The attacks on DEI: white anxieties, moral panics, and material impacts
In the past year, legislation targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at public institutions has surged. Since 2023, at least 84 anti-DEI bills have been introduced in 28 states, 12 of which have become law and 13 have final legislative approval. These legislative attacks on DEI coincide with the Supreme Court’s termination of affirmative action in 2023. A recent Clayman Institute event convened a panel of professors and journalists to discuss the meaning of these accelerating attacks on DEI, particularly as it coincides with the end of affirmative action.
The current discourse around DEI can be understood as the latest iteration in what is a cyclical pattern of reactionary moral panics launched by right wing conservative groups, which previously have taken aim at critical race theory (CRT), “wokeness,” and cancel culture, to name a few of its targets. Panelist Hakeem Jefferson, assistant professor of political science at Stanford and faculty director of the Program on Identity, Democracy, and Justice, situated the current escalation in anti-DEI legislation as “part of a long through-line in American history of a kind of racial backlash,” a reaction that follows whenever “there’s the perception of movement for racial progress.” The current attacks on DEI make up part of the ongoing response to the George Floyd protests of 2020. Since that time, backlash has often been focused on controlling what is taught in schools. “We’re seeing the legislating of white identity politics,” stated Jefferson: “there is no hiding what this is about, the banning of books about Black people, the curtailing of the teaching of the history of race and racism in the U.S.”
The DEI that is currently under attack “is another one of these objects of public scrutiny and panic that decisively exceeds and differs from the real thing,” stated moderator Adrian Daub, director of the Clayman Institute. At one level, noted Daub, DEI “just becomes code for putting up for debate the presence of people of color, especially Black Americans,” in positions of power. Panelist Jamelle Bouie, a columnist for the New York Times, commented, “It’s been striking to me to see the extent to which there’s not even any attempt to hide the idea that what is actually being complained about here is the presence and legitimacy of Black Americans in elite spaces.”
Moira Weigel, assistant professor of communication studies at Northeastern University, observed that what makes the attacks on DEI different from previous targets “is this explicit focus on organizations and institutions…and not even just at universities, but also in federal bureaucracies and corporations.” Bouie recognized that the escalation to institutions has “a lot to do with the very real sense of…trauma that conservatives felt in the wake of the George Floyd protests. I don't think we can overstate the extent to which the right broadly saw that in basically apocalyptic terms,” stated Bouie. “Part of the escalation here is conservatives asking themselves, how can we basically prevent that from ever happening again?” For Bouie, the targeting of institutions stems in part from a sense among conservatives that “the only way to preclude the kind of mass, socially disruptive protest against perceived hierarchies of race and gender is to target those cultural forces, social forces, political forces, and institutions that seem to be undermining them, whether actively or just by simple acknowledgement of some idea of racial or gender equality.”
There already is a pre-existing kind of cultural narrative about merit and deservingness in elite spaces. There’s a ready-made cultural narrative of a lack of deservingness for elite positions, especially when Black people have them.—Jamelle Bouie
The targeting of DEI has proven particularly effective, given the staggering rate at which new anti-DEI legislation has been introduced and the very real material impacts that have already taken place at universities and institutions across the country. One reason for its effectiveness, the panelists proposed, is that DEI has a particular resonance for white people, as something that is much closer to their everyday lives than previous targets. “There already is a pre-existing kind of cultural narrative about merit and deservingness in elite spaces,” explained Bouie. “There’s a ready-made cultural narrative of a lack of deservingness for elite positions, especially when Black people have them.” In this way, DEI has served as a critical site for the formation of new alliances and coalitions among white people. “One important way that these terms serve to escalate,” explained Weigel, “is they become the basis for shared antipathy to something [that is] disavowed or not explicitly defined, and therefore can be a site for the formation of new coalitions.”
Bouie further expounded that a particular political formation is taking shape through the use of DEI as a “sort of stand-in for all sorts of grievances and complaints.” This has made DEI a fertile ground for alliance-building between conservatives and some white liberals who feel “in community with some of these grievances,” stated Jefferson. Conversations about white racism pose “a kind of identity threat to many white Americans who are worried about the changing nature of whiteness,” explained Jefferson. Because race is so central to how we see ourselves and orients our place in the world, he said, as white Americans perceive their own status to be shifting, they increasingly take on these sites of grievance as their own.
As for what the future holds in the attacks on DEI programming, Jefferson predicted that “we're going to see a lot of universities fearful of being called before a congressional committee, fearful of being investigated, fearful of losing dollars…I think we're going to see… a lot of giving in and giving up. Because institutions are not often courageous when it comes to race and issues of equity.” Bouie sees a potential path forward in “meeting this rhetoric head on” and calling out these legislative attacks “for what they actually are.” “I think naming and labeling the thing and taking advantage of the very real tension between the resentments people might feel, but also the larger social values they [say they] want to adhere to is an important part of a political strategy,” noted Bouie. “Even if people may feel resentful of one thing or another, they also want to believe that they are good, inclusive people. And you can capture that. You can play those two things against each other.
