The Trump administration has been targeting DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs throughout the federal government and even the private sector for those who receive federal grants. That means telling universities to close DEI offices and corporations to stop DEI initiatives. Within the federal government, it includes eliminating programs promoting diversity and even erasing recognition of individuals who belong to minority groups or women who have accomplished some notable achievement.
All of this may seem new. But it isn’t. In fact, opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion dates back hundreds or even thousands of years. Attempts to block diversity on religious, racial, ethnic or gender grounds appear to be the story of the human race.
In terms of the quest to stamp out religious diversity, the Middle Ages saw the burning of heretics throughout Europe. The Grand Inquisition of the Catholic Church was designed to root out diversity within the church. Jews were the victims of many pogroms over the centuries. And multiple wars have been fought between Protestants and Catholics — each claiming the other was evil and should be killed.
U.S. history has had its own record of intolerance of religious diversity. The search for homogeneity led to mobs attempting to drive out Catholics and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Latter-day Saints were forced to move repeatedly — from Ohio to Missouri to Illinois to Utah — to escape those who opposed religious diversity.
Racial diversity was not tolerated in much of the United States until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Segregated schools, buses, lunch counters and movie theaters were the norm. Whites and Blacks lived in separate sections of town and even in separate towns in the South. In the West, Chinese immigrants faced legal discrimination, as did Mexicans and Native Americans. Interracial marriage was banned in many states, including Utah, until the 1960s.
Equity has not been a concept accepted by most humans throughout history. Examples abound. In addition to the 200-year practice of slavery in the United States, Jim Crow laws assured inequity of the races for another century. A caste system perpetuated social differences in India. Class systems have dominated nations in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Women have been and still are discriminated against in many parts of the world. Equity is a foreign concept to them.
Since we as humans have eschewed diversity and equity, it is not surprising that we have chosen exclusion far more often than inclusion. In the United States, Blacks were not allowed to live in White neighborhoods. Jews were banned from universities, as well from social clubs. Today, women still struggle for equal pay and status in the corporate world. The story is just as dire in other nations today where minority groups are barely tolerated in society. Muslims and the Roma are shunned in much of Europe, while in some African nations, homosexuals are jailed.
For a brief period after the Civil Rights Movement, the United States sought to change human history by celebrating diversity, equity and inclusion. We hoped to create a society where the effects of the legal, political and social discrimination we had created throughout our nation’s history were rectified. We wanted to confess our past intolerance, repent those actions and make restitution as far as possible to attempt to make those who were discriminated against whole again. We might not have been able to do that to most of them since most have passed. But we could make sure their children and grandchildren were given ample opportunities and were told they were appreciated for their accomplishments despite that background of discrimination.
But maybe that is no more. And what will be the effect? Will the gutting of DEI programs throughout the government and elsewhere create a racial, religious and gender-neutral society some promise will occur as a result of these anti-DEI actions? Or will we just return to the bad old days?