Victories Against DEI May Prove Fleeting if the Administrative State is Not Fully Downsized

The Civil Rights Revolution must be erased from the American memory.

A common theme emerging from Donald Trump’s electoral victory on Nov. 5. 2024 is the perceived defeat of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and wokism. Since Trump’s first presidential term, the United States has experienced a surge in cultural leftism that has consumed the private and public sectors alike.

This permutation of leftism places a stronger emphasis on race and sexual identity in contrast to the Marxism of yore that was more class reduction in its socio-political analysis. Nevertheless, the current woke wave remains a collectivist force designed to upend natural human relations and give modern-day governments more power to encroach on people’s private affairs.

Owing to the polarized nature of Western politics, wokism has provoked a backlash both at the ballot box and in state legislatures. In the lead up to Trump’s 2024 victory, close to two dozen state university systems have prohibited or at least rolled back DEI measures such as mandatory DEI statements for graduate school applications or the use of racial and/or sexual characteristics for making hiring decisions. Similarly, in a landmark Supreme Court decision in the summer of 2023, the use of affirmative action in university admissions processes was deemed unconstitutional by the highest court in the land.

With Trump on his way to the White House on Jan. 20, 2025, many of his most fervent supporters are convinced the country is on the verge of entering a new “Golden Age” where economic prosperity will sweep across the land and race relations, after reaching a fever pitch in the wake of the Black Lives Matter unrest of the summer of 2020, will be fully mended.

While rolling back DEI measures are sensible measures in the short-term, to proclaim that implementing such reforms on their own will instantly lead to peace and tranquility nationwide is a bit of a stretch. Frankly, rolling back DEI alone is not sufficient for allaying racial tensions, much less restoring liberties that the administrative state has usurped over the last century.

Wanjiru Njoya made an excellent observation that “The terminology of DEI is constantly being reconfigured, and vigilance is therefore required in keeping up with its new forms.” Njoya’s perspective was confirmed by J. Danielle Carr, chief officer of inclusion at Lowenstein Sandler and president of the Association of Law Firm Diversity Professionals, who recently declared in an interview with CNN in December that “DEI isn’t going away. It’s just changing.” The organization found that just 14 Fortune 500 companies made any public changes to their DEI teams or initiatives in 2024.

To understand why political correctness, wokism, and other permutations of culturally leftist ideologies have become so entrenched in American politics, one must be willing to confront the legislative great leap forwards that created the conditions for such noxious ideologies to proliferate.

The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and attendant race reforms struck a massive blow to the freedom of association and laid the groundwork for race being injected into every facet of daily life. Title VII of the CRA is particularly egregious. It established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a bipartisan commission tasked with eliminating illegal discrimination in job settings.

The creation of the EEOC has put businesses in a perpetual state of fear of running afoul of anti-discrimination edicts. Such is the nature of laws that create permanent bureaucracies. They enable constant attacks against personal freedoms, irrespective of who occupies the White House.

Like most of the transgressions against individual freedoms ushered in the past century, they’re not exclusively the domain of the liberal Left. Under the presidency of Richard Nixon, the Philadelphia Plan—the nation’s first affirmative action plan—was passed to forcibly integrate construction unions that were contracted by the federal government. Subsequent presidential administrations—Democrats and Republicans alike—have expanded the reach of affirmative action.

The late George H.W. Bush used the policy levers of the Department of Education to prevent minority groups from being subjected to a “hostile work environment.” George W. Bush continued his father’s work by pushing for “affirmative access” while campaigning for the presidency in 2000.

Most remarkable is how the average American voter views affirmative action in the voting booth. States such as Arizona, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Washington have previously approved constitutional amendments to prohibit affirmative action. Even the liberal bastion of California saw its voters defeat affirmative action at the ballot box. Many of the racial, social engineering schemes being imposed across the country are creations of managerial elites and have little support among the populace.

A modest proposal for cooling racial tensions is for the CRA and similar anti-discrimination legislation to be gutted and eventually abolished. The very existence of such a structure is a vehicle for race hustlers to use state power to constantly settle racial scores at the expense of people’s liberties and the nation’s social cohesion. Moreover, it’s a make-work jobs program for busybodies who want to micromanage every minute details of individuals’ and businesses’ daily activities.

The latest conservative ravings about DEI’s rollback and the golden age that inevitably awaits us reveals some fundamental flaws in their ideological outlook. Reforming, or perhaps repealing, legislation is only a part of the battle. Many of these policies are downstream from the ideological and cultural revolution that took place over the last century, wherein the state has taken it upon itself to modify people’s behavior writ large. It’s going to take a categorical rejection of those ideas for a genuine return to sanity to occur.

Just like the rise of populism has allowed for people to question the merits of the liberal international order’s sacred cows such as so-called “free trade” and foreign policy interventionism, questions should be raised about the civil rights revolution and the public policies it has unleashed in the ensuing decades.

Political gains made in the short-term will prove to be fleeting if the underlying premises of DEI, which can be traced back to 20th century administrative state overreach, are not decisively discredited. The same leftists conservatives think they’ve defeated will just find new ways to reconstitute themselves and resume their attacks on the general public further down the road.

A new approach must ultimately be taken to adequately address the managerial state’s penchant for fomenting social discord. The first step is to remove Dr. Marin Luther King from the national pantheon and put the legacy of the Civil Rights movement where it rightfully belongs: In the ash heap of history.

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