DEI was the bipartisan solution, until it wasn't.
We wanted more, we always wanted much more, and they told us it was too much. Now, the compromise is also considered the extreme.
This is a piece that I have been sitting on since the beginning of 2025, when I was reflecting on the election and how we got to where we are, and one of the ways that came to mind was the institutional concessions that were allegedly going to appease everyone on “both sides” and bring solutions to the social problems identified by those on the left. Now, even these center-right solutions are being seen as militant wokeism by people of all statist political stripes.
Picture it, it’s the groovy 70s. The state is looking how to permanently solve the problems of burgeoning radical insurgency in a post-Civil Rights world that lost many of its leaders to its own suppression and violence (woops, maybe should have kept one or two of them around to keep people happy!). Fake Hippies who weren’t even the cool ones are coming out saying they were never militants, they had just been possessed by demons after being tricked by a satanic cult, that after years of being godless weed-smoking California free love acolytes that now they’re reformed Jesus Freaks, yuppies and young aspiring capitalists who sure, still care about social issues, but an appropriate amount, and are looking for measured solutions all can agree upon.
DEI is this twisted brain-child that was born in blood in the aftermath of the global destruction of leftist movements through the late 60s and 70s. We wanted radical change. The state wanted us dead. And these reformed hippie liberals wondered if there was a way they could have our funerals and eat cake at them, too. Deep-seated centuries old white supremacy manifest in every conceivable aspect of life is the issue yes? Just that? OK, well here’s some Black kids at some white universities. Does that make you people happy?
So color us surprised when over the past few years the very institution that told us this was the solution we needed to be mature and accept is now telling us it is a far left plot pushed on them by us. Now, DEI is used akin to the N word to castigate anything related to social justice or people of color, Black ones specifically.
As to the present, radicals never wanted DEI or any related paltry scraps. We wanted a dissolution of these institutions of violence and power, not inclusion into them. We wanted to virtually reformat every part of society, not simply find the most palatable and normative of marginal ranks and include them in the existing rot. But these demands have always been castigated as too much, impossible, or needing a clear, step-by-step, institutional route to be made somewhat actionable, and so it takes time and some compromise. These alleged leftist insiders operate as the compromise to both further scare the centrist populace against the spook of the radicals the state is plotting to further repress and offer our heads with their chosen concessions on a plate. Thusly came the idea of simply adding marginalized people to the American Pie through state and institutional diversity and inclusion initiatives. Because the pie will be baked, one way or another.
Defund for Abolish became “Defund for reform” became “Fund them to do implicit bias training and hire some more Black cops that will absolutely behave just as bad if not worse than the white ones.” The ultimate rolling back of Roe vs Wade and other successful attacks against repro rights like the shuttering of abortion clinics was prefaced by "pro-choicers” who stopped using the word “abortion” and instead switched to “Family Planning,” decrying that they were not in fact pro-abortion or interested in reproductive justice as a whole, but pro-like, do you, girlina! The prevalence of neopronouns and trans and queer micro-identities were scrubbed from the mainstream for the sake of simple she, he or the occasional theys who just want to fit in and get married and yet the homophobic transphobic specter of the blue haired cat-identified xie/xem scold looms as a threat used just as much by liberals as the far right. 2020 brought so many liberal offerings for short-lived gigs and some scant opportunities for Black people but didn’t make a change in our killings at the hands of the state. At every step of a concession and a loss is a liberal clearing the path for it to happen, bending past the point of breaking. And still it isn’t enough because it won’t ever be enough until full fascism is achieved.
It would be one thing if liberals stood fast by DEI and actually worked to protect what they helped destroy the left back in the 70s to build on top of. A spine is a spine even in a lesser creature with bad intent. But immediately liberals joined in throwing their own idea under the bus, saying the very things they came up with and demanded we compromise for were “too woke” or “taken too far.” Immediately, they let the right cannibalize what they built on the graves of our movements.
This is the problem we have with liberals. At best they’re a bunch of sometimes-OK but mostly trifling and deeply-indoctrinated, barely politically-radicalized polite people with no bite who happen to think we shouldn’t put Black people and other communities of color in the Shred-o-meter 5000, like LGBTQ folks well enough and want vague notion of reproductive access for all. None of this is rooted in any political theory of change or vision for the future but exists as stand-alone genteel asks that can be slapped on a $35 pink hat. Because of how rabidly conservative the settler state is, this is considered rather progressive and the left—whatever that is. This liberal set then does what they were always going to do, bow to the right and scold anyone actually principled to the far left of them—and call our gripes against this and their invasion of and attacks against our politics and communities “puritanical,” “idealistic” or “infighting”. People who never had our politics or intentions for a better world at heart starting making compromises on our behalf and now they’re turning around and saying the compromises were actually a bit much!
The reality is the solution to the problems of a settler state are not found in DEI or affirmative action, in the middle, or through institutions, or agreeing to disagree, or finding common humanity, because common and humanity is defined by those with rotten souls who feast on the blood of the living. Seeing eye to eye with them was never the goal. The demand always has to be radical—from the root—because the problem goes deep. It can’t be a compromise. It was never DEI. But it’s still astonishing that the thing liberals whined and kicked and screamed for is now something many are turning their backs on.
Even if it was never the ask, the attacks against anything seen as DEI are still remarkable, troubling, dangerous. They’re still further being used to economically and socially disenfranchise, isolate and harm our communities and movements. But taking a protective stance of our people is different from taking one over failed liberal initiatives that are being weaponized to undermine us.