What Anti-DEI Really Ends Up Meaning
A case from rural Alabama.
Without any doubt, “DEI,” like “CRT” before it (and “woke” for that matter), has no precise definition when used in the broader political discourse, especially by the Trump administration. To them, it is just an ideologically useful way to deride any kind of program or policy linked in any way to “leftist” (another vague term) attempts to deal with, well, anything linked to racial injustice or environmental/social concerns.
I will engage in the intellectually honest observation that, sure, any such policies could be debated in terms of their efficacy, cost, and value. But this is true of anything that the federal government does. Indeed, it is true of any human endeavor. So while I go ahead and make this concession because it is inherent to my way of thinking, I also want to acknowledge how tired I am that people like myself who are inclined to be fair-minded, find themselves in a debate with an administration that has no interest in being fair-minded, but rather wants to play semantic games that ignore the consequences of their actions.
So, while I can envision a conversation wherein DEI or other race-related issues could be debated/critiqued, this is not where we are. For one thing, the administration and their supporters are taking the view that since they won the election, they can do whatever they want. Not only is this not how the system works, but I would again note that a 1.47% margin of popular vote victory, whilst not even being able to surmount the 50% mark in public support, is not the stuff of legendary mandates.*
But let’s be real here. The administration is not interested in some nuanced discussion of how to deal with racial, environmental, or social inequities. Rather, it doesn’t even want to acknowledge them and is clearly pursuing the kind of “meritocracy” that is interested in restoring and solidifying the dominance of white males.** Yes, I know that saying that turns people off. But it doesn’t make it untrue. I have yet to see any deployment by these folks of the idea of “meritocracy” that does not mean simply the promotion of people that they like, and they sure tend to like themselves some white dudes.***
What’s really going on here can be found in things like the words the Trump administration is using to sniff out wokeness (see here). You know, like how the Enola Gay got caught up in the anti-DEI purge (Pentagon to remove ‘Enola Gay’ WWII aircraft photos for violating DEI rules).
None of this is about some serious intellectual attempt to deal with complex social phenomena. When CTRL-F is your research methodology, you aren’t a serious person. And when CTRL-F and then DELETE is your process, you just might be engaging in blatant racism (and sexism or homophobia and so forth and so on).
Again, for anyone not paying attention to what I have already said above, there is a real debate about how to address the effects of the past on the present. And if you want to have that debate, that’s fine. But just mindlessly saying “DEI” or “woke” and then CTRL-Fing your way through the federal government does not qualify as a debate of any kind.
All of which brings me to this via NBC News: Trump shut down program to end human waste backing into Alabama homes, calling it ‘illegal DEI’.
For the last 14 years, when it rains in Lowndes County, Alabama, contaminated standing water builds up around Annye Burke’s home. When the septic tank breaks down, raw sewage backs up into her toilet, she said.
Although “frustrated” by the unhealthy and inconvenient conditions, Burke said she doesn’t let it get her down. Human wastewater contaminating homes and yards in these rural parts of central Alabama “has become a way of life,” she said. The problem has existed so long and was so pervasive that a 2017 study determined 1 in every 3 adults in the county had the intestinal parasite hookworm.
The Biden administration investigated and allocated nearly $26 million to rebuild Lowndes County’s water infrastructure, with the Department of Justice declaring the majority-Black area was suffering from “environmental racism.”
[…]
A 2023 investigation sparked by environmental activist Catherine Coleman Flowers and conducted by the DOJ found that low-income residents of the county, most of whom are Black, have lacked basic sanitation services for generations. Given the area’s especially hard, impermeable soil and the high cost of installing private wastewater systems, many residents have resorted to straight piping to deal with human wastewater. This method involves guiding human wastewater away from the home into a series of ditches and crude piping systems, according to the DOJ report. That water collects in nearby yards, open areas and woods.
In more recent years, heavier rainfall related to climate change has meant that contaminated water floods into the home, spills across open areas, and contaminates local vegetation and water, exposing residents to illness.
And so, Burke and more than 300 other families in Lowndes County — located about 40 miles southwest of Montgomery — are forced to live with a failing water infrastructure that has led to serious health concerns, including hookworm, which at one point had been thought to be eradicated from the United States, according to a 2021 study by the Baylor College of Medicine and the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise.
[…]
This environmental quagmire has persisted for more than 20 years in this rural part of the state, where 72.4% of the population is Black and the median household income is $35,160, according to the latest census; one-third of residents live below the poverty line. Flowers said that much of the problem started back in 1866 with the passage of the Southern Homestead Act, when Black people were first allowed to purchase land there and were offered mostly places that were environmentally unsafe.
