Christopher Ruffo: The campaign for color-blind equality has scored its biggest victory yet

Editor’s note: The following column was originally published in City Journal.

On Monday, President Trump signed an executive order dismantling the “diversity, equity and inclusion” bureaucracy in the federal government.

The move marks a dramatic reversal of fortunes from four years ago, when Black Lives Matter, critical race theory and DEI seemed unstoppable. In the wake of George Floyd’s death, left-wing racists have infiltrated American institutions, rewriting school curricula, changing government policy, and establishing DEI offices at major universities, big city schools, and Fortune 100 companies. The Biden administration immediately followed DEI by ordering a “government equality agenda” entrenched in the federal government.

It doesn’t exist anymore. President Trump rescinded Biden’s executive order and directed his cabinet to “cut all DEI, DEIA and “Environmental Justice” offices and positions and all “equity action programs, to the maximum extent permitted by law.” Actions, initiatives or programs. In other words, President Trump has signed a death warrant for DEI in the federal government.

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How did we get here? By patiently building a movement and winning public debate. In the year In early 2023, I worked with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to launch the “Abolish DEI” campaign. We started by cutting through the DEI bureaucracy at New College of Florida, a small public university in Sarasota, where I served as a trustee. The reaction of the racist left was severe. Protesters descended on the campus and left-wing media published hundreds of articles condemning the move. But we persevered and presented the issue and made government institutions judge individuals not by their race but by their success.

The debate began to take hold. Polling data suggests that Americans favor a “color-blind society” over a “race-aware society” by large margins. Even the New York Times, one of the purveyors of left-wing racism, began publishing sections critical of the DEI. At the same time, the Black Lives Matter movement was mired in scandals and DEI’s leading intellectual voices such as Abram X. Kennedy and Robin DiAngelo faced continued public scrutiny and seemed to fade from the spotlight.

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He pushed us forward. Gov. DeSantis led the way by signing legislation that would abolish the DEI bureaucracy at all of Florida’s public universities. A dozen other red states have followed suit, limiting DEI programs and banning DEI-type discrimination in their public institutions. The process became a virtuous cycle: each state that passed an anti-DEI bill reduced the risk that the next state would do the same. The campaign moved from debate to the realm of policy.

Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris on November 5 sealed DEI’s fate. Corporate America, including companies like Walmart and Meta, interpreted the event as a boost, voluntarily ending their DEI programs before Trump took office. Mark Zuckerberg argued that the country had reached a “cultural tipping point” and persuaded him to end DEI programs. And Zuckerberg sat prominently at Monday’s inauguration, along with several other tech titans.

In a way, Trump’s executive order on Monday paid off—people knew it was coming. Still, it’s a huge achievement for the people who built this campaign from the ground up. There will be more battles ahead—the bureaucracy will try to circumvent the order, and generally make more demands on civil rights reform—but for now, we must respect. The forces of left-wing racism are on the defensive, and the forces of colorblind equality are on the move.

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None of it was inevitable – and nothing will be going forward. It took courage, hard work and more than a little luck. But this is undoubtedly a time to feel optimistic.

American institutions are not above correction, as many fear. The American people were wise enough to realize that their country could survive for more than four or eight years. Govt in DEI. In the year They said it on November 5th, and now President Trump is acting on it.

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