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Why bad things keep getting blamed on DEI

Republican politicians and media have repeatedly blamed diversity efforts for recent tragedies, from the Los Angeles fires to the D.C.-area plane crash.

Commentary on leading, national news stories is a tried and true way for partisan media figures to drive engagement online. But stoking anger about diversity efforts in particular is also shorthand for a much larger story, said Ian Haney López, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the author "Dog Whistle Politics."

"The story is something like this: We as a society used to hire on the basis of competence and meritocracy. But that system has been hijacked by powerful minorities," he told NPR.

"Again and again, we see these efforts to trigger people's latent resentments against groups that historically have been socially marginalized, socially reviled in terms that do not embrace a blatant direct bigotry, but that instead seek to clothe themselves in some form of neutrality or even a commitment to fairness or excellence."

It's the definition of a dog whistle, said Haney López, and it's been happening in various forms since at least the end of the Civil War.

Read more here.

Copyright 2025 NPR

Lisa Hagen
Lisa Hagen is a reporter at NPR, covering conspiracism and the mainstreaming of extreme or unconventional beliefs. She's interested in how people form and maintain deeply held worldviews, and decide who to trust.
Jude Joffe-Block
[Copyright 2024 NPR]
Rachel Treisman
Rachel Treisman (she/her) is a writer and editor for the Morning Edition live blog, which she helped launch in early 2021.