In recent decades, it’s not uncommon for untreated sewage to flow from some residents’ toilets into their yards or back up into their homes through sinks or bathtubs. Drinking water from the tap is out of the question. Some residents have dug ditches in an attempt to drain rainwater away from their homes.
These are conditions associated with some of the poorer parts of the developing world. They should not exist in the richest country on Earth. And I assure everyone that tariffs aren’t going to fix the problem. Indeed, Federal funding to address this issue has been canceled via Executive Order by the Trump administration because it is focused on “environmental justice.”
Which is just a reminder that the president who claims to have “brought back free speech” sure does like to target words he doesn’t like. It is all rather reminiscent of Soviet Era purges, but I digress (or do I?).
But back to Lowdnes County, which borders the county in which I reside. I can attest to the fact that the soil around here does not drain well.**** When dry, it is hard as a rock, so digging drainage ditches by hand would not be fun. Moreover, because of the way it can shift when it moves from wet to dry, it is not usual for it to negatively impact manmade objects, especially things like amateur-laid pipes.
More on the county below, but first, more on the canceled funding.
When announcing the results of the 2023 investigation, former Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said the Justice Department found evidence that suggested Alabama’s Department of Public Health showed “a consistent pattern of inaction and/or neglect concerning the health risks associated with exposure to raw sewage.”
Sewell added that the burden to “remedy this injustice” fell to the Alabama Department of Public Health. But the ADH said in a statement to NBC News that “the installation of sanitation systems and related infrastructure is outside the authority or responsibilities.”
A second statement from ADH said the department had received $1.5 million of the funds from the Biden agreement and used it in part to pay for three septic tank installations. With the remainder of that money, ADH will pay a contractor to complete more work by May 2026, according to the statement. Trump killed the agreement before any additional funds could be distributed toward fixing the water infrastructure.
The fact that the state of Alabama has neglected the citizens of Lowndes County is, in fact, an injustice. And that injustice has manifested as an environmental disaster. And cancelling the funding to address that problem is a further injustice.
Injustices do not go away because you refuse to call them injustices.
So, as noted above, Lowndes is a low-population, poor, and majority Black county. It voted 68.4%-31.1% for Harris over Trump in case you were wondering how likely it is that Trump will care about its residents.
Race is central to this conversation and underscores why some version of using historical injustices as a variable in making public policy is warranted.
Indeed, it is a moral imperative.
I would note, first, that Lowdnes is in the Black Belt. I have discussed the political significance of this region before (here, for example). From that post:
The region is so-called because of the soil. And to show how various factors work together for long-term consequences, the soil of the Black Belt made it ideal for cotton farming, and hence used to house a lot of plantations fueled by slave labor). It is not hyperbole to note that socio-economic choices made in the 1800s, based on much longer-term geological developments, are directly affecting both rural poverty in Alabama, but also political choices.
Indeed, the way in which soil type can be linked to a specific socio-economic system (plantation slavery) and then to the manifestation of rural poverty we find in the region given the collapse of the plantation system and the way freed Black were treated after the Civil War all combine to be great examples of how structural factors can contribute to long-term social consequences. It is a great example of how the effects of slavery, the Civil War, and post-Reconstruction all combine to have real-world effects in the here and now (despite the fact that many people want to pretend like the past is far distant and should not come into discussions of contemporary politics).
So, the reason that Lowndes County is over 70% Black is rooted in enslavement in the first place. Its poverty is further linked to the collapse of the slave-based cotton economy and the general abandonment of much of the state by both wealth and interest from the state government. If one looks at the history of the county, one finds things like attempts at political organization by Black residents that are opposed by the White majority in the state, including prominent activity during the Civil Rights Era. We see a major federal court case fighting racial discrimination in juries originating in Lowndes County. The marches from Selma to Montgomery in service of voting rights went through Lowndes County.
I would submit that it is no coincidence that the state government, over the decades, has ignored the county’s needs. There is the general neglect linked to most rural counties in the state, and especially those in the Black Belt. And then there is little doubt in my mind that some state officials, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, consciously eschewed helping the troublemaker in Lowndes County.*****
The current physical circumstances in Lowndes County are a reminder of how the present is arrived at via the history of a given place. And an examination of that history is necessary when making policy choices.
For those who would say that the residents of the country should just move to a better place, I would note that many in the county have moved out. But I would also note that the poorer you are, the harder it can be to move. There are real costs associated with relocation, both personal and financial. One has to have somewhere to go (which includes a job) and enough money to start up before the new income rolls in (assuming you have a job that pays enough to live in the big city).****** And, are you willing to leave Mama (or Granny or whomever) behind in the falling-apart trailer with the sewage problem?
