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solidarity
Why DEI Was Doomed to Fail
DEI’s fundamental contradiction was this: It argued that race is a social invention—a system created to control people by reducing complexity—yet it never suggested replacing it with a more holistic vision of justice.
Mar 09, 2025
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI, is collapsing—not just as a corporate initiative, but as an ideological framework.
In what seemed like a flash, it became a dominant force in American institutional life, embedded in HR departments, university policies, and media discourse. And now, just as quickly, it finds itself in retreat, with entire DEI offices being gutted across corporate and academic America.
President Donald Trump’s administration has aggressively targeted DEI, issuing executive orders to dismantle these programs across federal agencies. This federal rollback has emboldened Republican-led states to eliminate DEI efforts within public institutions. Meanwhile, MSNBC’s recent firing of Joy Reid, a vocal defender of DEI who embodied many of its most aggressive tendencies, signals a broader cultural shift.
If we want to build a politics that actually addresses racial injustice, we need an approach that is dynamic rather than static—one that acknowledges history without being trapped by it.
The right celebrates this as a victory over “woke ideology.” The left frames it as yet another example of backlash and white fragility. But these explanations fail to account for why DEI has unraveled so quickly.
The reality is that DEI was doomed to fail—not because the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion are unworthy, but because the framework built around them was structurally flawed.
DEI’s fundamental contradiction was this: It argued that race is a social invention—a system created to control people by reducing complexity—yet it never suggested replacing it.
Instead, it doubled down on racial categorization, reinforcing the very thing it claimed to challenge. This reification of race, rather than dismantling structures of oppression, helped sustain them, making DEI brittle and politically untenable.
For the left, the lesson here is crucial. If we don’t break out of the rigid, black-and-white thinking that DEI promoted, we will continue ceding ground to the right. The need to discuss race and identity remains vital, but it must be done in a way that opens space for complexity rather than reinforcing the very constructs that uphold division.
DEI’s fatal flaw is that it traps itself in a closed loop. It rightly argues that race is a historical construct—a tool of power designed to enforce hierarchy. Yet instead of pushing beyond this construct, it reinforces race as fixed and immutable. The result is an ideological contradiction: Race is framed as an arbitrary invention, yet treated as an unchanging, permanent reality.
James Baldwin exposed the hollowness of racial constructs decades ago. In “On Being ‘White’… and Other Lies,” he wrote: “The crisis of leadership in the white community is remarkable—and terrifying—because there is, in fact, no white community.”
Baldwin understood that whiteness, like all racial identities, was not a biological or cultural fact but a political invention—a shifting construct designed to serve power. Yet DEI never seriously engaged with this idea. It simply replaced one rigid racial hierarchy with another, treating whiteness as an unchanging position of privilege while treating other racial identities as fixed sites of oppression.
This rigidity meant that DEI operated as a closed system, reasserting racial categories rather than interrogating them. It failed to engage with race as a lived, historically contingent process—one shaped by history, class, and material conditions.
By doing this, DEI alienated people across the political spectrum. Many white people, even those who consider themselves progressive, felt that DEI erased any meaningful discussion of economic struggle or historical complexity within whiteness.
Meanwhile, many people of color found DEI’s racial framework superficial—offering corporate-friendly language about inclusion while doing little to address material inequalities. The framework functioned as a kind of racial accounting system, but it lacked a clear political vision for building solidarity.
Sheena Mason, a scholar of racial theory, has articulated the deeper flaw in this approach: “To undo racism, we have to undo our belief in race.”
This insight is crucial. If race itself is a construct designed to justify social stratification, then maintaining race as a primary framework for addressing inequality only reinforces the divisions we claim to want to overcome. Yet DEI never suggested dismantling the concept of race—it only sought to redistribute power within its existing framework.
This was a fatal mistake. Modern genetic science has definitively debunked the biological basis of race. There is more genetic diversity within so-called racial groups than between them. The racial categories that shape our politics and institutions are historical inventions, not natural facts.
Yet DEI, instead of leveraging this knowledge to transcend racial essentialism, entrenches race as the defining lens for justice. This approach not only deepens social division but also makes the left vulnerable to the right’s attacks.
