War on DEI: White Fragility’s Shameful Obsession with Black Excellence

William H. Johnson, Oh Freedom!, Via SAAM

White mediocrity, by nature, is fragile and unable to stand on its own. And that’s why it attempts to dismantle the floor so that no one can stand independently. It’s like snatching the PlayStation controller from your younger brother when he’s mercilessly beating you at a game you taught him to lose. No one is more obsessed with those who are winning the game than the creators of the game itself. The USA was built on oppression, and despite ongoing inequality, segregation, the wealth gap, and unequal access to resources, those who have been disenfranchised, exploited, and oppressed continue to outshine those who designed the systems. As a result, there are continuous attempts to adjust the playing field with more white-tear safeguards, reinforcing oppression and helping to cope. The latest safeguard is Trump’s “merit-based” policies that will ensure that cis-gendered white men’s self-worth can stay intact in corporate and federal America. 

What is “merit-based” coming from a racist, rapist, fascist, mediocre white man who was handed one million dollars as a “starting point in life?” The Trump administration is certainly practicing what it’s preaching. They sure weren’t entertaining a DEI hire out of Tim Scott. Perhaps a coon stipend in the form of shares in Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks would suffice. The “merit-based” bullshit rhetoric is vehemently rooted in passive aggressiveness; the implication is “whites only.” 

Every Narrative Needs a Villain

Every narrative needs a villain; to create one, one must decide who the story is written for. Trump’s attempt to consciously misinterpret DEI establishes the narrative that America’s weaknesses are rooted in “dumbing down” the system—suggesting that BIPOC individuals in the workforce are contributing to this decline. This is a strategy that American history has seen repeatedly. During the Antebellum South era, class was sometimes more about socioeconomic status than race. And poor whites and Blacks shared a similar frustration against the elite class, who held both money and power. Yet, rich Southerners saw an advantage in creating division between poor whites and Blacks. They convinced poor whites that Blacks were to blame for their lack of money and opportunities. Thus, they gave them a sliver of power over Blacks and made it into a “whites only” playing field.  They made an unfair system that was in favor of their interests, and when faced with opposition, they obfuscated and created their own modern-day “merit-based-white” criterion.

From Yahoo News, Edited by AHUS

Racist Armageddon

No doubt, the new Trump leadership has mirrored a sense of Armageddon: freezing federal payments, bulldozing school curriculums that attempt to educate on equity, and opening Guantanamo Bay as a functioning concentration camp for undocumented immigrants. Compounding these heartbreaking events, a plane crash in Washington D.C. on January 29th gave Trump an opportunity to blame the DEI programs. As baseless as the arguments were, at no point did Trump address his firing of the aviation committee members days before the crash. 

So why is Trump starting this “War on DEI?” Every villain has its origin story. And for Trump, racism is certainly enough. Yet, I believe a decent amount of marbles went missing at the 2011 Correspondents’ Dinner after Obama, in not so many words, called him a self-indulgent piece of shit and mocked his so-called “presidential” leadership, which boiled down to nothing more than babysitting Gary Busey. Essentially, Trump’s war on DEI is an attempt to silence Black people and to subject them to an inferior familiar place in society. His message is that Black people have too many rights, are too successful, and are too smart if they can call me out on my mediocrity, and thus, dismantling protections on historical racist policies is necessary. And that’s exactly what he did. Trump has managed to compromise the Equal Employment Opportunity that was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. 

Outside of Trump’s racist rationale as to why he does anything, the better question is, why does he seem to draw so much positive attraction to the policies he’s introducing? 

White Mediocrity Recognizes Its Mediocrity

Anything or anyone that is deliberately subpar, because the scales have always been in their favor, becomes hypersensitive when they witness higher achievement from those who’ve faced unfair odds. If “good” deviates away from a state of being to an opportunity to prove character, the discrepancy becomes too much to handle. And too many Trumpers suffer from this phenomenon. The real problem is that cis-gendered white males know that they are one-dimensional, and outside of their privilege, they have no depth. 

Screaming “merit-based” to anyone who isn’t a cis-gendered white male is a passive-aggressive way of placing ridiculous expectations for the sole purpose of “justification” to keep them out.  And it’s just code for re-segregation. Let’s keep out anyone who doesn’t look like us, think like us, act like us. These privileged, white cis-gendered mediocre, white men who are in these spaces to place these safeguards usually don’t have clean records, outstanding work ethics, or contribute any significant value to the systems, yet we're obliged to accept all that simply because they are white. It’s a fucked-up reality to be used to winning due to the sole purpose of being white, feeling entitled when challenged, and being empowered to make barriers pronounced for anyone who doesn’t look like them.

For any cis-gendered white male who believes that migrants need to go to concentration camps, yet evades conversations about colonialism, there is no standing. For any cis-gendered white male who believes that the ruin of America rests on the establishment of DEI, but overlooks legacy admissions into elite schools and jobs, there is no standing. For any cis-gendered white male who believes that eloquent, intelligent Black people are a threat to their status in society, there is no standing. They are not correct in their fears, and they are shamefully obsessed; and “would rather risk hurting themselves in efforts to see us fail.” - T.G. Brown