This past Thursday, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein published document leaks from an extraordinarily high number of government staffers, detailing President Trump’s war on DEI initiatives within the purview of the federal government.
this seems needed, for all i've listened to you critiquing DEI, what you're saying really makes sense about the bitterness of its assassination by the gleeful right. it feels somehow deader than it was before it was born. i know it's not, as you say, minds were opened, efforts were put in place to open space up to a fuller segment of our racism/white supremacy imbued society. the roots of exclusion are as old as the USA itself, so i guess it can be acknowledged that the doors and minds that opened in recent years will have some staying power, small roots in a vast field of exclusionist history and present life. and maybe, maybe, could we be in for some broader awareness of the economic gulfs that engulf so many, so the next time around will be more grounded in a vision of true equality.
I went to college partly because Penn State needed some Black students to respond satisfactorily to the Civil Rights Movement. 34,000 students, 500 hundred Black ones. (1969)
Without the government, we were slaves, with the government we are dependent. WTF
This, too: "But in the end, we have to acknowledge that DEI was the product of neoliberal capitalist thought, and as such it was never the revolutionary project that some believed it to be. At the end of the day, DEI was an individualist-minded initiative masquerading as systemic change."
'If ideas like DEI and CRT alienated white people from a leftist political message it was because reactionary conservative media was poised and well-trained to lie and distort reality, because liberals don’t understand how to do mass politics anymore, and because the left was either too anemic to reframe the conversation in a way that included white people or just gave up even trying.'
this seems needed, for all i've listened to you critiquing DEI, what you're saying really makes sense about the bitterness of its assassination by the gleeful right. it feels somehow deader than it was before it was born. i know it's not, as you say, minds were opened, efforts were put in place to open space up to a fuller segment of our racism/white supremacy imbued society. the roots of exclusion are as old as the USA itself, so i guess it can be acknowledged that the doors and minds that opened in recent years will have some staying power, small roots in a vast field of exclusionist history and present life. and maybe, maybe, could we be in for some broader awareness of the economic gulfs that engulf so many, so the next time around will be more grounded in a vision of true equality.
I went to college partly because Penn State needed some Black students to respond satisfactorily to the Civil Rights Movement. 34,000 students, 500 hundred Black ones. (1969)
Without the government, we were slaves, with the government we are dependent. WTF
https://youtu.be/y_holg85-Sk?si=v3CdN8Gi1laIJGsf
This, too: "But in the end, we have to acknowledge that DEI was the product of neoliberal capitalist thought, and as such it was never the revolutionary project that some believed it to be. At the end of the day, DEI was an individualist-minded initiative masquerading as systemic change."
Oof.
'If ideas like DEI and CRT alienated white people from a leftist political message it was because reactionary conservative media was poised and well-trained to lie and distort reality, because liberals don’t understand how to do mass politics anymore, and because the left was either too anemic to reframe the conversation in a way that included white people or just gave up even trying.'
Truest words you've ever typed, Mr. Vicks.
Yep, fully nailed it as usual.