By insisting on the permanence of racial categories, DEI created an ideological framework that could be easily caricatured as divisive and exclusionary—giving conservatives an easy target while failing to deliver meaningful change.
Racial discourse often eclipses broader discussions of material conditions, making it harder to address economic inequality in a meaningful way.
Patricia Hill Collins, a foundational thinker in intersectional theory, has observed that, “Race operates as such an overriding feature of African-American experience in the United States that it not only overshadows economic class relations for Blacks but obscures the significance of economic class within the United States in general.”
DEI’s fixation on race, detached from material conditions, contributed to this very problem. By prioritizing racial categorization over economic struggle, it often obscured the broader systems of inequality that shape American life.
This not only made class politics more difficult to articulate but also allowed racial identity to become a stand-in for structural critique—reinforcing an identity-based framework that often benefited elites more than the working class.
With DEI collapsing, the question becomes: What comes next? The right hopes this marks the end of racial discourse altogether. That cannot happen. Structural racism, economic exclusion, and historical injustice are still deeply embedded in American life. Ignoring the function of racism and racial categories plays into the hands of those who want to maintain both racial and economic inequality.
But we cannot simply replace DEI with another rigid, prepackaged framework that reproduces the same mistakes. If we want to build a politics that actually addresses racial injustice, we need an approach that is dynamic rather than static—one that acknowledges history without being trapped by it.
This means recognizing that racial categories are not timeless truths but historical constructions that have been shaped by economic, political, and social forces. It means rejecting the idea that people are permanently locked into racial identities that define their entire experience. And it means moving beyond an approach that focuses primarily on representation and inclusion toward one that addresses material conditions to redistribute power.
DEI’s failure provides an opportunity for the left to rethink how it engages with race and identity. We need to stop seeing race as an unchanging structure and start understanding it as something that can be transformed. Morgan Freeman put it bluntly in an interview, stating, “I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.”
This is the kind of shift we need—one that integrates historical understanding rather than segregates it, one that moves past “race”—which we know doesn't exist—as a fixed identity category toward a broader, more holistic vision of justice.
The goal should not be to replace DEI with another top-down, bureaucratic approach, but to build a new paradigm that is open, flexible, and capable of fostering real solidarity.
If the left fails to do this, it will keep losing to the right. And if that happens, the backlash against DEI will not just be the end of a flawed initiative—it will be a major setback for the broader struggle for justice and equality.
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What Could Come After NATO?
If Trump moves forward with reducing U.S. involvement in the alliance, European countries may be forced to explore alternative security frameworks.
Mar 07, 2025
During his first term as president, Donald Trump criticized NATO, demanding that European allies increase their defense spending. This friction created uncertainty about NATO's reliability, a key aspect of its role in global security. Concern exists into his second term as countries like Ukraine brace for changing foreign policy.
This was heightened after a White House meeting in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was reportedly asked to leave, contacting French President Macron and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte afterward. Since their meeting, events have escalated, including the European Commission's proposal to borrow 150 billion euros for E.U. governments to invest in rearmament amid growing doubts about U.S. protection.
These concerns have also led some European leaders to explore alternative security arrangements beyond NATO. If Trump moves forward with reducing U.S. involvement in NATO, European countries may be forced to explore alternative security frameworks.
NATO's perceived instability could create opportunities for non-state actors and radical movements to challenge traditional security models.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, there was no immediate answer as to what should become of NATO or future security structures. Mikhail Gorbachev's concept of a "Common European Home," proposed in the late 1980s, aimed to establish a unified and cooperative security framework that would encompass both Eastern and Western Europe. This vision sought to move beyond the division of military blocs like NATO and the Warsaw Pact, instead fostering a collective security system based on dialogue and cooperation. Institutions such as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which later evolved into the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), were envisioned as key platforms for conflict resolution and diplomatic engagement.
A central element of Gorbachev's proposal was demilitarization and arms reduction, which he linked to broader Soviet arms control efforts, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987 and the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty of 1990. Gorbachev also signaled an end to the Brezhnev Doctrine, Glasnost, and Perestroika, which sought to reform the Soviet system while reducing tensions with the West.
