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The GOP’s DEI panic is just recycled bigotry with a thesaurus. Trump’s crew rebranding exclusion as “anti-wokeness” — a moral panic for donors and pundits to feast on. They’re not defending merit; they’re erasing history.
Republicans framing equity as oppression is peak gaslighting. Every crusade against “divisive concepts” reveals their real fear: a future where their cultural monopoly crumbles. DEI isn’t the threat—their irrelevance is.
This isn’t policy. It’s a smokescreen for institutionalizing resentment. When they scream “reverse racism,” what they mean is “keep the hierarchy intact.” The roadmap’s clear: manufacture enemies, sell outrage, cash checks. Democracy as a looted storefront.
They're doing it because organizations run by white males aren't viable unless propped up by the power of the state.
I had the opportunity (OK, I was paid some serious money to do it) to run a team of software and systems people who were all gentile cis males, mostly white. I'm one of those myself. It was an international gig with some other peculiar restrictions as well. It turned out to be an interesting management challenge, of the "slow horses" variety. These were not the ultra-high-talent outliers, for the most part, though many were graduates of universities associated with the elite. Having such a restricted talent pool forced me (and my management team) to think hard about the work we were doing and how to minimize the risks of fuck-ups. We were successful, but it was like trying to ride a motorcycle with both eyes tied behind my back. Before that, I'd been on a job where I was empowered to recover a failed project, and I had carte blanche on hiring decisions and anything budgetary that wasn't outright silly. So this was a shock. When I finished the (very long) project, everything seemed easy afterwards.
All DEI is, in essence, is not going out of your way to support the current dysfunctional legacy hierarchy. Even now, I'm cautious about hiring from organizations and institutions that are frequented by the well-connected and privileged. Cronyism is a pig of a problem, and if I see someone operating an old-boy's network, their ass is gone. And that's not just true of WASPs. The elite recruitment and clannishness problem is also severe in many other countries.
As an aging white male myself, instead of whining about DEI, I used a different strategy to advance at work: I made myself able to compete with anyone in the world. If you're not prepared to do that, you shouldn't be in a global business. And rigging the system to protect your homies just leaves you fat, complacent and easy pickings for people who know what they're doing. Why do you think Musk is sucking up to Trump? It's because he knows that, in a fair fight, his ass will be handed to him. Even without his ketamine issues and egomania, he's not up to the job.
The crux of your argument is spot on: cronyism and insular networks are cancers to any system claiming meritocracy. Your experience managing a restricted talent pool highlights how fragility thrives when privilege shields mediocrity. But here’s the rub—your disdain for "old-boy networks" doesn’t just apply to WASPs; it’s a universal issue. Yet, the backlash against DEI disproportionately comes from those who’ve benefited most from these rigged systems.
You’re right that global business demands competition on a level playing field, but the resistance to DEI isn’t just fear of competition—it’s existential dread about losing cultural dominance. Musk pandering to Trump is a perfect example: a desperate bid to preserve a rigged status quo. The real challenge isn’t DEI; it’s dismantling the entitlement that masquerades as merit.