HOUSMAN: Conservatives Are Quickly Creating Their Own DEI Problem

It goes without saying at this point that diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is a scourge on our great country. It’s a braindead, offensive concept that future generations will hopefully look back on with simultaneous disdain and bewilderment.

The steps the new presidential administration is taking to root DEI out of the government are welcome and needed. Hopefully they are only just the beginning of the likely years of work that will be needed to rip this nonsense out of the cornerstone institutions of American life.

All of that is why it’s increasingly concerning that many conservatives are jumping the shark in an almost comical fashion in their efforts to destroy DEI.

This has never been more evident than in the aftermath of the tragic plane crash that took the lives of dozens of innocent Americans in Washington, D.C. last week. It was the most devastating American aviation disaster in more than two decades. In a past, more unified time, this would have set off a period of national mourning while investigators searched for answers. (RELATED: LOFTUS: Ghoulish Blame Games Are Warping Our Sense Of Tragedy)

Instead, what happened this week was an instant rush to politicize the incident. The left of course tried to shoehorn Donald Trump into the blame, as they always do. But many on the right similarly strained to put the blame on DEI, the political bogeyman of the day.

We don’t yet know what the exact cause of the crash was. There are several plausible theories. At some point, it may come to be that some aspect of DEI played some role. I don’t know. Neither does anyone reading this. It seems just as likely to me, if not more so, that this was just a tragic accident with no clear ideological sect to blame.

The rush to blame DEI is not just troubling because it’s tasteless and unbecoming of those who did it. It’s a strategic error that threatens to undo the important work of dismantling DEI that is currently underway.

Twitter is elevating ghoulish posts like this into my feed. If you think attacking a now dead service member for DEI as a way to cast blame for a plane crash is going to help your argument, not only have you over played your hand, but you need to touch some grass. https://t.co/rARWg6hU6u

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) February 2, 2025

We know this to be true because we’ve just seen the left make the same mistake with their own bogeyman: racism.

For several decades, the left pushed harder and harder to make every single problem in American life about racism. Every institution, every accident, every bad person, lots of good people, every societal problem were all touched by the R word. Progressives woke up in the middle of the night sweating at the thought of racism, they devoted their entire lives to destroying racism, they checked under their beds when they got home for racism.

In short, they became hysterical, and it backfired. The attribution of every ill in the world to racism or another form of bigotry became so oppressive, so all-consuming, so obviously excessive that it took a valid project (wanting everyone to be treated fairly) and caused a political backlash that got their most hated enemy, Donald Trump, elected not once, but twice.

Conservatives have the upper hand on the DEI debate right now. Trump won his second term in no small part because people are sick of it. It does, in fact, infect large swathes of American life and needs to be gotten rid of.

But the left once had the upper hand in combating racism, too. They pushed it too far, though. They became the thing they sought to destroy, and the American people punished them for it.

If the right continues to take events that have no apparent connection to DEI whatsoever, and strain themselves beyond recognition to try to blame it, people are going to notice. They already have. I have several “normie” friends who I spoke to this week, who are no fans of DEI, and were confused as to why it was being connected to the plane crash.

The right is far from the point of no return on this issue. There’s still time to be smart about this, and tackle the problem the right way. But if this week is any indication, conservatives are careening towards fumbling away their biggest cultural victory in a generation by hysterically pursuing it in a stupid manner. If we want to actually defeat DEI, we need to make sure this unwarranted DEI freakout about a tragic plane crash doesn’t become a normalized trend.

Dylan Housman is the editor-in-chief of the Daily Caller.