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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Trump’s attacks on DEI initiatives cause concern for some Spokane community members

US President Donald Trump speaks about a collision involving an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter during a press briefing at the White House in Washington on January 30, 2025.  (Yuri Gripas/Abaca Press/TNS)

In a press briefing Thursday, President Donald Trump insinuated the Federal Aviation Administration’s diversity efforts were to blame for Wednesday’s catastrophic plane crash that likely killed more than 60 people near Washington D.C.’s Ronald Reagan National Airport.

When asked by a reporter how he made that determination, Trump admitted a thorough investigation needed to be conducted, before responding with “I have common sense.”

The circumstances of how a military Black Hawk helicopter with three soldiers on board collided with a commercial jet carrying 64 people are still unknown. Search and rescue teams were still pulling bodies from the icy waters of the Potomac River as Trump made his comments.

The president’s critical remarks of the agency’s efforts to diversify its workforce were the latest in his ongoing bid to end diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts. It follows months of campaign trail promises to dismantle such programs within the federal government as well as a slate of executive orders issued during his first 10 days in office that made good on those promises.

In his “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing” order, Trump placed all federal employees working in DEI offices on leave to eventually be laid off. He’s also rescinded a longstanding order establishing an equal opportunity policy for federal contractors put in place by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, established a federal policy recognizing only two genders and tapped a vocal critic of efforts in the private sector, Andrea Lucas, to lead the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

On Tuesday, chaos erupted throughout the country as local and state governments, public schools and a litany of organizations had their federal funding frozen by an executive order that sought to require those recipients to adhere to Trump’s stated goals of dismantling DEI efforts, climate change policies, removing protections for transgender Americans and increasing fossil fuel production.

While tailored to the federal government, the new administration’s actions and rhetoric targeting diversity, equity and inclusion are intended to have a sweeping effect on institutions throughout the country.

That’s cause for concern for some local advocates, business owners and educators, who say the attacks could undo decades of work to advance women, people of color and other marginalized communities.

Former Spokane NAACP President James Wilburn said he believes Trump’s actions and remarks are tailored to those he hopes to serve while in power: white American men. The new administration is clear about wanting to cut people of color “from the workforce, from the government, from everything, really,” he said.

“What he’s trying to do is go back to before the 14th Amendment, when African Americans were not citizens of this country, but slaves,” Wilburn said. “ ‘Make America Great Again,’ and by ‘again,’ he means when we didn’t have the rights that we have now.”

Wilburn, former mayor of Sunset, Arkansas, said diversity in the government is particularly important, noting that it goes well beyond just race and ethnicity. Diversity means including people from a wide range of backgrounds, with differences in age, social class, gender, sexual orientation, military service, religious views or physical ability.

Having a community’s diversity of backgrounds and perspectives reflected in a government ensures constituents are served adequately, Wilburn said.

“You got to be able to address both young and old, rich and poor, Black and white, male and female,” Wilburn said. “You got to be able to address them all from where they are, not them coming to you from where you are.”

Many of the DEI efforts in the crosshairs now sprung from the country’s racial reckoning spurred by the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.

Companies and the former administration publicly embraced the calls for social justice, rolling out recruiting and retention efforts to diversify the workforce, examining internal processes for things like promotions in the name of equity and forming inclusive workplaces so employees felt valued and welcome.

But both the public and private sector have long implemented what could be considered DEI initiatives, said Pui-Yan Lam, a professor of sociology and justice at Eastern Washington University.

For example, maternity leave is an effort to provide equal opportunity to women to succeed in the workplace. Trainings on sexual harassment ensure a workplace is safe and inclusive . And posting job listings across multiple platforms, rather than handing a position to a friend or associate, can ensure talent from marginalized communities is not overlooked. The same is true for internships designed for veterans and high school students.

“DEI programs are very, very broad,” Lam said.

A lot of DEI work is about establishing procedures and processes that remove subjectivity and biases from the equation in recruiting, retaining or promoting employees, Lam said.

“We are only human, and a lot of times, DEI practices are giving us tools so that we can ask and make decisions in a more thoughtful way,” Lam said.

Michelle Hege, CEO of the Spokane-based marketing and public relations firm DH, said her company, also known as Desautel Hege, is one of many inspired by the protests to do more internally toward diversity, equity and inclusion.

“We’ve always had values in this area, but after the murder of George Floyd, we really asked ourselves, ‘What more can we do, and what are our goals in this area?’ ” Hege said.

She said the concerns around DEI efforts are often misplaced. The assertion that it leads to unqualified individuals receiving jobs due to some aspect of their identity is simply not accurate, she said, as most businesses want to recruit the best.

“They’re looking for top talent to move their organizations forward, and they want to create cultures of belonging, where all employees feel appreciated, valued and seen in the workplace,” Hege said.

“To me, DEI programs are a core piece of that,” she added. “It’s ensuring that you are proactively looking for and nurturing talent that helps you represent your client base, and in our business, the audiences you’re seeking to reach.”