The United States put forward a contrasting vision. In his speech "A Whole Europe, A Free Europe," President George H.W. Bush emphasized the spread of free markets and the expansion of NATO's mission to support Eastern European democratization and strengthen transatlantic ties. He positioned NATO as the central stabilizing force in post-Cold War Europe.
While there are reasons why NATO's expansion filled the post-Cold War security vacuum, it remains highly controversial. Gorbachev's remarks and declassified documents provide a nuanced view of the debate, particularly regarding the infamous "not an inch" exchange between Secretary of State James Baker and Gorbachev. Baker's assurance that "not an inch of NATO's present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction" has remained a point of ongoing contention, frequently cited in debates over NATO expansion and the commitments made during post-Cold War negotiations.
Baker's assurances were nonbinding and focused solely on NATO's presence in Germany, rather than a broader commitment against expansion. While these discussions did not explicitly address countries like Ukraine, any movement beyond Germany could be interpreted as conflicting with the spirit of those assurances. However, Gorbachev later emphasized that neither he nor Soviet authorities were "naïve people who were wrapped around the West's finger," asserting, "If there was naïveté, it was later, when the issue arose. Russia at first did not object."
Robert Zoellick, who participated in the negotiations as a U.S. State Department official, recalled that President George H.W. Bush explicitly asked Gorbachev whether he agreed that sovereign nations had the right to choose their alliances. Gorbachev affirmed this principle, effectively acknowledging that former Warsaw Pact countries could independently determine their security alignments. However, Gorbachev later expressed regret over NATO's expansion, stating, "I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990."
The debate over NATO's expansion did not end with Gorbachev. Russian President Boris Yeltsin also expressed mixed feelings, notably in a letter to President Bill Clinton. While he opposed NATO's rapid enlargement, citing what Russia believed were assurances made during German reunification negotiations, his position was inconsistent. During a visit to Poland, he reluctantly acknowledged Poland's right to join NATO, characterizing this statement as merely an "understanding."
Despite tensions, NATO and Russia initially pursued cooperation through the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, in which NATO pledged not to station permanent forces in new member states. However, Yeltsin later described this agreement as a "forced step," reflecting Russia's growing unease with NATO's expansion.
Other efforts to define NATO-Russia relations took shape through the 2002 NATO-Russia Council, which sought to establish equal dialogue. However, relations steadily deteriorated, first with Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia, then with the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and finally collapsing entirely in 2021 when Russia ended its NATO diplomatic mission.
George Robertson, former U.K. Labour defense secretary and NATO chief, claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin once expressed interest in Russia joining NATO, a notion Putin himself had also suggested. Putin transitioned away from these efforts, culminating in the 2007 Munich Security Conference speech, where he condemned the U.S. for seeking a "unipolar world," a vision he saw as destabilizing and unacceptable. He portrayed NATO's eastward expansion as a direct threat to Russian security and strongly criticized U.S. military interventions conducted without United Nations approval.
While there is far more history behind this issue, these fundamentals are key to understanding the barriers and complexities in discussing alternatives to NATO. The debate highlights core issues, including the West's interest in maintaining power, Russia's attempts to either integrate into or counter that structure, and the often-overlooked agency of smaller nations. These discussions tend to center on justifiable criticism of Western dominance, partly fueled by financial interests tied to weapons production, and Russian security concerns, while overlooking the actual security needs and self-determination of the nations most directly affected.
Although Russia perceived NATO enlargement as a threat, the newly independent states of Eastern and Central Europe had their own security priorities, shaped by decades of Soviet dominance. Many actively sought NATO membership, not to provoke Russia, but to secure their sovereignty in a post-Soviet landscape where Moscow's future actions remained uncertain. Dismissing or misrepresenting these concerns overlooks the agency of these nations. This was most recently evident in Sweden and Finland's decision to join NATO, which was driven by Russia's invasion of Ukraine rather than Western pressure.