And for someone who might object that people should be able to take care of themselves and not rely on federal tax dollars to address their woes, I would ask how many sewage ditches they had to dig near their homes recently. Or when they flush, do they not worry about where it goes?
This situation reminds me of posts I have written over the years, noting how much we, as a country, ignore our past, and not just because we should know our past, but because the present is the direct result of that past.
Some examples:
- America’s “Family Secret” or Just Plain Denial?
- Thinking about the Past
- Thinking about the Injustice that Feeds the Flame
- The Town Without Elections
- Some Photos for Juneteenth
The bottom line is that the Trump administration and its anti-DEI crusaders don’t care at all about whom they are hurting when they make these cuts. And in behaving as they are, they are proving the need for policies that address equity, diversity, and inclusion, as well as things like environmental justice, because if the government is not purposeful in trying to address these kinds of problems, people fall through the cracks.
Of course, we will have to call it something new because the anti-woke brigade has tainted these terms. But playing language police doesn’t fix the sewage problem in Lowdnes County or in similar forgotten places around the country.
*And to be clear: if he had won 70%-30%, the way he has used power would still be an abuse of the constitutional system, but at least then he would have truly overwhelming public support and political capital. He talks and acts like he has such capital, but his approval rating of ~40% says otherwise (but all of that is the subject of a different post).
**Just look at the cabinet. I continue to find it telling that the only Black appointee runs Housing and Urban Development, as was the case in his first term. Because, you know, Blacks are like, urban. But also listen to people like Chris Rufo talk about admissions and hiring in higher education. He is clearly concerned with not enough white people getting in/hired. Again, this could be its own post.
***If they were running a true meritocracy, most of the cabinet would not have been appointed. There is simply no way that Pete Hegseth won that job on merit. And may I remind the audience that CQ Brown was replaced as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by Dan Caine, who has a decidedly inferior resume. Brown is Black and Ciane is White. Meritocracy, indeed.
****In fact, I, too, have a septic system, and the one time I had a serious problem with it was when the rained so much that the ground was so saturated that it wasn’t draining properly. And I have a pretty good system and, moreover, can afford to have it serviced to deal with problems before they back up into my house.
*****I admit that this is supposition, but it is historically informed supposition. I will note that Jefferson Cowie, in Freedom’s Dominion, 372-373, discusses some of the political activism in the county in the 1960s and the retaliation by local White landowners against Black tenants involved in political activism.
******And pretty much anything outside of Lowndes County is the “big city,” regardless of the size thereof.
A lot of people believe they can be above the fray. Sure, they want black people to have sewage-free homes. But they want a third answer to the yes/no question of whether or not this is due to structural racism and if white people, regardless of their status, are responsible. They think there must be a better way to talk about race and injustice, and that’s why we have Trump, because the better way was not discovered, and fault lies with the people who talked about race and injustice.
Laid out like this, it sounds pathetic, but if you’re white (like me) this way of thinking is how you’re taught to think about racism. That plus amnesia and a belief that everything is better, which will happen if Trump goes down for good.
I assume that this situation violates any number of EPA regulations. Why haven’t the county and state been paying large fines, or having compliance plans imposed on them? Unlikely to happen under Trump, of course, but this has been going on for many years.
@Modulo Myself:
I would argue that this is unnecessary and if anything subverts the purpose of DEI which is not to assign blame but to look at solutions for existing inequities. White people are not responsible for the sins of their fathers or the sins of other White people. Collective guilt is a pernicious idea, it is in fact the foundation of anti-semitism, and other forms of bigotry as well.
Extrapolating from an individual or segment of a group to the whole is faulty reasoning. So, ‘Cadillac-driving welfare queen,’ even if you find a handful of such people, does not in any way define the 40 million or so Black people. And ‘Klansman in Alabama’ does not define White people. Jews are not collectively guilty, Black people are not collectively guilty, Hispanics, gays, trans whatever groups you want to delineate with lazily-applied parentheses, are not collectively guilty. And taking that notion of collective guilt to the next step of extending it back in time is ridiculous unless you intend to blame modern Spaniards for wiping out the Aztecs, or about a thousand other examples.
If we insist on the collective guilt of White people we needlessly stigmatize and antagonize a group which comprises 60% plus of the voters in this country. It’s illogical, unnecessary and politically suicidal.
Let’s talk about inequities, and to what degree we should or are able to, ameliorate them.
