In 2024, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives became ground zero for hard-right mobilizations to whitewash American society and protect white supremacy. These efforts built a foundation in 2024 for nationwide policy actions to follow by President Donald Trump.
Black Americans have long described a reality different from white Americans, but the police killings in 2020 of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor exposed many of the inequalities at the center of American life. Since 2020, Black organizers, leaders and their allies have advocated for and won public policies and conversations about the history and effects of systemic racism and inequities. The hard right responded immediately with organized opposition, led by some of the country’s most active hate and antigovernment groups and individuals.
Although more people now believe racism is a widespread problem — including six in 10 people who believe DEI policies are good for companies — the perniciousness of structural racism means that Black and Brown Americans are often forced to reside in liminal spaces where tragedy must seemingly be endured to achieve social progress. Exposing a racist system and experiencing tragedy frequently go together, as if the effects of racism become apparent only in the aftermath of public tragedy.
DEI initiatives aim to address systemic disparities and promote inclusivity in an equitable manner. They may promote teaching accurate histories of American inequalities as structural — or the result of how American social and political institutions were created — and attempt to ensure marginalized groups have equitable employment and educational opportunities. These initiatives are essential in ensuring pluralism, reducing inequities that spur division and promoting democracy.
The racist underpinnings of anti-diversity, equity and inclusion rhetoric
DEI principles recognize the lingering effects and continued reality of discrimination. DEI initiatives that promote an understanding of these effects are frequently mischaracterized as stand-ins for racial quotas, affirmative action, or a form of “reverse racism” that harms white people. Derived from white supremacist conspiracy theories and racist pseudoscience, the rhetoric anti-DEI activists use is consistent across hard-right ideologies.
Christian identity preacher Jason Robb, writing in his 2024 pamphlet Dark Medicine, said: “We have seen the scourge of DEI invade every aspect of our lives: from education, corporations, and the police, and even the military. We have seen the anti-white hatred reveal itself in our culture by tearing down statues throughout the South.”DEI, he claims, is “just another avenue used against us and our children.”
Similarly, in a 2024 blog post titled “DEI Is White Genocide,” Paul Craig Roberts, a former Reagan administration official and prominent conservative author, claimed DEI initiatives are “indoctrination programs” that threaten white, heterosexual and cisgender people. “White genocide” is an antisemitic, racist myth whose advocates falsely claim shadowy figures — often Jewish people — use immigration and violence to replace or eliminate white people in majority-white countries with Brown, Black and mixed-race people.
DEI is “an anti-white, anti-heterosexual, and ‘gender by choice’ indoctrination program,” Roberts claims, that “is designed to marginalize normality and to replace it with abnormality, to destroy the confidence of normal white people, and to position them in law as second class [sic] citizens against whom discrimination is legal.”
Mimicking the language of white supremacist ideologues in 2023, Colin Wright, an anti-DEI activist and adviser to The Killarney Group project of the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Genspect, wrote on X that DEI efforts “encompass a radical ecosystem of related ideologies that are divisive, intolerant, racist, anti-truth, and even genocidal.”
DEI is also frequently mischaracterized as undoing meritocracy. This falsehood relies on the racist assumption that people of color are less-intelligent and less-qualified job and academic applicants or do not work as hard to achieve success as white people. Opponents of DEI falsely suggest DEI initiatives give preferential treatment to unqualified Black and Brown applicants, which, they claim, results in poorer-performing professionals taking the place of better qualified peers.
In his book America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything, far-right activist Christopher Rufo dismisses DEI programs in schools as existing only to embed ideologies and to create jobs for people with degrees in “race, gender, and identity.”
Before Kamala Harris became the first woman of color to accept a major party’s nomination for president in 2024, U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman suggested the vice president was not intelligent and only achieved her position because of DEI, saying: “I think she’s one of the weakest candidates I’ve ever seen in the history of our country. I mean intellectually, just really kind of the bottom of the barrel,” and “I think that she was a DEI hire.”
