The Jig Is Up

Trump administration decided they would pause all government initiatives of DEI. 

DEI stands for "diversity, education, and inclusion". So if you simply took the denotation of those words you may wonder out loud why would the Trump administration be against efforts at diversity, education, and inclusion in that America is and always will be a melting pot of diverse individuals: black, white, any number of nationalities who come here through any number of means, straight, gay, trans, and every sex or gender in between. 

I wish I could say I didn't know the answer as to why Trump administration is against DEI and why a whole lot of his supporters are too but the answer is as easy as the skin on my body: they're all convinced that DEI is an attempt for minorities (especially black but I will allow for the fact that I literally have to be subjective on this topic in that I am a black American) to get into positions that they didn't earn or maybe even deserve.

Well, here's the problem with that...sigh. Ok, there are many problems with it and if I typed all of them I could rage about this for a while, so I'll be mostly succinct about mentioning the problems. DEI doesn't just cover black people. It covers women, who are considered minorities. It absolutely covers LGBTQIA. It also covers marginalized groups such as Native Americans and veterans. The idea of DEI was to give these businesses an opportunity to address that not only are they possibly ignoring these groups for any number of reason it also but also that people in these groups could be a positive asset to their organizations not only as individuals (making them more efficient and making them more money) but also by making the team more diverse and strong. 

Honestly, DEI efforts should not be needed but it seems that those in power given their own devices will hire only people who look like them or who they live nearby. Oftentimes that means white people in these positions only hire only white people they know. Is it possible that this could make for a better organization? I'd say maybe, but probably not in that the people these organizations are catering to are diverse groups so it stands to reason that the organizations themselves should be diverse. That is, if these organizations are interested in catering to marginalized groups. Which they should be interested in because at the end of the day a dollar is a dollar: the more people you cater to the more people can give you money: with DEI in place you're catering in a way that isn't condescending. 

So when one of the first things Trump did was aggressively work to eliminate any mention of DEI in the government (as well as eliminate a lot of protections of minorities that have long existed) the rightful alarm bells should have started going off, well, to at least those who would affected by such things. It's possible that the thought behind removing those measurements were "we don't really need any of these protections anymore because we are that advanced as a nation." 

The jig on that was up, completely and utterly, when Trump's administration asked the Air Force to not teach the story of the Tuskegee Airmen.

These men are legends in American History AND Black History. The country was embroiled in a World War at the time and they needed all hands on deck so they turned to a contingent of black navigators to fly planes. (I understand that is a wildly abridged version of things, bear with me.) Consider that the idea of a black pilot, a black ANYTHING at that time in America was seen as controversial because racism was as commonplace as oxygen in the 1930s and 1940s. So, ironically, what was tantamount to DEI measure led the government to consider the creation of the Tuskeegee Airmen. Their story is an example of men put in an insanely ridiculous set of circumstances and produced at a level that cleared the bar to a magnificent degree.

But to the Trump administration, who sees "DEI" as a bad term, only see it (I'm assuming) as young black men who didn't deserve the chance that (I'm assuming) a white man could have done. Even though they hadn't done it to that point. And those white men scoffed at the Tuskegee Airmen until they showed up and showed out. And even after those white men treated Tuskegee Airmen (and ALL black people who serverd honorably) as second class citizens to be hated and spat upon.

The legend of the Tuskegee Airmen will never die. That really isn't my point. My point is that Trump decided to even make an attempt to tilt at legends simply because he deems their story as lesser than because of their race. 

That chills me to my core.

That tells me that my moral compass points straight north when it comes to opposing literally everything Trump is and who is followers are. The only history they're interested in; the only people they're interested in are people who look just like them. That is something that absolutely should take a pause. Permanently.