Op-Ed: The Electoral College Proves White Conservatives Actually Love DEI

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Here’s the thing: if white conservatives were capable of publicly acknowledging their own hypocrisy they might find it ironic that they have followed behind President Donald Trump in his propaganda-reliant war against diversity, equity and inclusion considering Trump would have never been elected president the first time if not for America’s biggest DEI program, the Electoral College.

Now, before we get to my larger point — that white people actually love DEI when it works in their favor — let me get ahead of the Caucasian readers who might become disgruntled at the very idea that the Electoral College is DEI.

If you’ve ever suggested abolishing the Electoral College to a Republican (who has at least a rudimentary understanding of our political process), they’ll usually hit you with the same talking point: if there were no EC, Republicans would rarely win the presidency because rural voters and people from states with smaller populations wouldn’t be able to compete with larger states like California and New York.

In other words, minorities needed a special program so they wouldn’t be systemically disenfranchised. Sound familiar?

I mean, if the presidential election process were a meritocracy, it would be one person, one vote just like every other election, would it not? Sure, it might be true that voters in small cities like Madison, Georgia, might have different needs than voters from Chicago, indicating that the EC does provide a degree of — *checks notes* — equity. However, if you ask white Republicans to apply that same logic to programs meant to help Black people, people of color and women find more opportunities in industries that white men have historically dominated because everyone else was excluded for the overwhelming majority of those industries’ existence, they’ll look at you like you just declared all white men should be relegated to the cotton fields.

Speaking of the cotton fields, it should be mentioned that if not for the practice of slavery, there would be no EC, which was only created to empower white men who lived in states that had large populations of enslaved people.

From Forbes:

The majority voice of the delegates from the slaveholding Southern states opposed the popular vote, because it would put them at a disadvantage. The populations in the North and South were almost equal, but one-third of those living in the South were enslaved. They weren’t even recognized as being human, simply due to their race, so they certainly weren’t allowed to vote.

This disparity would cost the South power, and they realized their voices and clout could never be leveraged in a democracy they were actively responsible for creating. Therefore, they lobbied for a new system. A more controlled, indirect method of electing the president. One that provided a compromise between two separate systems: 1) the election of the president by a vote in Congress and 2) the election of the president by a popular vote of qualified citizens.

The result? The Electoral College.

Once the system was agreed upon, the Founding Fathers had to figure out how to ensure their privilege and power wouldn’t be available to any Black Americans. In 1787, the Three-Fifths Compromise was proposed at the Constitutional Convention to count enslaved people in the South as three-fifths of a white person for purposes of taxation and representation in the House of Representatives and Electoral College.

See, this is the insidiousness of white America. They live in a country that was built on systems, programs and institutions that were designed to benefit white men at the expense of everyone else, and now, a party that is largely comprised of white men is moving to wife from the face of America critical race theory — an academic framework for examining those racist systems, programs and institutions — as well as “race-based” DEI, which are initiatives designed to counter those racist systems, programs and institutions.

So, basically, the more white supremacy changes, the more it stays the same. 

The fact is, Donald Trump is only the second president to win the popular vote since 1988, and he won it by a smaller margin than Hillary Clinton beat him by in 2016, and a much smaller margin than Joe Biden won it by in 2020. Republican presidential candidates typically lose on “merit,” so they need their electoral DEI program, which, ironically, only exists because of anti-Black oppression, which is exactly what MAGA’s anti-DEI propaganda is perpetuating. (To be fair, Trump has now extended his anti-DEI warpath to disabled people, who could also be white men, but that doesn’t change the fact that white conservatives have made Black people with good jobs the face of the movement.)

Remember when Barack Obama was elected president and white people who were trying their best not to sound racist complained ad nauseam that Obama lacked experience despite his four years in the U.S. Senate and eight years as a state senator? Remember how, at the end of Obama’s second term, those same white conservatives elected the guy from The Apprentice who had zero experience in any of the three branches of government? Remember how those same damn white conservatives repeatedly called Kamala Harris a “DEI candidate” who is woefully underqualified for the office of commander-in-chief despite her eight years as San Francisco’s 27th district attorney, eight years as California’s 32nd attorney general, four years as a U.S. senator and four years as vice president of the United States? Now, Trump, a DEI president (because now lack of political knowledge or governing experience has apparently diversified the presidency) who won his first election due to a 237-year-long DEI program, has filled his cabinet with white men who are demonstrably unqualified for the positions they hold.

Again, they love DEI; it just has to be the white — I mean, right kind of DEI.

SEE ALSO:

How Trump Officially Ending DEI On Paper Could Be A Blessing In Disguise

Despite DEI Backlash, Leading Companies Continued To Expand Diversity Efforts In 2024

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