Rep. Jamie Comer, who insists on presenting himself as a numbskull, has decided to expand the boundaries of his dubious expertise and is now weighing in on matters of race.
God save the Commonwealth.
Apparently, Jamie’s failed tenure as chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, where the Republican from who-knows-where unsuccessfully sought to portray President Biden as the 21st Century’s Al Capone before shifting gears and ludicrously endeavoring to establish that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the erstwhile Democratic candidate for vice president, was a tool of the ChiComs, hasn’t proved sufficiently humiliating to this point, so full speed ahead.
Now he wants you to know the dastardly initiative to thwart centuries of subjugation and provide Black Americans with a leg up through diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs needs to be aborted lest White folks get their feelings hurt.
Comer has gotten behind the Dismantle the DEI Act, a proposal that would kill all diversity, equity and inclusion activities undertaken within the federal government. It would further rescind a number of executive orders related to discrimination based on sexual orientation and ethnicity.
During a meeting of the House Oversight Committee last month, Comer urged members to get behind the bill.
“The Biden-Harris Administration has forced DEI initiatives into nearly every agency and program within the federal government,” Comer said. “The bill will lend legislative support to the incoming Trump Administration’s efforts to eradicate the Biden-Harris Administration’s entrenchment of leftist DEI policies in the executive branch.”
Diversity, equality and inclusion as leftist policies. Okay. Is anti-diversity, anti-equality and anti-inclusion right-wing policies? I thought so. Good grief, you can imagine this dude appearing in a community theater production of The Wizard of Oz as the Scarecrow singing, “If I Only Had a Brain.”
DEI, he said, “destroy morale, decrease recruitment and potentially violate federal law. These initiatives spread divisive and exclusive ideologies in our federal government workplaces.”
The evidence on any of that is lacking.
It wasn’t the first time Comer went to bat against DEI. During a committee hearing on June 27 he claimed, “Unfortunately, many of these initiatives—which many assume simply promote equal opportunity—have in some cases become integrated into employment practices to a point where the civil rights of employees are violated.”
DEI, he said, “in some forms means preferencing racial categories and disfavoring other racial categories. It’s discrimination with a fancy acronym.”
This country already maintains a preferred racial category – White folks, specifically White men. Leveling the playing field hardly amounts to discrimination.
Rep. Summer Lee, D-PA, a committee member, wasn’t about to let Comer get away with the silliness he was spewing.
“If we’re being honest here, this bill, which will wipe out every diversity, equity, and inclusion program in our federal agencies, plus those who contract with us, plus those who receive grant money, plus our schools, is nothing new,” she said. “This is just the final piece of a decades-long obsession with targeting and dismantling anything that might give marginalized people a fair shot, including DEI programs, which honestly started the second the Civil Rights Act passed.”
Lee asked, “Why do predominantly conservative white men believe that the success of a Black person or the opportunity or access of a Black person is an existential threat to them? DEI has not given any unfair advantage that society itself does not already confer on certain Americans.”
Jamie Comer, to be blunt, is as white as Casper the Friendly Ghost. His hometown, Tompkinsville is 90 percent White. He knows as much about the everyday difficulties Black folks face in this society as the man in the moon. Yet here he is bad-mouthing legitimate governmental attempts to address a continuing, horrendous situation that deleteriously impacts America’s Black citizenry, people who for years and years were denied the opportunity to attend the same schools as White folks and faced job rejection because of the color of their skin.
Comer and those of his ilk embrace the fantasy that racism in America is over, which, taken to its logical conclusion, means that the problems Blacks now encounter are their own fault, that they need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.
The problem, of course, is they’re being denied the bootstraps. As Lee noted, “remedying past discrimination is not, in turn, a discrimination.”
Recent history shows White folks continue to employ the age-old practice of telling Black folks what’s best for them.
In 2013, in response to the shootings of several young, unarmed Black men, activists initiated the “Black Lives Matter” movement to highlight problems related to racism and racial inequality with a focus on police brutality and racially motivated violence. The response in many White quarters was dismissive, resulting in defense of all police actions and the sophomoric response, “All Lives Matter,” ignoring the issues activists sought to address in the first place.
Then there was the rise of Critical Race Theory, initially broached in 1995 but re-emphasized around 2020. It is an academic field that holds, among other things, that racism has been systematically built into the nation’s laws, resulting in societal structures that penalize Black folks. The roof really caved in on this one with Whites activating to make sure CRT wasn’t broached in the public schools, lest children feel bad about their forebears who created the problems.
Now it’s DEI’s turn. Whenever an initiative is suggested to address the ongoing sin of racism in this country, White conservatives are there to make sure it’s shot down. The pattern continues and those who stand in the way offer nothing to champion racial progress, other than to suggest it’s no longer a problem.
Basically, DEI programs were implemented in both the private and public sectors to create diverse and inclusive workplaces where everyone could thrive. The specifics may vary from place to place, but generally DEI training for employees offers guidance on how to bridge cultural differences within the workplace. Such programs generally recruit culturally and racially diverse job candidates.
On college campuses, according to CNN, many schools focus their DEI efforts on recruitment and admissions, curriculum and special programs for underrepresented students.
Georgetown University, for instance, “oversees several DEI-centered programs including the Disability Cultural Center, Women’s Center, LGBTQ Resource Center, and the Center for Multicultural Equity and Access, according to its website.”
This is the horror Jamie Comer wants to prevent – programs for marginalized students.
Comer, of course, isn’t alone in this kill DEI endeavor. Several colleges in the Commonwealth, including my alma mater, the University of Kentucky, where the president Eli Capilouto, with the backbone of an earthworm, caved into pressure from right-wing state legislators and closed the UK program.
Now the new Kentucky Senate president, Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, maintains that killing DEI, primarily at the state universities, is the General Assembly’s top goal in the upcoming session.
This all-likely will come to pass. And you can bet that not a single Republican office holder will address the loss of DEI programs with an alternative that will close the large economic, cultural and social gaps that plague Black Americans.
There’s a word for it – racism.
As always your liberal point of view misses the point! DEI is racism and your support of it means you don’t understand that. MLK described it best when he said he longs for the day when a man could be judged by the content of of his character and not the color of his skin. DEI is step backwards to quotas. How about we do this, make appointments to the best qualified individual. The last 4 years had shown what happens when you worry about being diverse over being competent.
Nah
As Rep. Lee rightly points out. “Remedying past discrimination is not, in turn, discrimination.” Opposition to the principle of diversity/ equity/inclusion does not gibe with justice and fairness toward our fellow Americans.
Jamie Comer has proven to be nothing but a complete failure in Congress. He spent 4 years trying to prosecute Biden and his family with nothing to show for his efforts . I wonder how many millions it cost for the proven false attacks he made on Biden. The man lacks in character and also has done all he could to suck up to Trump, I assume hoping to get some type cabinet post. What a shame the voters of Kentucky did not have the good sense to reject his inability to be a good Representative.