By Douglas Byrd

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is creating havoc upon the United States. Egg prices are too high. It’s not the avian bird flu, it’s DEI. Your energy bill skyrocketed, not because of the polar vortex sweeping down across the country this past month, but because of DEI. Your refrigerator stops running, your mail arrives late, you get in fender bender, the stock market starts going down — blame it all on DEI. 

But seriously, I watched Trump’s press conference about the plane crash in our country’s capital. As they were literally still recovering the bodies of victims from the river and as the investigation had yet to begin, he was playing the blame game, saying the crash was caused by DEI within the government and using the tragedy as a political sideshow. It was wrong and, as Captain Sully put it, “disgusting.” But that’s Trump’s playbook — insult, blame, lie. 

He did the same when Hurricane Helene hit our state last fall and when the wildfires hit Los Angeles. Maybe the FEMA response could have been more efficient, but both disasters were unprecedented in their size, scale and devastation. It maxed out the thousands of FEMA personnel and their resources. Mother Nature has not been happy lately. Blaming DEI for the response and making the disasters political does not help anybody. Again, it’s just disgusting.

I don’t know a lot about DEI initiatives. I’m sure it has pros and cons, depending how it is implemented. But why does Trump disparage it so much to the point of ridding it from our culture? Two reasons. First, the ultra conservative Heritage Foundation’s influence in getting him elected again and their subsequent implementation of the Project 2025 agenda throughout our government, which is taking place before our very eyes. The second reason is his well-documented antipathy toward people of color (e.g., Racial views of Donald Trump — Wikipedia). It seems that DEI has become the new N-word for Trump and the conservatives. 

When the next tragedy or disaster comes, he will offer a few panned words of sympathy, but then quickly turn to blaming and insulting someone or something else. When the prices of things start to rise and inflation starts to tick up due to his economic policies, he will blame it on someone or something else. When government services start to disintegrate because of his actions to purge the federal work force of as many people as he deems necessary (especially people of color), he will blame it on something else. Trump will use DEI as a scapegoat for as long as he can get away with it. Why? If you haven’t drank his Kool-Aid, you know why.

Douglas Byrd lives in Salisbury.