Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Congressman Tim Burchette referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as a “DEI hire” in racially coded subtext suggesting she is unqualified for her position because she is a woman of color. Not only are the vice president’s qualifications undeniable, but the slight is representative of a deeper and more organized and troubling attack on the very civil rights protections that have created equal opportunity for all. Harris is unquestionably qualified. Attacks on her have been racist and sexist as her qualifications as a district attorney, California attorney general and U.S. senator make clear. But something more sinister is at work here. It is part of a larger effort to convince the American people to turn their backs on civil rights laws and their universal protections, stoking division over debate.
An ideological and notably extremist set of groups and individuals have detailed their anti-freedom agenda in Project 2025, a 900-plus page “how-to” guide for a presidential administration hostile to civil rights laws we take for granted. In that document, white men are victims of the protection of the rights of people of color, and women and LGBTQ people, particularly transgender people, of all races. It explicitly wants to “reverse the DEI revolution” that it claims hurts men and that includes putting an end to counting our residents under the census and capturing ways to understand whether or not an employer is discriminating by race, gender and religion, even as that literally includes protections for everyone, including white men.
Imagine a sweeping set of laws that ushered in extended lives, improved educational success for kids, and helped people get better jobs. We’d not only celebrate it — we’d protect it. We have those laws on the books now. In its 60th year, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 advanced equal opportunity in myriad ways. In July 1964 schools, restaurants, public bathrooms, and even drinking fountains were strictly segregated through much of the South, while redlining and other forms of discrimination ran rampant in the North. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 added years, literally about three to four years, onto the life expectancy of Black people when health care had to open its once-segregated doors. More Black students saw their education improve, while white students continued on the same educational footing. It helped to reduce “intense segregation — schools with 10% or less white students — of Black students in Southern schools from 78% in 1978 to 24% in 1988. Thanks to employment protections opportunities for Black workers, while still far from sufficient, got significantly better, with less of a wage gap and less of an employment gap.
This legislation helped protect every American from discrimination anywhere in our country. But we are far from finished, as born out by data and research — data and research extremists want to block. Project 2025 maps out a plan to significantly undermine the federal government’s power and resources to enforce the Civil Rights Act, opening the door to reversing the gains we have made as a country and making more gains near impossible. It would mean that the Department of Education, which Project 2025 wants to shutter altogether, would not be able to investigate complaints of Asian, Latino, Muslim or transgender children bullied and unprotected because of book bans and teaching behaviors that create a hostile environment for them. Imagine a Department of Justice that could no longer use its resources or investigation powers to determine whether or not police departments are systematically abusing Black or Brown or Native American communities.
But these extremists are the few, and we who believe in rights are the majority. The Leadership Conference’s 2023 survey found that more than 80 percent of Americans are concerned about the loss of rights and freedoms today. Nearly 60 percent agreed with this statement: “America’s strength is its diversity…we are a nation defined by the different people who have come together and put truth to the ideal that we the people can accomplish anything together.”
To distract from what we agree on, extremists try to tell us the qualified are unqualified because they are women, women of color, transgender or some other version of “other.” That’s called discrimination and is exactly why we need the Civil Rights Act and federal enforcement. Many of the leading civil rights activists who worked to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed into law didn’t live to see the full scope of its impact. Instead, they did everything they could and passed the baton to us. Now, it’s our turn to protect that progress.
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is not the problem. Eviscerating civil rights laws is.
Maya D. Wiley is an American lawyer, professor, and civil rights activist. She has served as president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights since May 2022.
Wade J. Henderson is an African-American advocate, community leader and governmental activist. He has served as president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and counsel to the Leadership Conference Education Fund.