CASH MICHAELS
YOU’VE BEEN SUCKERED AGAIN, AMERICA!
by Cash Michaels
As the old saying goes “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before,” but my old answer remains the same - “Why? You weren’t listening the first time!”
For if you were, you’d recall me telling you that you have absolutely nothing to fear from DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies, either in private industry or government, unless you’re a racist!
All DEI is is a commitment to the idea that the most qualified person, - regardless of color, ethnicity or gender - gets a fair opportunity to compete in any school or workplace in this society.
“When equal performance does not result in equal advancement, then something is wrong with the system, and our leaders have an obligation to fix it,” the late, but still great Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, a rare decent Republican and strong supporter of DEI, once argued.
That’s all it means. Please forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that what America is supposed to be about? Giving everybody a “fair shot?” In a nation where a majority of the population will soon clock in as being nonwhite, seems to me that policy is the common sense thing to do. However, not everyone feels that way.
And one of those “not-everyones” happens to be the current president of the United States. You know, the clown we now have who is literally rushing to takeover the world before anyone else notices.
The ink hadn’t dried on the inauguration speech he really didn’t want to deliver (because it wasn’t tough enough he said later) before Trump made it clear that the days of diversity, equity and inclusion were over. America would become a bastion of meritocracy, where the color of anyone’s skin will not matter in the grand scheme of things.
Funny, we’ve heard that song and dance before. But then we take a look at various areas of leadership in our society, and see what amounts to silos of all-white male clubs.
And when that happens, instead of dutifully fixing the problem, we shamefully politicize it, so that the problem gets worse, and isn’t really fixed until something happens none of us can really deny. Like, for example the police murder of George Floyd back in May 2020.
It took a citizen video of a Minneapolis police officer fatally torturing an unarmed African-American citizen in the street to wake many Americans up to the profound injustice many Black men suffer at the hands of some white police officers. Needless to say, if we in society truly had this racism thing beat, that would have never happened.
“George Floyd” (our universal shorthand for the tragedy) was powerful, and forced many in corporate America in particular to suddenly admit they weren’t doing all they could to provide an even playing field for people of color to compete in a bitterly divided nation.
And so, all of a sudden, DEI was created from the long faded spirit of the Republican-created affirmative action policy.
Of course the racists amongst us fought hard against DEI, but corporate America called the shots, and that was the direction we all went in.
Who was president then? Donald J. Trump, and there was nothing he could do to stop the DEI movement.
That was five years ago, and of course, America’s had many challenges since then. And who do Republicans fraudulently blame those problems on?
“Wokeness,” which is another way of saying “becoming racially and socially aware.”
Why pick on such an innocent thing? Because for Republicans, it stands in the way of obtaining more power!
When folks just go along to get along, they'll accept anything. But when people know the truth about their history and their society, they pay more attention to who is really doing what and why, and they usually don’t like it.
It’s one of the reasons why conservatives jump up and down about children learning anything about America’s racial history in school. They want ALL of our kids to be as dumb as nails so that they can’t use their brains to make connections, and corrections.
So Republicans start criticizing CRT (critical race theory) as something being taught to our kids to “make them hate white people” or “hate themselves.” Not true.
But the average American (and budding MAGA follower) is intellectually bashed in and lied to so much that they don’t even want to learn the truth of America’s racial history.
And anyone who wants to teach them that truth, like many in the media, is defined as “the enemy of the people.”
Here a conundrum - many MAGA folks say the enslavement of Africans by white Europeans was something that happened long before their time today, so they shouldn’t be held responsible for the continued impact of slavery on the Black community. A good argument against giving reparations, I’m told.
But then “George Floyd” happens, and corporate America suddenly rolls out the big bucks, policies and programs because it somehow feels responsible for what one police officer did to one Black man. Now you and I know that the change of corporate heart is really because the suits want to stay in the good graces of everybody so that we will continue to spend money hand over fist with them. But funny how all of a sudden, the powerful corporates discover humanity and responsibility when they think their pocket books are threatened.
