Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion over the Potomac
Deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.
Wayne Hare
Note: This was written and sent yesterday. But today I discovered that none of my posts since January 8th have been sent out. So if the sequence of events and says seem kinda off, that’s what. My apologies. And over the next couple days, I’ll resend two posts (and this note) that you did not receive. Technology! Aarrrgggh! Thanks for understanding.
Today is an unusually sad day. Yesterday over 60 people lost their lives in a plane crash over the Potomac in Washington DC. Some of those people almost certainly went into the river alive and drowned while strapped in their seats. You sometimes hear that drowning is a good way to go because it’s fast. It is neither good nor fast.
The sadness we all feel has undoubtedly been exacerbated by the president of the United States casting blame rather than comfort and condolence…all in the name of race. Blame that once again, pits American against American.
Trump began his White House briefing Thursday with a moment of silence and a prayer for victims of Wednesday’s air crash over the Potomac. But he quickly pivoted to a diatribe against diversity hiring and his allegation that hiring non-White people had lowered the standards and were thus to blame for the crash.
"I had to say that it's terrible," he said, citing what he called a story about a group within the FAA that had "determined that the [FAA] workforce was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately. This was in the Obama administration, just prior to my getting there, and we took care of African Americans, Hispanic Americans."
“We do not know what led to this crash but we have some very strong opinions and ideas, and I think we'll probably state those opinions now.” His opinion was that the people responsible for the accident were not of “superior intelligence.”
“A group within the FAA determined that the workforce was too white, then they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately. This was in the Obama administration.”
Asked how he could come to the conclusion that diversity played a role in the deadly midair collision Trump responded, “Because I have common sense, OK? And unfortunately a lot of people don’t.”
Then later on Thursday Trump signed an executive order that "aimed at undoing all of that damage caused by the Biden administration's DEI and woke policies."
EXECUTIVE ORDER: IMMEDIATE ASSESSMENT OF AVIATION SAFETY
This shocking event follows problematic and likely illegal decisions during the Obama and Biden Administrations that minimized merit and competence in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The Obama Administration implemented a biographical questionnaire at the FAA to shift the hiring focus away from objective aptitude. During my first term, my Administration raised standards to achieve the highest standards of safety and excellence. But the Biden Administration egregiously rejected merit-based hiring, requiring all executive departments and agencies to implement dangerous “diversity equity and inclusion” tactics, and specifically recruiting individuals with “severe intellectual” disabilities in the FAA.
On my second day in office, I ordered an immediate return to merit-based recruitment, hiring, and promotion, elevating safety and ability as the paramount standard. Yesterday’s devastating accident tragically underscores the need to elevate safety and competence as the priority of the FAA.
Consistent with the Presidential Memorandum of January 21, 2025 (Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation), I am further ordering the Secretary of Transportation (Secretary) and the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (Administrator) to review all hiring decisions and changes to safety protocols made during the prior 4 years, and to take such corrective action as necessary to achieve uncompromised aviation safety, including the replacement of any individuals who do not meet qualification standards. This review shall include a systematic assessment of any deterioration in hiring standards and aviation safety standards and protocols during the Biden Administration.
You can read the full Executive Order here.
“Historically, there has never been an incident, big or small, where DEI or diversity has ever been attributed as a sole cause or contributing cause,” according to Tennessee Garvey, a pilot and the chairman of the board of directors for the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals.
Garvey added that the rigorous standards for hiring pilots, mechanics and air traffic controllers were never relaxed to meet diversity goals, but rather that previous administrations and the commercial air industry overall have worked to remove barriers to entry.
Vice President JD Vance also alluded to DEI having a part in the crash, saying, "We want the best people at air traffic control. If you go back to just some of the headlines over the past 10 years, you have many hundreds of people suing the government because they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the color of their skin. That policy ends under Donald Trump's leadership, because safety is the first priority of our aviation industry."
“Best people.” Code talk for “Make air traffic controllers all White again.” At this point we have no idea what skin color the controllers on duty that night were.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, while noting that a "mistake was made" in the crash, said “The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department We need the best and brightest, whether it's in our air traffic control, in our generals, or whether it's throughout government. The Department of Defense must be "colorblind and merit-based ... whether it's flying Black Hawks, and flying airplanes, leading platoons or in government."