” I have yet to see any deployment by these folks of the idea of “meritocracy” that does not mean simply the promotion of people that they like, and they sure tend to like themselves some white dudes.”
I forget where I saw it first, but in Trump’s America, white people expect to be judged by the color of their skin, and not the content of their character.
I support DEI. In fact in my own work I perform DEI. Have been since long before the term was coined. But I have been bitching about the way it is being done. I can’t speak to academia or the corporate world, but it has been screamingly obvious to me that in entertainment (books, movies, music, TV etc…) we’ve been doing it in the least effective and most counter-productive ways.
It is not necessary to denigrate X in order to elevate Y. In fact doing it that way is in itself racist and/or sexist, because the premise is not that X and Y are equal, but rather that Y can only hope to be equal to an inferior X. It’s like saying we’re going to have a foot race in which we demonstrate that women are equal by having them compete against one-legged men. Or Blacks are equal but only when contrasted with terrible Whites.
That is not how you do it. It’s really not at all hard to do it effectively.
I love the whole “CTRL-F” metaphor. Nicely done.
I think this stuff is shot through with shame. And shame dies hard. In my own life, I have experienced something that feels a lot like my life (in a broad sense) is a big old rambling house, with some doors that I’ve never opened. (My great-grandparent’s house can serve as a model for this).
Then one day, because of curiosity, I open one of those doors. This unleashes a smell. A very bad smell. Maybe it’s nearly overpowering. I question the widom of opening that door. I have a strong urge to shut it again. Maybe some times I do shut it.
But sometimes I don’t shut it, because of my curiosity. Because I can see that there are things that interest me in the room. Things I want to know more about. With time, and air currents, the smell abates. I might see unpleasant things, I might see things I’m glad I learned about. But after enduring the smell, it dissipates and I have a new room, full of interesting, if sometimes sobering, items and furniture and views.
I did not cause that smell. I was never in that room before. But it still affects me.
Shame is that smell. When we have guilt, it is because of something we did, and we can potentially make amends for it, and correct our path, though by no means does this always happen.
Shame has no redemptive pathway. It only dissipates with time and fresh air. Opening those doors to the past, those remembrances of terrible things done by those before us, is difficult work, but also valuable work.
I do not regret opening any such door in my own history.
I do not anticipate regretting opening any such door in our national history.
@Michael Reynolds:
It has nothing to do with guilt. The unfortunate truth is that white people in America have not done very much to combat racism, and if they did they were outsiders–Jewish, communists, and a few other radicals mostly, some of whom were only ‘white’ after WW2 put everyone who wasn’t ‘black’ into the same uniform. By doing anything, I mean laying your body and life on the line or being socially ostracized. Look, for example, at the animosity towards woke white progressives who might at 20 say a few clunky things in college but who are trying to think about race.
Americans are good Germans, and I honestly believe it’s denigrating to America and Americans to pretend that the mainstream has been anything than utterly conformist when it comes to challenging injustice.
@Michael Reynolds: The answer to who to blame is dead people. People want to know the cause of problems before they fix them, otherwise, maybe those Black folks in Alabama are just dumping their waste water into their neighbors lawns because they are awful people and why should we get involved?
Dead people. A perfect scapegoat in that they cannot fight back, and (just as good) they were the cause.
I think part of the problem is that we extol the greatness of the Founding Fathers, and don’t address the fact that a lot of them were complete shitheads. George Washington wrote about the necessity of beating slaves. The Federalists did not want a Bill of Rights. They were men of their times, but they were bad men of their times.
If you aren’t willing to blame the Founding Fathers, because they can do no wrong, then who is left to blame? Either white people right now, or the black, brown and poor people right now — the victims of these policies.
@Modulo Myself:
360,000 White (mostly) Americans died on the Union side in the Civil War, a number which in current terms would be about 3 and a half million people. Add in the wounded and the traumatized, and the orphans and widows. Certainly not all of them GAF about rights for Blacks – I’m well-versed in this area – but a significant number did.
When Hubert Humphrey in 1948 gave the speech that helped spur the Dixiecrat schism, was he a member of a marginalized group? How about the White Baptists who split from the Southern Baptists? What about the Quakers? Or John Brown? William Lloyd Garrison? Eleanor Roosevelt? Branch Rickey? Harper Lee? Or for that matter, Lyndon Johnson? I’m pleased that many Jews supported civil rights, but it was not just Jews.
@Michael Reynolds: Ultimately, to me, the guilt is American guilt, not collective White Guilt.
But there is no escaping the fact that the Americans who perpetrated most of the crimes were White.
And there is no escaping that Whites have been, and continue to be, the majority.
