The latest flashpoint in the conservative and far-right war against so-called “woke culture” is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

Many Republican Party officials and public figures are openly conservative He blamed tragic accidents, such as the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge In Baltimore, on “DEI Employment Practices.” South African billionaire, owner of X, and newly appointed US Director of Government Efficiency Elon Musk blamed DEI For this month’s climate-change-caused wildfires in Southern California, she claimed in a video posted on X that “DEI means people die.”

In recent months, opponents of DEI have gone after organizations that support these efforts. from Fear box to Merckfrom Walmart to McDonald’sAnd who dead As for Amazon, some nonprofits and major corporations are now in reckless retreat. They are abandoning or eliminating programs they have implemented or significantly expanded After the uprisings that broke out after the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in 2020. In states such as Alabama, Iowa, Utah, Missouri, Kentucky, Texas, and Nebraska, US AI infrastructures have been dismantled. Public higher education institutions It reportedly began at the local and institutional level more than three years ago.

As expected, President Donald Trump used his first day of his second term in the White House to begin talks dismantling Of the diversity and comprehensive infrastructure of the federal government. He demanded all federalism Subordinate Employees will be placed on paid leave starting Wednesday and will eventually be laid off.

So why is ending DEI – which typically consists of accepting and even embracing racial, gender, sexual orientation, and other differences and creating a welcoming climate for marginalized Americans on campuses and workplaces – such a priority for Trump? His conservative supporters and the broader far right?

They want to see the end of DEI because they believe these programs represent a real challenge to their efforts to rebuild the “white man’s country” they long for. Their insistence on colorblindness in educational and employment practices is in fact an insistence on a return to the days when only white men could benefit positively from the allegedly objective practices of social mobility. They want to do nothing less than close the already very narrow paths to social and economic advancement available to people of color and other marginalized people in the United States. They want to make sure that DEI or other anti-racist or “woke” programs cannot force them to confront their racism in the process. To them, DEI is just code for “never merge.”

None of this is accidental. Since 2019, The far right has been throwing grenades at Critical Race Theory and African American Studies In kindergarten through 12th grade and at colleges and universities across the country. In two June 2023 cases, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard University and SFFA v. University of North Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race-sensitive affirmative action in college admissions was unconstitutional, overturning decades of precedent. These were not stand-alone developments. Efforts against DEI programs, affirmative action in education and employment, and critical race theory are all part of a larger movement to return the United States to a state of quasi-legal segregation.

Long before current efforts against DEI, opponents of race-based affirmative action regularly criticized the idea that Americans of color — especially blacks — needed a better path to better educational and employment opportunities. They stood in opposition to President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 decision Executive Order No. 11246 and gradually expand its scope beyond government contractors to include higher education and employment in all sectors of the American economy. President Johnson may have sensed this potential opposition as well. in His inaugural address in 1965 At the historic Black Howard University in Washington, D.C., in June of that year, “To Realize These Rights,” Johnson said, “You don’t take someone who’s been in chains for years and set them free, and put them in their rightful place.” The starting line of the race and then you say: “You are free to compete with others,” and you still truly believe that you were completely fair. Johnson wanted to find ways to create an uneven playing field, which had always heavily favored white Americans and white men over all other groups. Trump Executive Order 14171Ending Unlawful Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, formally rescinded Johnson’s order, as well as 60 years of federal workforce discrimination protections with it.

Every movement has its heroes, even anti-social justice movements. For conservatives like Ward Connerly and Edward Bloom, any corrections aimed at working against the white racism embedded in American systems and institutions—whether affirmative action, DEI, or even critical race theory—are over-corrections. Connerly, who is African-American, stood against affirmative action in the 1980s and 1990s. He led the anti-affirmative action movement in California, and with the help of Republican Governor Pete Wilson, he successfully overturned affirmative action in the state. With the Proposition 209 initiative In 1996. He helped implement the initiative into law Severely reducing the number of black and brown students Enrollment in California universities.

during Interview with Politico in 2023on the eve of the end of affirmative action, Connerly once again explained the rationale for ending any race-based admissions and hiring efforts, whether affirmative action or DEI. “But ‘building diversity’ is just a euphemism for discrimination, because you’re race-conscious.” For Connerly, the path to equality was through race-blind politics, where “government is supposed to be color-blind. I think we as people should strive to be color-blind, and not attach any consequences to a person’s color.”

Edward Bloom has worked as an anti-affirmative action and DEI litigator for decades He follows directly in Conerly’s footsteps. In his own interpretation of A storm of lawsuits Against universities, law firms and private corporations over the years, Bloom said: “I am a one-trick pony. I hope and care that these racial classifications and preferences in our public policy will end… and an individual’s race or ethnicity should not be used to aid or harm him in his life’s endeavors.” In explaining the NFL’s victory American Foot on the Supreme Court in 2023, Bloom asserted his vision of a color-blind United States “In the culture war this nation has fought for wokeness, the SFFA’s view has been like an Allied landing on Normandy Beach.” According to Bloom, “SFFA’s lawsuits have received overwhelming support from individuals and organizations across the country who share our belief in the importance of meritocracy and color-blind admissions policies.”

This is the main problem in both Connerly and Bloom’s work. The United States is not a color-blind society. It is a society plagued by white supremacy, patriarchal misogyny, and massive social and economic inequality encoded in its cultural DNA. The struggle for “fairness,” “meritocracy,” and “colorblind” politics only means that conservatives and far-rights like Connerly and Bloom fight to end any paths for marginalized Americans to social mobility through higher education and middle-class jobs. . If the initial ladders of creating positive opportunities in a white (and male) dominated society are destroyed, then backwards exclusion and segregation in higher education and the workforce will soon follow. The impact of dismantling affirmative action is already clear At the discounted black and latino university and Admission to the College of Medicine over the past 18 months, and it will certainly impact your hiring and promotion practices as well.

But the truth is that exclusion or segregation never disappeared; Not with more than 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies With white men at the head. And definitely Not with more than half of black and brown children They attend majority black and brown schools while 76 percent of white children attend majority white schools. Only, in higher education, in employment and entrepreneurship, have Connerly and Bloom made it their mission to end the little spigot that affirmative action and DEI programs have provided over the past six decades. But with 43% of students attending prestigious Ivy League universities are legaciesAffirmative action seems always welcome to white Americans, even in Conerly and Bloom’s vision of a color-blind society.

As sociologist Eduardo Bonilla Silva of Duke University points out in his book Racism Without Racists: Colorblind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, “colorblind racism” involves “rationalization.”[ing] The contemporary status of minorities as a product of market dynamics, naturally occurring phenomena, and cultural constraints attributed to blacks. People like Connerly, Bloom, Donald Trump, and Elon Musk are merely exercising the narcissism that comes with their socioeconomic, racial, and gender status.

As is typical of this group, they place the blame for setbacks and failures on individuals, not on systems that primarily emphasize white people and especially wealthy white men. In fact, their excuses for attacking anything anti-racist, anti-discrimination, and affirmative action are merely a smokescreen for expressing racism and tacit approval of segregation and exclusion on the difficult path to inclusion.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.