Discussions about the influence of institutions like the International Monetary Fund or the E.U. are important, but they must also acknowledge the genuine security concerns of these countries, which extend beyond external pressures or manipulation. For example, after gaining independence in 1991, Ukraine quickly recognized that securing its sovereignty depended on international alliances. In 1994, Ukraine joined NATO's Partnership for Peace (PfP). This decision was made independently of later political narratives and took place years before the Orange Revolution.
Ukraine also entered into the Budapest Memorandum (1994), an agreement in which it relinquished its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the U.S., and the U.K., but this ultimately failed to prevent later invasion. It exemplifies how nonbinding agreements, lacking the enforcement mechanisms of military alliances, can create vulnerabilities and uncertainty in international security commitments. It also highlights the tensions Eastern European countries face when entering such agreements with Russia, particularly when they lack assured, legally binding military defense.
During and after this time, NATO's interventions led to allegations of war crimes, civilian casualties, and legal violations. These allegations span interventions from Kosovo to Afghanistan and Libya. The International Criminal Court attempted to investigate war crimes, including allegations of rape and torture by the U.S. military and CIA, but U.S. pressure shut down the inquiry. In 2019, the U.S. revoked the visa of ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and later imposed sanctions on her and other ICC officials involved in the investigation. Facing these challenges, the ICC's Office of the Prosecutor, under new leadership in 2021, decided to "deprioritize" investigations into U.S. and NATO personnel, focusing instead on alleged crimes by the Taliban and ISIS. This further undermined NATO's portrayal of itself as a purely defensive alliance.
Over the years, various alternatives to NATO have been proposed, shaped by different geopolitical, ideological, and strategic considerations. These proposals generally fall into three broad categories: European-led defense initiatives, U.N.-based security strategies, and non-state or decentralized models.
Some European leaders advocate for reducing reliance on NATO, particularly on U.S. military commitments, by strengthening the European Union's Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). This vision promotes an E.U.-led military force capable of acting autonomously when European interests diverge from those of the U.S. French President Emmanuel Macron has been a strong proponent of this approach, arguing that Europe's dependence on the U.S. leaves it vulnerable to shifts in American foreign policy, such as those seen during Trump's presidency. His vision includes a joint European military force that could operate alongside NATO when necessary but remain independent when transatlantic priorities differ.
Another approach emphasizes strengthening the U.N.'s role in global security as an alternative to NATO. One example is the Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative, which aims to enhance U.N. peacekeeping operations by prioritizing multilateral cooperation over military alliances. However, the Security Council's structure remains a significant barrier to any U.N.-led initiatives, as the veto power held by the U.S., Russia, and China frequently obstructs meaningful reforms and hinders the organization's ability to respond effectively to global security challenges. While calls for Security Council restructuring have gained momentum, particularly in response to conflicts like the Gaza crisis, the likelihood of the U.N. fully replacing NATO remains low without substantial institutional changes.
Nonaligned or regional security frameworks have also been proposed. This includes a return to Cold War-era nonalignment, where countries avoid military blocs, and the formation of regional security pacts. Organizations like the African Union (AU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) could potentially assume roles similar to NATO within their respective regions.
Beyond state-centered models, some anarchist and labor movements propose radical alternatives that challenge the idea that security must be provided by nation-states or military alliances. These models emphasize mutual aid, worker solidarity, and decentralized defense structures rather than state-controlled militaries. The Zapatistas in Mexico, for example, have established autonomous self-defense forces to protect Indigenous communities, while Kurdish-led autonomous administrations in Syria organize security through federated agreements rather than centralized military command. In Ukraine, networks such as Solidarity Collectives play an important role in providing mutual aid and logistical support in conflict zones, working alongside unions to coordinate efforts.
Although these decentralized approaches offer an alternative vision, they face significant challenges, particularly the lack of strong military deterrence. In regions dominated by state-backed militaries, their ability to resist aggression remains limited. However, as NATO's legitimacy continues to be questioned, these models could gain traction, expanding the debate on security beyond traditional military alliances.
Trump is unlikely to formally withdraw the U.S. from NATO, but his past confrontations with the alliance and his current treatment of Zelenskyy signal to European leaders that NATO's reliability is no longer guaranteed. This uncertainty has already sparked discussions on alternative security frameworks, ranging from a stronger European defense initiative to broader multilateral arrangements. If European nations increasingly view NATO as unstable or subject to U.S. political shifts, they may seek greater autonomy, altering the global security landscape.
