Republicans keep swinging at the DEI policies they don't understand | Opinion
All Republicans know is that President Donald Trump is against DEI and that producing legislation – even if it's an idiotic word salad – will send a message to Dear Leader that they are not 'woke.'
I’d guess that the Republicans pushing the latest anti-diversity, equity and inclusion bill through the Arizona Legislature have no idea what half the words in the bill actually mean, or even what DEI actually means, or how a bill threatening to cut funding from colleges that offer courses in DEI possibly could be enforced.
All they know is that Donald Trump is against DEI and that producing legislation – even if it’s an idiotic word salad – will send a message to Dear Leader that Republicans in the desert Southwest are not “woke.”
(Another word I’d guess they don’t actually understand.)
Everyone should read Senate Bill 1694.
It defines a DEI course is any class that relates “contemporary American society to critical theory, whiteness, systemic racism, institutional racism, anti-racism, microaggressions, systemic bias, implicit bias, unconscious bias, intersectionality, gender identity, social justice, cultural competence, allyship, race-based reparations ... race-based equity, gender-based equity, race-based inclusion or gender-based inclusion.”
So, Republicans are against increasing freedom?
To begin with, can you tell me what “critical theory” means?
I didn’t think so.
Neither can the lawmakers going along with this steaming pile of … gobbledygook.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive says, “A critical theory provides the descriptive and normative bases for social inquiry aimed at decreasing domination and increasing freedoms in all their forms.”
So, increasing freedoms is bad?
And, looking through the bill’s list of anti-DEI words, so is antiracism?
And social justice?
In what universe is it bad to uplift others?
And do you believe for one second that the lawmakers who voted on this bill know what “intersectionality” means? Or could explain to you why they think it’s bad?
According to the National Institute of Health, “Intersectionality is a theoretical framework rooted in the premise that human experience is jointly shaped by multiple social positions (e.g. race, gender), and cannot be adequately understood by considering social positions independently.”
How is that a bad thing?
And what’s wrong with “allyship"?
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, allyship is “the quality or practice of helping or supporting other people who are part of a group that is treated badly or unfairly, although you are not yourself a member of this group.”
The definition includes an addendum saying, “Allyship means using your power, position, or privilege to uplift others.”
So, uplifting others is a bad thing?
Anti-DEI bill is instructive about one thing
As silly as all that is, the bill also says that DEI does NOT "include a course that identifies or discusses historical movements, ideologies or instances of racial hatred or race-based discrimination, including slavery, Indian removal, the Holocaust and Japanese American internment in the course materials or instruction" include prohibited activities.
Which means, essentially, that college educators and their students can talk about all the stuff that other parts of the bill say they can’t talk about.
This is what happens when politicians get mixed up with education.
Still, as ridiculous as a bill like this is, it is also instructive. Not about DEI, of course, but about BS.
EJ Montini is a columnist at the Arizona Republic, where this column originally published. Reach him at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com