No more, however. Trump says the days of diversity, equity and inclusion are over. The country doesn’t owe Americans of color a thing. Back to business as usual. Why? Because as far as Trump is concerned, we’re not interested in making America what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said it ought to be, a land where all men (and women) are created equal.
Naw, we want to “make America great again,” like before all of that civil rights stuff. We liked America when it was asleep to the truth about its racial history, because then, we didn’t have to deal with it. We had the “right” to discriminate against whom we wanted to, because this was our country!
That’s when people feared us across the globe and we could do whatever we wanted, to whomever we wanted to with the stroke of a pen, we believed.
Yes, those were the days, and guess what? Trump is trying to bring them back. Just ask Panama, Greenland and Canada. He’s playing imperialist here at home, and on the world stage.
Trump has even “rolled back a 60 year-old anti-discrimination executive order from Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson…(that) guts federal contract workers’ protections from discrimination on the basis of characteristics like race, religion, and sex,” according to the Business Insider.
Judy Conti, government affairs director of the National Employment Law Project, said "This is not a return to so-called 'meritocracy, Rather, it's an attempted return to the days when people of color, women, and other marginalized people lacked the tools to ensure that they were evaluated on their merits."
Trump’s White House has even refused to confirm whether or not it will continue to celebrate Black History Month, something Jimmy Carter started.
America is out of the DEI business now. What we’re into is playing everyone for suckers - making whites feel like they’re in charge again, and people of color made to understand that they either follow the rules of second-class citizenship, or else.
So now all DEI areas of the federal government will effectively be shut down, and the policy discontinued. All DEI employees (many of whom are probably Black or Hispanic) will eventually be let go.
And even our US military, once a proud promoter of DEI, is being forced to terminate that practice. Initially, it also terminated usage of training films featuring the historic Tuskegee Airmen, the all-Black Air Force squadron that shot down a hundred German planes while heroically escorting American bombers on their missions during World War II.
That dumbass order was rescinded after a great uproar, and rightfully so.
You could probably forget about learning anything about the Six Triple Eight, that now famous all-Black female Army battalion that moved millions of pieces of mail out to our troops to help boost morale during WWII, unless you have Netflix
You see learning, and sharing the pride in the stories of these heroes of color isn’t just a black thing, but an American thing. Because by doing that, all of us who salute that flag and serve in some capacity then understand that as a country, we truly represent GOD’s matrix for humanity, and how each one of us, regardless of our color, can contribute.
Indeed, should contribute.
If you know the stories of the Tuskegee Airmen, or the 6888, or the Buffalo Soldiers, or other all-Black military units during time of war, then you know that these brave men and women of color weren’t allowed to participate without being segregated, and then treated like crap. But because they all felt they had something to prove - namely that they loved their country when it refused to love them back - they served, and willingly gave their lives to prove that they and the people they left behind during war time belonged, and deserved full citizenship.
So it is an awful damn shame that today, in the face of that undeniable mutual history, that our nation has elected a clown who is doing all he can to keep white supremacy in business, and many of the people who support him are more than happy to go along with him.
Well, once again, folks, you’ve been suckered!
Trump tells you no more DEI, no more “unqualified” people at the wheel, meanwhile he’s putting nuts and squirrels in charge of some of the nation’s most important government agencies, with their only qualification being that they’re sworn to obey and worship him, before they serve the nation.
Folks argue that DEI (and affirmative action before it) doesn’t work. First of all, that’s not true. There are some brilliant professionals of color out there who are just taking it to the bank. Just ask the military, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Costco, and many, many others.
What do these blue ribbon companies know that Walmart, McDonald’s and Meta don’t?
But secondly, in those areas where there may be a problem, just fix what’s wrong, don’t trash the entire policy.
Yeah, America, you’ve been suckered again, alright. Hope you’re listening this time. I just pray that we all survive Trump’s DEI - Dumb, Egotistical and Ignorant - foolishness!
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