Behold – the GOP war on acronyms! Why stunt legislation to ban DEI will fail | Opinion

Republicans in Congress introduced a bill last week that would ban diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government, opening yet another front in the party’s chaotic culture wars that seem to consume every waking moment. Aside from the fact that this bill has no chance of becoming law unless Republicans take all power in Washington next year, it will also do virtually nothing to address the problem it is supposed to solve. Companies seem to value the goals of these programs and will continue to try to build diverse workforces and inclusive office environments if they want to attract top talent. If Congress tries to abolish an acronym, it will only lead to new acronyms, because ultimately, you can’t ban values.

DEI refers to efforts to build a more diverse workforce where people of all backgrounds are treated fairly and “all employees feel like their voices are heard,” as described by Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) former employer, McKinsey & Company, the prestigious consulting firm that both the left and the right love to hate. It typically involves creating a well-paid position to lead a company’s DEI efforts, overseeing workshops, training, outreach and other practices that, when described, sound less like a nefarious, racist plot and more like standardized strategic planning and team building.

Yet to the architects of this latest moral panic, “DEI” represents everything conservatives dislike about current workplace culture and hiring practices. Like a serial monogamist who moves seamlessly from one relationship to the next, conservatives are using DEI to replace the “CRT” panic, even though Critical Race Theory itself has not suffered a decisive defeat on the battlefield. This push resulted in some bland, ineffective legislation in Republican states, where the only significant success was to further alienate teachers. Parents, fueled by Fox News propaganda, ran for school boards and subsequently implemented unpopular culture war policies like book bans, patriotically correct curricula, and speech restrictions for teachers and librarians. Many of them went under in the next school board election, as parents realized they didn’t want to turn their children’s schools into arenas of endless ideological battles after all.

As with CRT, it’s highly doubtful that most people who are supposedly upset about it could say what DEI actually is or how it works, even in their own workplace. More likely, they associate it with online employee training that they find annoying and pedantic, and with ideas about race and gender that they find tedious or offensive.

If it makes you feel better: Most companies probably only install DEI offices and policies to coat their blatant greed for profit with a thin layer of justice, as Amazon’s ultraviolent superhero satire best mocks. The youngwhere corporate conglomerate Vought clumsily attempts to soften its image by, for example, equipping a theme park with BLM BLTs and Woke Woks.

But here, as elsewhere, Republicans are operating with great, undeserved confidence that they are on the right side of public opinion, when in reality they are not. WashingtonPost/An Ipsos poll released today found that 61 percent of Americans, including a majority of white respondents, approve of DEI practices by companies. Only 27 percent thought these programs harm white workers. This poll is consistent with existing data on Americans’ attitudes toward DEI and is as close to an unproblematic consensus as you’ll find in America today: Americans believe employers still need to take basic, proactive steps to recruit from marginalized communities and make some effort to ensure they can succeed once hired.

It’s remarkable that this consensus remains intact after more than a year of DEI hysteria that has only served to radicalize people who were already extremely angry all along. The right-wing media complex is, to say the least, extremely talented at channeling that anger where their funders believe it can be used most effectively.

But Americans are not really demanding that their DEI offices be shut down by a Congress that seems to have no idea how else to do anything. Nor should anyone want their company’s internal policies to be cooked up by Senators JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), two co-signers of the Dismantle DEI Act who consistently seem more interested in currying favor with Donald Trump and getting on TV than governing.

If conservatives don’t like DEI offices, they should start companies that don’t have such offices and see what kind of people they attract. In all likelihood, the effort will end up the same as other major attempts to make ideological detours around mainstream industries, such as right-wing children’s television, right-wing beer, right-wing dating sites, and right-wing mutual funds.

That Republicans can’t trust the market to get them the jobs they want—jobs where you can still call the secretary of state your “sweetheart” and hire your buddies from Georgetown Prep without conducting a real search—says more about their inability to adapt to changing norms and expectations than it does about the supposedly deadly threat posed by corporate diversity practices.

If you want fewer Republicans to waste their positions of power on stunt legislation that solves no one’s problems, then may I encourage you to practice your own form of DEI this November: Don’t vote for idiots.

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and author of It’s time for a dirty fight: How Democrats can build a lasting majority in American politics. His writings appeared in The week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Washington monthly and more. Find him on Twitter at @davidmfaris.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author.