On the Wednesday, January 22 broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Senate Minority Whip Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) told Mitchell that those on the left who support promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives “should continue to encourage” government agencies to continue promoting those DEI policies despite the executive order from President Donald Trump that demands quite the opposite.
As background, President Donald Trump released an executive order that, quite in contrast to what has existed since President Lyndon B. Johnson, requires that those federal agencies using DEI, characterized by many on the right to be discrimination on the basis of race against white people, stop doing so and end their DEI programs immediately.
It was about that order from the new president that Andrea Mitchell asked. She said, “I want to ask you about the DEI decision, because that affects, it seems like everyone in government, and, by implication, the way it’s worded, it seems like it’s also a directive to universities, to corporations, to others around the country.”
Responding, Durbin noted that the order appears designed to hammer efforts to force diversity on companies and government agencies, though he declined to note the force aspect of it or that, in the past, such efforts generally meant using discrimination to push unqualified candidates on companies and agencies.
Making that point in predictably pearl-clutching terms, the woke Democratic senator from Illinois told Mitchell that agency and corporate diversity will be suppressed, saying, “Well, there’s no doubt about it. It’s designed to discourage efforts to have diversity in the leadership of companies, as well as agencies of government.”
Continuing, Senator Durbin then claimed that “diversity is America’s strength,” providing no evidence whatsoever for that point, one that an increasingly large segment of the American population disagrees with, at least when “diversity” takes the form of discriminatory DEI mandates. He said, “I happen to think that diversity is America’s strength. Obviously, the Trump administration sees it just the opposite.”
Sen. Durbin then got to his point about encouraging resistance from within the Trump Administration, something that ground its gears to a halt in the first administration, saying, “We should continue to encourage individuals and agencies and corporations to do the right thing anyway.” Watch him here:
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Trump’s DEI Executive Order provides, “Longstanding Federal civil-rights laws protect individual Americans from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. These civil-rights protections serve as a bedrock supporting equality of opportunity for all Americans. As President, I have a solemn duty to ensure that these laws are enforced for the benefit of all Americans.”
It continues, “Yet today, roughly 60 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, critical and influential institutions of American society, including the Federal Government, major corporations, financial institutions, the medical industry, large commercial airlines, law enforcement agencies, and institutions of higher education have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) or “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation.”
It adds, “Illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system. Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex.”
Then, slamming DEI as illegal and discriminatory and declaring it ended, it provides, “These illegal DEI and DEIA policies also threaten the safety of American men, women, and children across the Nation by diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination when selecting people for jobs and services in key sectors of American society, including all levels of government, and the medical, aviation, and law-enforcement communities. Yet in case after tragic case, the American people have witnessed first-hand the disastrous consequences of illegal, pernicious discrimination that has prioritized how people were born instead of what they were capable of doing. The Federal Government is charged with enforcing our civil-rights laws. The purpose of this order is to ensure that it does so by ending illegal preferences and discrimination.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video