In 2024, hate and antigovernment groups opportunistically used natural disasters and tragic accidents to bolster racist claims that DEI initiatives promote unqualified candidates. Following the devastation of Hurricane Helene, for example, the Cape Fear Proud Boys falsely linked the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s equity goals to ineffective management of the disaster response. The Family Research Council similarly blamed DEI initiatives for distracting the head of the U.S. Secret Service and female agents in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Trump was targeted by a would-be assassin.
2025 will be the year we dismantle everything these far left activists have built.”
— Robby Starbuck, former congressional candidate
Comments from a former Utah state representative show how claims of Black and female inferiority are weaponized in the wake of disaster. In a post on X following the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Rep. Phil Lyman suggested the collapse was the result of politicians who “prioritize diversity over the wellbeing and security of citizens.” According to NBC, he later posted but deleted, “DEI = DIE.” His original post was accompanied by a picture of one of the six Port of Baltimore commissioners, Karenthia Barber, who is the only Black woman on the commission.
Hate groups that focus on dismantling inclusive education have perpetuated similar language. In a 2022 Newsweek editorial, Stanley Goldfarb, founder of the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Do No Harm, wrote about a “diversity delusion” in medical schools that he argued led to less-qualified doctors getting preferential treatment in admissions. Medical schools, he said, should “be concerned that more qualified students are likely being passed over, leaving patients with a less talented crop of doctors over the long run.”
In The Wall Street Journal in 2022, Do No Harm’s Laura Morgan said that DEI initiatives assume that “white people treat those who aren’t white worse than those who are,” and implied that systemic racism does not exist in medical care. Rather, Morgan claimed, DEI initiatives want to replace racist systems “with preferential treatment for the nonwhite.”
Attacks on DEI in schools
In education, DEI is often invoked to promote literary bans, restrictive history and sex education curricula, and to infuse hard-right ideology into public classrooms. The antigovernment group PragerU calls DEI “an affront to America’s core values” that must be “cast … into the dustbin of history alongside all the other racist and discredited ideas of the past.” In 2024, the group’s lessons were approved for use in at least nine states, including Florida and Louisiana.
Emily Jones of the Moms for Liberty chapter in Madison County, Alabama, said on “1819 News: The Podcast” that students are inundated with DEI masquerading as mental health. “It’s sick,” she claimed, explaining how prompting kids to think about their feelings can lead them “down this road of anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies.”
In 2024, legislation to dismantle DEI programs again swept the nation, affecting 212 college campuses in 32 states. These legislative measures restrict discussions of race and gender in classrooms, and, in states like Texas and Florida, cut funding for programs that disproportionately impact employees from marginalized communities who work in DEI roles. Communities that don’t teach honest history are doomed to repeat errors and tragedies and lose empathy and a sense of shared humanity. The combination of restrictions and defunding risks further institutionalizing wealth inequalities, particularly among Black women.
32States enacted legislation to dismantle DEI programs, affecting 212 college campuses
In a December 2024 article applauding the Idaho Board of Education for banning DEI initiatives, the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Family Research Council claimed eliminating DEI initiatives was at the vanguard of “the movement to increase conservative governance of educational institutions,” adding, “These policies can be used as a model for other state boards or legislatures.”
Also in 2024, two Texas universities reportedly fired at least 80 faculty members to comply with new anti-DEI regulations. Similarly, the University of Florida reportedly eliminated its DEI positions and canceled some contracts with outside vendors because of the DEI ban. On X, anti-DEI advocate Christopher Rufo claimed: “University of Florida has fired all employees related to DEI. The conservative counter-revolution has begun.”
While hard-right politicians legislate against DEI initiatives, hate and antigovernment groups have also taken direct actions against them. Arguing that DEI programs promote divisiveness, indoctrination or so-called “reverse discrimination,” such groups as Parents Defending Education have filed lawsuits against individual school districts and complaints with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Similarly, Do No Harm has initiated a campaign and published a report resulting in more than 50 federal investigations to challenge DEI initiatives it claims will “disadvantage capable students and applicants.”
In 2023, the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions policies, a cornerstone of DEI in higher education. This decision set a precedent that emboldened broader efforts in 2024 to dismantle DEI practices.
