Right-wingers have been complaining about and lobbying against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives for years. Axios ran the numbers on Republican efforts to strike down those programs in state education systems in a recent report, and it turns out that those efforts have been shockingly successful: GOP state lawmakers in 21 states have introduced laws dismantling DEI programs on state college campuses and, since 2021, have managed to get such laws passed in nine of the states.
Red states have become overtly hostile to initiatives that they were either open to or less hostile to before the peak of Black Lives Matters’ energy around 2020. This reactionary backlash was not only fueled by the fear of a more antiracist society, but also by a positive vision of white nationalism that grew under Donald Trump. The entire premise of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan is that a reversion to social norms when white supremacy and patriarchy were relatively unchallenged would light the path to a great society. The anti-DEI crusade helps fulfill that vision.
The anti-DEI crusade is helping push universities in the direction of becoming institutions defending the status quo.
Unlike conservatives’ poorly organized and mostly ill-fated attempts to boycott “woke” corporations, their anti-DEI agenda has evolved into something seriously consequential. It’s a reminder of how even incremental attempts at social reform can elicit a backlash that reverses reform attempts and sometimes even unravels pre-reform norms.
As Axios reports, drawing from data from the National Conference of State Legislatures, in the last two years two states have passed laws that require higher education institutions to “offer training on DEI or antiracism.” But things have headed more strongly in the other direction on this front: At least nine states have passed laws that restrict or ban DEI programs or “divisive concepts” on college campuses in red states from…
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