Also on Wednesday, Hegseth directed staff to create a DEI task force to ensure no DEI programs remain in the Pentagon. “We’re not joking around. There’s no changing of names or softly manipulating something. DEI is gone.”
White Americans’ view and interpretation of ‘color blind’ – what it is and who benefits from a “color blind society” would be humeorus if it were not so not humorous. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson nailed it in her dissent to the Supreme Court Affirmative Action decision to strike down policies that sought to correct hundreds of years of systematically and intentionally being left behind.
“Our country has never been colorblind. Given the lengthy history of state-sponsored race-based preferences in America, to say that anyone is now victimized if a college considers whether that legacy of discrimination has unequally advantaged its applicants fails to acknowledge the well documented “intergenerational transmission of inequality” that still plagues our citizenry.
With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, on Thursday, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”
Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly also nailed it; "The issue with our country is not its diversity. It's the lack of leadership in the White House and unqualified Cabinet. Trump's actions and words are dangerous, racist, and ignorant — simply un-American."
Make America Great Again. Again? I might argue that America has never actually achieved greatness. But as a country, we’ve done some great things. We fought a war against fascism and Nazism and won a war that surely would have been lost without us. The post WWII Marshall Plan uplifted and entire continent. We contained communism and tore down the Berlin Wall, re-uniting a country. We put troops on the ground to feed Mogadishu, a starving, war-torn nation.
We fought a war against ourselves to end slavery. We enabled people of different races and sexual orientation to marry whom they love. We conjured up the Emancipation Proclamation; the 13th, 14th – which Trump thinks he can magically abolish by presidential caveat - and 15th Amendments to the Constitution; the Voting Rights Act of 1964, and Civil Rights Act of 1965, respectively. We created, but then repealed racist exclusionary laws. We passed the 19th amendment allowing women to vote - correcting a ridiculous wrong.
When I was in school – and probably you as well - American history was taught as a series of triumphs that we have bragging rights to and that remain front and center over wrongs that were relegated to the distant, unimportant, unspeakable past. We portray that we are an honorable country always marching towards good. Slavery was evil, but the Civil War ended that evilness. Then there was segregation, but America-the-good gallantly addressed that with the Civil Rights movement - and with the help of White people ended segregation and all that had been unfair and un-American. There was no atoning for the near elimination of Native Americans, yet it somehow didn’t invalidate our national narrative of perpetual greatness. Abroad, the U.S. had led the cause of freedom against fascism and communism. At home Japanese internment, McCarthyism, and Vietnam were mistakes but they didn’t erase the larger picture of our greatness.
So while we may not be great, at least at times we’ve tried to be.
So when the Tea Party, pre-cursor to the MAGA party wanted to “Take the country back”, and when the MAGA movement cries, “Make America Great Again” – it’s the words “back” and “again” that expose where they want to go. Back again to a time when power was consolidated exclusively in the hands of a few wealthy White men.
And finally - in response to President Donald Trump’s attempt to Make America White Again via his ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal workplace, the Defense Department’s intelligence Agency has paused observances of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Pride Month, Holocaust Days of Remembrance, Juneteenth, and others.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/us/trump-dei-plane-crash-fact-check.html
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5116606-5-takeaways-trump-briefing-dca-plane-crash/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/immediate-assessment-of-aviation-safety/
Letters from an American
Last night, just before 9:00 Eastern time, an American Airlines jet originating in Wichita, Kansas, carrying 64 people and a U.S. Army helicopter carrying three military personnel collided in the airspace over Washington, D.C. Both aircraft crashed into the Potomac River. Authorities say there were no survivors…
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so Trump says DEI caused the crash. He must have been told the helicopter pilot was not a white person. [Interesting we have not yet seen their faces.]
So he immediately says it is a DEI problem without the public knowing what he is talking about.
The report asks him "how do you know it is a DEI issue?" Trump then says "I have common sense"
So... he is told the pilot isn't white and.... 10 minutes later he announces the pilot cant be qualified.
Man, it would be great if this poor bastard graduated at the top of his/her class. And if they did not, that is OK too. They passed the same rigorous training the white guys did.
My hunch is that this was a tragic HUMAN error accident.