You Can’t Spell “Divisive” Without DEI
Skin tones are not sports teams.
Every few decades, to set up a serious conversation about racism, a black person has to die. Usually, in horrifying circumstances.
In 2020, George Floyd triggered a long overdue discussion about police brutality, but only after he was filmed slowly suffocating to death.
In 1998, after years of stalling, James Byrd Jr. convinced Texas lawmakers to strengthen hate crime laws by having three men tie him to the back of a pickup truck and drag him down an asphalt road.
And in 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till became the catalyst for the most significant racial progress America had ever seen. All he had to do was spend a day being tortured to death.
One of several reforms signed in the wake of Till’s murder was Executive Order 10925, requiring government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated […] without regard to their race, creed, colour, or national origin.”
Affirmative Action for short.
And as soon as it passed, lawmakers who’d spent decades upholding and endorsing racial discrimination were suddenly deeply invested in fighting it.
