Sit through a DEI Training? Or Live a Lifetime as an African American in a Nation Gripped with White Supremacy?

By Daryl Grigsby, As published in The Union

Terry McLaughlin’s 6/14 column ‘DEI in action’ seems to be a one-sided view of a complex social reality. She draws broad conclusions from one person’s experience with required DEI training at their institution. Dr. Owen Anderson’s objections to the implementation of DEI training at Arizona State University is the centerpiece of her argument.

An entire genre of training is condemned through the lens of one dissatisfied participant. What most intrigues me about objections to the ‘blame,’ ‘mandatory,’ ‘coercion’, assertions of DEI is they completely ignore the victims of racial injustice. The victim now becomes the unfortunate people who are ‘forced’ to face the realities of America. I would ask what is more difficult; to sit through an ‘uncomfortable’ training or live each day with the consequences of what the training modestly attempts to correct.

I am fascinated by those people who react strongly to small remedies to racial injustice rather than identifying and solving the larger and more difficult aspects of race. Among Dr. Anderson’s many objections to DEI is that it ‘forces’ him to accept that ‘white supremacy is written into the foundational documents of our nation.’ That abstract thought for him is, in truth, a reality for millions.

Our history, and our founding institutions and documents, enabled the genocide of Indigenous peoples, 250 years of African slavery, the violent overthrow of Reconstruction, massacres of blacks organizing to vote or work, lynch mobs, segregation, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton, Medgar Evers, Harry and Harriet Moore; mass incarceration, housing and employment discrimination and other realties. The electoral college, the structure of the Senate, the filibuster, and other basic features of our nation arose from slavery and its aftermath. One need look no further than our current political parties – one formerly the bastion of slavery and segregation, the other the party of black rights and freedom. Now that is reversed as most blacks are in the former party of slavery, and the most reactionary elements of white supremacists in the former party of slavery’s demise. Race looms large over our every institution.

Every step toward justice, affirmative action, DEI, however small, is met with fear and backlash. None of those small steps come close to real justice. I would ask Anderson and McLaughlin, what is more different – to sit through a DEI training, or to live a lifetime as an African American in a nation gripped with white supremacy? All measures of quality of life – life expectancy, graduation rates, school suspensions, health care coverage, quality of housing, arrests and incarcerations, maternal mortality rates, have African Americans at the bottom. Is that due to an inherent flaw in black people, or, inherent flaws in our political, economic and social structure?

We celebrate July 4th as Independence Day, yet, that joyous occasion left slavery untouched for another century. This slavery included rape, torture, forcible breakup of families, and constant dehumanization. The varied complexions of African Americans go back to plantations where masters took liberties with their property. My own complexion is because the Bate and Grigsby plantation owners had forced sexual relations with their African slaves. There are no white people in my family tree except those men. My last name – unlike McLaughlin’s – is not a family name but is one given my ancestors as property of Nathaniel Grigsby, plantation owner.

Every African American I know has been pulled over for not signaling, looking ‘suspicious,’ or other dubious charges. Our nation’s law enforcement agency is housed in the Hoover Building, named after a man who destroyed black liberation movements and called MLK ‘the most dangerous negro in America’. When you fly into Washington DC you can land at Reagan International, named after a man who announced his political campaign from a town where three civil rights workers were murdered. Accidental? The electoral college – with its roots in slavery – now makes our ‘free election’ a joke – essentially limiting the outcome of the election on 3-5 states every four years. One person one vote? Not hardly. Today the leading Republican candidate for President is from my perspective a frightening voice of violence and white supremacy.

Anderson complaints about how his ‘freedom’ is restricted by the DEI class reminds of what I just read in ‘Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power.’ This Pulitzer Prize winning book recounts how for hundreds of years many whites saw federal attempts to protect the rights of blacks and indigenous peoples as restrictions on their ‘freedom’. I suggest Anderson and McLaughlin read that book.

Anderson is suing the university because he is forced to take a DEI class, should African Americans sue for the unpaid wages, stolen votes, lost lives, false charges, lynchings, injustices, denied loans, lost job opportunities, and countless costs of racial injustice? I wish it were that easy.