I don’t think this is avoidable.
But I do think that America, as a whole, refuses to come to grips with its history and how that history brought us to the present.
Should we, as a country, use tax revenues to lessen or eliminate problems adversely affecting the health of citizens when nothing has been done by Churches, charities, the private sector, and state governments to mitigate those problems (and, in fact, have caused or aggravated those problems), over a span of several years, if not decades or centuries? Does the answer to this question hinge on the race or income levels of those affected? We have an answer from President Trump and, by implication, his party and voters, although, to be honest, we’ve had that answer for some time.
@Michael Reynolds:
You keep on referring to collective guilt, but I think you mean simply collective, as in collective awareness or collective fight. A collective fight against racism has always been resisted by mainstream America, Your list reflects this. It’s just throwing names at a wall, hoping some pattern or meaning will stick. John Brown and LBJ–there’s no meaning here. No one’s in charge. The truth is that the fight for civil rights was always transactional. One line here, but another there. Let’s desegregate the south but then on the weekends it’s time for the segregated private club.
@Steven L. Taylor:
It’s not avoidable in an mature country serious about solving problems and maximizing quality of life. Modern America is not that country.
Our forefathers are not the one flooding sewage into a poor black community. Modern America is doing that.
But witness how quickly the discussion shifted to centering white comfort, away how contemporary cultural and political racism allows this Alabama disgrace.
Sadly, the US is not going to improve very much any time soon, Trump or no. Because we are not ready to make the material (higher taxes on the rich etc.) and emotional (uncomfortable admissions of our moral backsliding etc) sacrifices necessary to improve.
Postwar Germany did not run away from shame and guilt. That’s how they limit Nazism. By contrast, America is still letting bigots off the hook, by arguing they are not 100% responsible for their own principles.
Principles don’t budge. Either you oppose racism, or you don’t. No one can be antagonized out of their ethics. One who can drop their morals because their feelings got hurt was always amoral.
This country would never accept a man saying, ‘I used to believe raping women was wrong, but then Hollywood DEI antagonized me, so now I support rape.’ Neither should this excuse should not fly for sexism, homophobia, or fascism.
America will not change significantly until people are made accountable for their own selfish and amoral choices — including being shamed — and we stop the excuses, rationalizations, and justifications.
No, Hollywood didn’t make anyone racist. Sorry, but no. And to fully jettison white supremacy, cutthroat capitalism, etc our desire to not feel bad nerds to matter less than our desire to do what’s right.
I appreciate you Dr. Taylor, this post is fantastic. You appear to dedicated to speaking up for what’s right after wrestling with various viewpoints, regardless which way the political wind blow, and regardless who’s feelings get hurt. That is the way forward, for Democrats and the country. (And that is way conservatives traditionally behaved, before they became crybaby neo-Nazis.)
But most of us are not like you. Most of us will find an excuse and will only support progress up until the point of our discomfort and no further. Sad!
@Michael Reynolds:
Correct. And yet, white people (collectively) have benefitted from the oppression of black people (collectively) and therefore SHOULD PAY FOR the things that need to be done to repair such damage as can be repaired.
That’s the crux. It’s not about who’s guilty; it’s about who should foot the bill. Black America (collectively) can’t pay for it, for reasons that are not (collectively) their fault. Ergo…
Of course, many believe that nobody should pay anything to fix anything — it wasn’t me, I didn’t do it, what do you mean “privilege”, I’m not rich… or if I am, I earned it with no help from anyone. Meritocracy!
DEI is/are the tepid half-measures that white people [did?] allow to actually implement the Civil Rights Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Remove DEI, you’re removing those 2 nominally important pieces of legislation.
To put it another way: DEI isn’t promoting a black guy with no skill over a qualified white guy, it’s the only thing that ensured a white guy with no skill was not promoted over a qualified black guy.
@DK:
Many thanks. I appreciate you saying so.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Repeated because it’s so dang true.
Exceedingly uncomfortable and still true.
It remains true while also acknowledging that there have been White folks (and others) throughout the years who have struggled through no fault of their own. In fact, many of the explicitly anti-Black actions have hurt lots of poor folks of all colors (and had, in sheer numbers, a larger impact on Whites than anyone else).
BTW, Steven, I suspect you agree with that final point. I also call out that you were in no way arguing the opposite. I think it’s important to emphasize how structural racism negatively impacts people of all colors. That’s part of the logic behind the idea that no one is free unless we all are free.
@Modulo Myself:
What’s the saying?
“There’s two things Republicans hate: 1, being called racist and 2, black people.”