For US Conservatives, DEI is code for ‘Don’t Ever Integrate’

The latest flashpoint in the conservative and far-right war against so-called “woke culture” is diversity, equity and inclusion programmes. They want to see the end of DEI because they believe these programmes present a real challenge to their efforts to rebuild the “white man’s country” they long for. In his 1965 commencement speech at the historically Black Howard University in Washington, DC, that June, titled “To Fulfill These Rights,” Johnson said, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” Johnson wanted to find ways to create onramps onto an otherwise unlevel playing field, one that had always heavily favoured white Americans and white men over all other groups. For conservatives like Ward Connerly and Edward Blum, any correctives meant to work against the ingrained white supremacist racism of the American systems and institutions – whether affirmative action, DEI, or even critical race theory – are overcorrections. During an interview with Politico in 2023, on the eve of affirmative action’s end, Connerly once again laid out his rationale for ending any efforts at race-conscious admissions and employment, whether affirmative action or DEI.