In 2024, Do No Harm filed eight lawsuits challenging programs like scholarships and fellowships for marginalized people. The group claims that the practice of nonprofit organizations like the American Association of University Women to provide fellowships to students of color and LGBTQ+ students — groups historically underrepresented in academia and medicine — harms patients by requiring medical schools to accept or fund unqualified candidates. According to the group, the case was dismissed “after AAUW agreed to drop the racial criteria in the fellowship’s selection process.”
‘Demoralize, Dismantle, Demolish’ corporate DEI principles
Corporate DEI efforts have been packaged within a broader set of investment and organizational principles called ESG or environmental, social and governance frameworks that promote corporate accountability to communities as well as shareholders, equitable environmental standards and DEI principles.
DEI policies promote accountability for contemporary acts of discrimination by barring discrimination against protected groups and encouraging everyone to take stock of how they might unconsciously contribute to the mistreatment of others. This might take the form of encouraging people not to assume a person’s gender identity because of their appearance, for example. For these reasons, anti-DEI activists frequently mischaracterize DEI principles as stand-ins for “socialism” and “Marxism” and claim DEI restricts freedoms of speech or association.
In 2024, publicly traded companies and private businesses increasingly faced legal challenges and pressure campaigns to drop their DEI programs. Companies including Walmart, Boeing, John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s, Nissan and Ford publicly announced they would scale back DEI programs in response to legal and political pressure generated by hard-right former congressional candidate Robby Starbuck.
Starbuck, who suggested DEI advocates promote “anti-capitalist” rhetoric in a 2024 interview, also claims to be representative of American consumers and that LGBTQ+ groups have a conspiratorial stranglehold on corporate boardrooms. “If I’m a ‘far right extremist’ because I oppose racist DEI policies, forced woke indoctrination at work and the sexualization of children then sure, I’m a far right extremist,” Starbuck told critics in a November 2024 post on X.
Reflecting on his work in December 2024, Starbuck said on X, “We demoralized the activists behind DEI and shifted culture back toward sanity,” but warned that “2025 will be the year we dismantle everything these far left activists have built.” His goal, he said: “Demoralize, Dismantle, Demolish” DEI. In October, Jeremy Tedesco of the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) tweeted that Starbuck was on a “mission of mercy in corporate America.”
Since 2022, ADF has similarly promoted a corporate-focused campaign called the “Viewpoint Diversity Score.” The group’s advisory council includes investment bankers, a “Christian economist and financial advisor,” investors focused on “biblically responsible investing,” and Christian investment firms. A proposal to JPMorgan Chase shareholders submitted in 2022 by ADF Viewpoint Diversity Score adviser David Bahnsen claims corporations are “giving fringe activists and governments a foothold to demand that private financial institutions deny service” to conservatives.
Underpinning ADF’s viewpoint diversity advocacy is a “debanking” conspiracy theory that suggests that banks and governments improperly work together to censor conservatives and close bank accounts primarily for sectarian religious groups that interpret their religion to oppose LGBTQ+ rights.
In 2024, ADF also promoted its Viewpoint Diversity Score program with language that mimics white supremacist narratives, characterizing diversity and LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination protections as threats to white Christian men. Through litigation and lobbying, ADF is working to dismantle DEI protections and weaponize government regulations to enforce sectarian Christian doctrines in publicly traded companies.
Rolling back progress
The multiracial movement for social justice and democratic accountability that emerged in summer 2020 was built on the collective experiences of Black Americans who have struggled for centuries against unfair policing, housing, financing, employment and education systems. Yet, it simultaneously generated hope for a better, more diverse, equitable and inclusive future.
Although some limited progress has since been achieved, attacks on DEI programs have wide-ranging consequences. Growing public consciousness of institutional inequalities pushed conversations about equity and fairness into boardrooms and school boards where wealth and educational inequalities are often perpetuated. Companies and the public sector rushed to hire diversity and equity specialists to help them implement anti-racist principles and create inclusive spaces. In addition, thanks to DEI efforts instituted after 2020, large corporations have hired more Black and Brown people.
The erosion of DEI programs risks reversing decades of progress in promoting fairness and inclusivity. Defending DEI is crucial to building just, innovative and resilient communities. The fight for diversity and inclusion is ultimately a fight for the future of an equitable society.
Illustration by Ben Jones.