The taxpayer-funded lefties at National Public Radio felt compelled to defend efforts of “DEI” (i.e. the left-wing “diversity-equity-inclusion” racket) that’s been discredited both intellectually and at the ballot box last November on Friday’s All Things Considered, in “Why right-wing influencers are blaming the California wildfires on diversity efforts,” by reporter Lisa Hagen. From the radio transcript:
Juana Summers, Host: Right-wing media and influencers have been blaming the scale of wildfire destruction in Los Angeles on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Billionaire Elon Musk and others circulated screenshots of the LA Fire Department's racial equity action plan. The city's fire chief also happens to be the first woman and openly gay person in that role. The chief, her fire department and the city government have become targets in right-wing media. NPR's Lisa Hagen reports on how it's part of a wider pattern.
And if “right-wing media” is attacking you, left-wing NPR will ride to your defense.
Lisa Hagen: Here's what it sounds like to blame a national tragedy on workplace diversity training. This is Charlie Kirk, founder of the right-wing nonprofit Turning Point USA, on his podcast this week.
Charlie Kirk, podcast clip: When you focus your government on diversity, equity, inclusion, LGBTQ pet projects, and you are captured by environmentalists, we have been warning for years that you are worried about abstractions, but you can't do the basic stuff.
NPR was comfortable throwing around the term “right-wing,” but found no labels for the leftist academics they cited to decry the supposed racism inherent in valid questions after a grievously flawed response to a natural disaster.
Hagen: This has become a common refrain for some on the right for all kinds of disasters and tragic events, including the Baltimore bridge collapse, aircraft safety failures and the effectiveness of the Secret Service. Stoking anger about diversity efforts is shorthand for a much larger story, according to Ian Haney Lopez.
Ian Haney Lopez:: 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.
Hagen: He's a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who focuses on evolving forms of racism.
Lopez: Again and again, we see these efforts to trigger people's latent resentments against groups that historically have been socially marginalized, socially reviled, but to do so in terms that seek to clothe themselves in a commitment to fairness or excellence.
Hagen: It's the definition of a dog whistle, he says, and it's taken various forms since at least the end of the Civil War….
She let DEI consultant Lily Zheng defend her profession against the “chilling effect” of “this toxic discourse.”
Hagen: Zheng says DEI efforts are attempts to push the status quo toward meritocracy. But popular distortions about it and things like critical race theory have been fueled by right-wing think tanks and influencers like Chris Rufo.
Even the clip that aired from that so-called right-wing distorter Rufo was anodyne and didn’t make his ideological point.
Christopher Rufo: We want to say it over and over and over. We want people to be thinking about DEI, people to be debating about DEI, talking about DEI in policy language. But then we want to translate this into a concrete and emotional space. [The text version of NPR’s story contained a sharper Rufo counter-attack.]
