Florida showed Trump how to demonize DEI. Now he can make America discriminate again | Opinion

Florida was a laboratory for the fight against diversity, equity and inclusion programs — known as DEI — now being waged on a national scale by President Donald Trump. The Sunshine State, under Gov. Ron DeSantis, was one of the early adopters of laws against anything deemed “woke,” and what followed showed the extremes to which the anti-DEI movement can go.

Legitimate concerns about the impact of DEI in education and workplaces eventually led to an overreaction in the state and the demonization of programs meant to ensure people who have been historically marginalized get equal opportunities. Florida became a proving ground for groups pushing for school book bans — so much so that the Legislature eventually had to pass a law to limit book challenges. This is also the state whose Black history curriculum says slaves benefited from skills learned in bondage.

The arguments against DEI may appear simple — the focus on race, gender and other categories shouldn’t supersede personal achievement — but Florida shows how quickly that idea can turn into whitewashing history and silencing marginalized voices.

At the federal level, Trump has quickly showed that his efforts to end DEI programs via a series of executive orders are likely to make discrimination acceptable, again, in government.

Last week, he blamed DEI for the midair plane crash involving a military helicopter in Washington, D.C. He suggested — without evidence and while bodies were still being recovered from the Potomac River — that DEI lowered hiring standards in aviation. The implication seems to be that women, people of color and people with disabilities are automatically “diversity hires,” not as deserving of their jobs as white, able-bodied males.

Beyond what Trump has said, there’s what he’s done. He reversed a 60-year-old order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson — definitely not the “wokest” of presidents — in the wake of the hard-fought passage of the Civil Rights Act. Johnson’s executive order 11246, signed in 1965, forbade discrimination by organizations receiving federal contracts and required them to create affirmative action programs. With his reversal, Trump is essentially signaling to those entities that they are free to discriminate.

The White House has said that Trump’s anti-DEI fervor is meant to restore “merit-based opportunity.” Most Americans can stand behind the importance of hard work and individual achievement. Indeed, DEI efforts haven’t been perfect, and there are questions about how to ensure that merit prevails when the most qualified person for a job, for example, might not be a diverse candidate.

But the implications of Trump’s action and what’s happened in Florida go much beyond simply prioritizing “aptitude, hard work, and determination” in hiring and services, as the Trump administration has said.

The possibility that anything could be deemed DEI or “woke” caused overreaction in school districts across Florida. The state passed laws that banned classroom instructions on sexual orientation and gender identity or any that are perceived as making students feel guilty or responsible for actions committed in the past, such as slavery. That, coupled with laws that made it easier for people to challenge school books, prompted schools to remove titles from their libraries out of fear of running afoul of the new rules. In the 2023-2024 academic year, Florida restricted or removed — temporarily or permanently — more books from schools than any other state, according to PEN America.

Something similar is already happening in the federal government. After Trump’s orders, the Defense Intelligence Agency mandated a pause of events related to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month — happening this month — Juneteenth and Holocaust Remembrance Day, among other “special observances,” NBC News reported. The agency also said that all affinity groups and “employee networking groups” were immediately on pause.

Are we about to reach a point where federal agencies that want to hire, say, a Black woman, will have to justify that person is actually qualified, and not a DEI hire? Or will those agencies default to what’s easiest for them and pass on candidates who are too “diverse?” And is that the true goal of those demonizing DEI?

In Florida, anti-”woke” policies are a blueprint, and a case study, of the consequences of making diversity, equity and inclusion a boogeyman. The country has been warned.

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This story was originally published February 4, 2025 at 5:59 PM.