The new administration has vowed to eliminate the federal government’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, and it couldn’t happen too soon. The preoccupation with racial justice has aggravated racial tensions, not relieved them. The left became race-obsessed, and its knee-jerk accusations of racism have suppressed the benevolent instincts of everyone else. 

Have you watched the videos of how the legacy networks covered the election, and seen how quickly the glee turned to despair? And then, when Trump’s victory was official, we heard the accusations. Americans had been given a test, and we had failed. We had been given the opportunity to vote for a woman of color, and instead had disclosed our misogyny and racism. 

The censorious talking heads had exposed the left’s divisive electoral strategy. Pick the furthermost left-wing candidate out there, and if he’s a minority tell the voters that their biases are on the line. It worked in 2008 but failed in 2024. We didn’t reject Vice President Harris because of her sex and race. Just the opposite. She had been chosen because of her race and sex, and other than that had nothing going for her. 

In 2008 Americans took a quiet pride in the fact that a community activist defeated a war hero for the presidency in 2008. The activist ran against an unpopular war, but there was one other thing going on. The activist was black and the war hero white, and when the votes were counted Americans felt that they had put their prejudices behind them.

We weren’t permitted to think so for long, however. What followed was a cultural revolution in which we were told that American history was nothing more than a record of white oppression and thievery. Forget MAGA. America had never been great, and we needed to defund the police and tolerate petty crimes. Riots became “mostly peaceful protests.” Even President Obama, who had once appealed to an unbiased electorate, now said that whites owed reparations to blacks. 

At the workplace, the DEI movement asked us to fixate on race for every waking moment. We were told that we all suffered from unconscious biases, from which there was no apparent escape. New hires were told to provide diversity statements on how they would contribute to their institution’s diversity, equity and inclusion. Since almost everything one might say could be suspect, we learned to do without friends at work and loneliness became a major public health concern.

How did it happen that the unprejudiced voters of 2008 so quickly became racist? We hadn’t really changed, of course. What had happened was the left had discovered how to make the politics of extortion work for them. Of them, the best that can be said is that they are opportunistic. In the alternative, they might simply resent most Americans.

They tried to make DEI work for them, but nothing good came out of it. It abandons the pursuit of excellence in our educational institutions, and has weakened our armed and police forces. In elevating race as the sole criterion of worth, it ignores the common welfare.

What is worse, the DEI movement has made us all more prejudiced. It has suppressed our natural inclination to help people who seem left behind. Leave off the joyless Savonarolas, the racial bias training and the hectoring Karens in Human Relations. We don’t need them. The “Defund the Police” movement didn’t do a thing to address anyone’s prejudices, and the riots really weren’t teachable moments, not in a good way anyway. We don’t need to hear anything the Reverend Al Sharpton has to say.

We’ll do fine without all that. Take them away and we’ll be self-arighting. Americans have a natural sense of generosity, and that includes the pleasure we take when we see someone overcome historical burdens. That was the country we were in 2008, and it’s one to which we reverted in 2024.