The Trump administration has said their actions are intended to return the country to a “meritocracy,” which Hege said is based on a false precedent that America was ever rooted in merit-based success. She pointed to those who made their wealth through slavery, how women did not have the right to vote until 1920 and the historic redlining of neighborhoods that kept people of certain races and faiths out of many upper and middle class neighborhoods as just a few examples.

Hege said DEI efforts attempt to make up for those historic wrongs that continue to set back communities to this day. At the end of the day, most Americans want those who live here to have the opportunity to succeed, and work needs to be done to make that a reality, she added.

“We’ve had systems that have actively discriminated against all kinds of different groups, Native Americans, Black Americans, women, people with disabilities,” Hege said. “So I think part of what people are trying to do now is to remove the barriers that have existed and create better equity.”

Lam said she expects many people to be surprised by how they’ll be directly affected by the end of DEI programs.

“That is unfortunate, because they have been misguided,” Lam said. “They have been told that this is how DEI works when it isn’t. So I think some people, again, they might not recognize they have benefited from it.”

The acronym, and the three words it compiles, has become a political dog whistle, Lam said.

She posited that attacks against DEI programs are in the same vein of past attacks against affirmative action and critical race theory, which are intended to “misinform the general public, incite racial hatred and to trigger people’s racism and racial biases.”

“It is not a good faith effort to examine what DEI programs are really about and to systematically assess if they’ll be effective or not,” Lam said. “It is a strategy to racialize what DEI programs are about, even though most people have worked in a place with DEI programs, they should know that DEI programs usually are about different types of diversity and not just racial diversity.”

Spokane activist Kitara Johnson, who owns and operates a diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging consulting agency, said the current landscape provides an opportunity for those in the space to refocus their efforts.

Johnson said the DEI acronym has become a lightning rod as much of the focus has been put on diversity in relation to race, but the attention now should be put on the latter two elements.

“I think that’s going to be the new focus: employee experience and engagement and organizational culture and inclusive organizational culture,” Johnson said. “Because if you think about it, if you focus on inclusion, you’re intentionally thinking about every population of employee or personnel that is in your organization. You can’t help but get to equity because you’re beginning with the end in mind.”

Johnson said she doesn’t feel surprised about the lack of public understanding of what DEI efforts actually are, or the rhetoric surrounding it spewed by those who feel passed over in the process.

Some of the corporate initiatives were poorly rolled out, were led by individuals lacking relevant organizational management or human resource experience and did not provide a chance for everyone to participate and understand the efforts, she said.

People want to do good work, and do right by their coworkers and neighbors, Johnson said. They fall short when they feel they are being overlooked, cut out or are provided little guidance on new initiatives or goals.

“A lot of times in the past, people will focus so much on teaching history that they never get a chance to actually talk about the practical things that you need to do in order to make it a reality,” Johnson said. “Because of that, people have the idea it was a history workshop when history should be used as context, not content.”

Lam said that for decades, academics have not been shy about exploring how DEI programs work, what they’ve accomplished and related failures. But with the politicization of the topic, the country has been unable to have any good faith discussions about the efforts’ effectiveness, how they could be improved and where they are falling short.

“For me, the difficulty is people are not having a discussion on what the programs really are, and they’re just reacting to the dog whistling from the Trump administration and from other right-wing commentators,” Lam said. “That is not a real, objective evaluation.”

Lam worries that the unfounded attacks against the principles by those in power may also have the effect of censoring those exercising their freedom of expression, speech and education down the road.

Trump’s definition of the concepts and his orders on how to dismantle them are vague, broad and based in subjective and arbitrary measures, she said, and it’s unclear just how widespread the attacks will become. Schools could be threatened to have their curriculum fall in line with the administration in order to receive funding, for example.

“As a college professor, I value my academic freedom,” Lam said. “For me to teach well, I need to be able to encourage conversation with my students. This is what education is about: we welcome discussion, debate, disagreement, and I always encourage students to think about what I teach.”

Michele Storms, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, said there’s a lack of clarity on what the orders mean, how they should be interpreted outside the federal government and what may be coming around the corner, particularly for the innumerable companies, schools and nonprofits that rely on federal dollars.

“This pressure to abandon what are basically perfectly legal initiatives, doesn’t change anti-discrimination law and it doesn’t remove obligations to provide equal opportunities,” Storms said. “However, institutions are going to feel that pressure.”

Amid all the uncertainty, Storms said it’s important for people and organizations to understand federal and state civil rights and anti-discrimination laws still stand.

“I would hope that people will not let fear rule,” Storms said. “It’s super frustrating to be in this time of uncertainty, but the federal and state laws remain clear. Discrimination is illegal. People deserve a fair shot, and that’s how we should live. In the face of uncertainty, let’s promote justice, let’s promote equity.”

Wilburn, Hege, Lam and Johnson all shared a similar sentiment: The work to improve workplaces, governments and broader society will continue, regardless of the administration.

“At the end of the day, you cannot erase diversity,” Johnson said. “You can’t erase inclusive practices, and you can’t erase taking care of your people. You wouldn’t have an organization without people.”

“Keep the faith,” Wilburn advised. “Don’t give up, don’t give in, don’t give out, hang on in there. A change is gonna come, and when it does, be prepared.”