things that they themselves believed to be immoral and that there is no scientific basis for the concept of race. In fact, one of the benefits of the Human Genome Project was the definitive rejection of race. Thus, we can at the same time we provide a more accurate history, remove the stigma of race even if we continue to use terms like Black and White as shorthand.

In every class, I always made sure to talk about white ethnic groups, partially to demonstrate that discrimination is, or at least was, more widely spread than most students realize. That Irish immigrants were once called the “N” word was a revelation to my students. It took but two generations for the Irish to become white. Students are always fascinated by this transformation, which allowed me to talk about the privilege of white skin, not as a negative, but as a strategic advantage anyone would use if they could. I could then talk about “passing,” something that a century ago (some, most…all) Black families hoped for; that is, that their children would be light enough to pass as white. They too wanted the privileges that came with white skin. They then, and we now, need to understand that privilege isn’t the enemy, it’s the goal. We must always remember that the goal of the Civil Rights Movement was for Black Americans to gain the privileges (guaranteed as rights by the Constitution) already enjoyed by white Americans.

Again, it is extremely hard to talk about demographics in history or as a social reality without, even unintentionally, sounding like one group is being blamed for the mistreatment of another. Yet a lack of blame is as critical to the current work as non-violence was to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. Malcolm X agreed that non-violence was a worthy goal, but only if white people would agree to be non-violent. Dr. King’s response was typically eloquent: “I’m not going to let my oppressor dictate to me what method I must use.” But there was a deeper strategic understanding King had that X did not. King was facing an opposition armed with guns during the day and ropes and knives at night and eager to use both, backed by the official authority and the military might of every badge-wearing person in the region. A single violent outburst could not only mean the end of the movement but could cost the lives of thousands. Yet, after years of success and the passage of the ’64 Civil Rights Act and the ’65 Voting Rights Act, the young, brash, newly-elected head of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Stokely Carmichael, arrived on the scene with the perfect phrase to undermine thirty years of “be not afraid” messaging. Black Power. It was a phrase that had been test-marketed among a handful of young black people in the South to great approval. It could just as easily have been test-marketed to the Ku Klux Klan and been just as well received. The Civil Rights Movement was an inclusive effort that had shaken the old slave- ocracy more effectively than the Civil War had and included tens of thousands of white people, some of whom gave their lives right alongside their Black sisters and brothers. Suddenly, young black people are walking next to these allies chanting “Hey, ho, whitey got to go.” The kids who chanted that phrase didn’t understand the movement or its goals; they just knew they were starting to feel strong and “Black Power” sounded good to them. But it was also the sound the Southern power structure was waiting for. To uncertain white people throughout the country, it sounded like permission to dismiss all of that mess. The rise of Black Power and the death of Dr. King shifted the focus from an effort to make the country more fair to permission to dismiss that effort as “both sides are simply engaged in a power struggle.” Klan leader David Duke took off his hood and began talking about how unfair things were for white people. Suddenly, “white power” had exactly the same meaning and connotations as “black power,” which to an increasing many, was the same as the civil rights movement.

When I contemplated the idea of the training I was doing or the college courses I was teaching being taught throughout the land, it never occurred to me what its inevitable end would look like. Poorly trained, inexperienced instructors or those simply emotionally unsuited to the task would find their way into these positions. It might take more than one mistake, but it would not take many as people with the weapons and the will would be waiting to turn them into Black Power 2.0. “Check your privilege” is simply the new “Hey, ho whitey got to go.”

At a recent teacher conference, there was a discussion group entitled “Improving Education for Young African American Men.” In the room were around twenty black women. When a white teacher walked in and sat down at one of the tables, she was told “This session is for Black people.” They didn’t ask her to leave, but they made it very clear that she wasn’t welcome. I’m sure I don’t need to explain the mind-numbing, jaw-dropping stupidity of such a position. One of the hardest things Black students had to endure coming out of segregation was attending schools where (white) teachers had no interest or investment in their success. Twenty years ago, the complaint at such a session would have been that there were only people of color in the room.

In some segments of our re-segregated society, these are the dominant voices. Kids still figuring stuff out, much like Carmichael, can broadcast their ignorance in an instant and get support an instant later. In a social media post from a few weeks ago, a person was expressing their anger at someone’s opinion, and concluded with “your privilege is TOXIC!” In this case, not only does this person not grasp that rights we’ve all been seeking through the various social movements dating back to the Declaration of Independence are only called privileges because we don’t have them yet. But another thing has become obvious. The person accusing the other of having privilege is also saying “I am a member of a disparaged group and thus I am safe from the attacks I fling.” At a very recent DEI training at a West Coast medical facility, the trainers asked an attendee this bizarre and loaded question: “What is it like to go to work as a white man?” I guess he was supposed to apologize for his skin color and that he was born with a penis, but he didn’t. He gave a dignified response about having to rise every day and work hard to deliver great care to everyone he encounters like everyone else who works there, and still not be able to afford to buy a house. The dismissive response started with “At least you don’t have to face…” Sure, white plantation owners 400 years ago established a system of racial privileges, but what has that to do with this white man today? Suggesting that he is responsible for the ills of the past and/or using statistical generalities to imply he is better off than he feels WILL backfire. At best a potential ally will be lost. The worst-case scenario can be found in the pages of the news.

Even up to this last generation, some Black people would sometimes still refer to wavy hair as “good hair.” I doubt any still want to “pass,” as now showing off one’s oppression bonafide comes with as much status in the progressive segment of society as being white used to in the officially segregated South. During a discussion on American slavery a couple of years ago, I asked students to contemplate what living during the antebellum period would have been like. A white transgender student (afab) said “I would have been dead because my people were all killed.” I pointed out that hundreds of women dressed as men and fought in the American Civil War. I didn’t point out the astounding attempt by a young white person to claim that “his people’s” position in society was comparably worse than that of a slave. The “oppression Olympics,” I believe one comedian called it, isn’t new, but being crowned the victor has never come with so many perks…for now.

I’ve spoken at length about what’s going wrong. Reading the news can tell you the ever more evident consequences of these mistakes. One way or another DEI will end. Either we will right the ship, offload the frivolous and the fraudulent, and pare down to fundamental, equitable teaching, or the backlash will swamp us and send us all to the bottom.

This is what I think a smooth sailing ship might look like:

We’ll want to talk about the Irish and their travails and we can tell our students that they were called “niggers” (because they were) and we use the words that were used and do so appropriately, not gratuitously. We’ll tell them that the term “paddy wagon” was originally the vehicle in which the “drunken Irish thugs” were hauled away. And we’ll explain how stereotypes are a psychologically essential outgrowth of mistreatment, thus if you see stereotypes, you know that something bad is happening to the people the stereotypes are about. We’ll tell students that two generations later, Irish Americans were able to take control of some city governments and, using something we will later call Affirmative Action, granted positions as firefighters and police officers to members of their group. Thus, the “paddy wagon” became the vehicle driven by cops in many cities and its original connotation disappeared. Let’s celebrate the success of the Irish and it’s also okay to take note of the positive effects (voting) and negatives (white supremacy). And, when we do, no one need feel guilty or attacked. No one will even think “race” or at least they’ll be learning that it is a made-up social grouping, like gender. And, if someone asks “Wait, if gender is a social construct, then what does it mean to transition from one made-up thing to another?” The question won’t be perceived as an attack, but a question, which is what we expect students to do in school. And we’ll have a good answer because that’s our job, to address questions, and not tow anyone’s party line.