At the same time, NATO's perceived instability could create opportunities for non-state actors and radical movements to challenge traditional security models. As states reassess their dependence on military alliances, decentralized defense structures whether rooted in anarchist mutual aid networks, worker-based militias, or regional federations may gain traction. While such alternatives face considerable obstacles, NATO's crisis of legitimacy could open space for non-state approaches to security, expanding the debate beyond state power and military blocs.
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Do You Want to Work for Justice? Go to Eviction Court
The closer we get to the millions of people who are facing evictions or already unhoused, the more likely we are to be motivated to do something about it.
Mar 04, 2025
Before the Super Bowl brought global attention and hundreds of thousands of visitors to New Orleans in February, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry cleared out over 100 unhoused people from downtown, busing them to an unheated warehouse miles away.
In our community of Indianapolis, advocates fear similar clear outs will happen when a planned city shelter outside the downtown area is finished.
Which makes me think of Stanley Milgram and Bryan Stevenson.
“On that fifth day, the weather was very cold and rainy. All I could think about was the young dad and his son without a home, with a job disrupted, and the young boy missing school.”
Milgram was the Yale University psychologist who conducted the famous experiments in the 1960s that showed a disturbing willingness of study participants to follow orders to administer what they thought were powerful electric shocks to other study participants.
The unsettling results remain widely known. But one component of Milgram’s experiments is less often discussed: The study participants were far less likely to administer the shocks if they could hear or see the victims of their actions.
Milgram used the word “proximity” to describe that variable. Which is the same term that Bryan Stevenson uses when he describes how we can change the world.
Stevenson is the attorney behind the book Just Mercy and the film of the same name, and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. Stevenson traces his lifelong devotion to ending mass incarceration and promoting racial justice back to an event when he was still a law student. While interning for a human rights organization, Stevenson was assigned to go to a maximum-security prison in Georgia and deliver some procedural case news to a man on death row.
But the planned brief meeting turned into a three-hour deep, wide-ranging conversation. At the end of his time with Stevenson, the prisoner sang the hymn, “I’m Pressing on the Upward Way.”
Which launched Stevenson on his lifelong trajectory devoted to seeking justice. “It’s because I got close enough to a condemned man to hear his song,” he says. “When you get proximate, you hear the songs. And those melodies in those songs will empower you, they will inspire you, and they will teach you what doing justice and loving mercy is all about.”
What Gov. Jeff Landry, Stanley Milgram, and Bryan Stevenson can all tell us is this: The closer we get to the millions of people who are facing evictions or already unhoused, the more likely we are to be motivated to do something about it.
Carolyn Kingen can tell us that, too.
A retired critical care cardiac nurse, Kingen in 2020 joined some of her fellow members of the Meridian Street United Methodist Church in Indianapolis for a book study group that chose to read Matthew Desmond’s Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. After reading and talking about the horrors of our nation’s eviction crisis, where 3.6 million households face forced removal from their homes each year, the group decided to see for themselves.
On one of Kingen’s first visits to eviction court, she heard a father of a seven-year-old boy explain to the judge that he had fallen behind on rent because he had not received expected overtime pay from his job. But, the father said, the overtime boost would be coming through in his next paycheck, which was arriving in a week. He could catch up on rent then, and pay late fees too.
The judge, unmoved, ordered the family to be evicted within five days. “The entire case lasted three or four minutes,” Kingen recalls. “In those few minutes, the decision was made that an employed father and mother had to pack their belongings and get out.”
“On that fifth day, the weather was very cold and rainy. All I could think about was the young dad and his son without a home, with a job disrupted, and the young boy missing school.”
“I Could Be That Tenant”
Experiences like this spurred Kingen and the book group to create a Housing Justice Task Force in their church, and then join with other congregations of different faiths to create the Indiana Eviction Justice Network. I teach a law school clinic where my students and I represent people facing eviction in the same area. I can attest that the presence of court watchers changes the tenor of the proceedings, ramping up the respect paid to tenants facing the loss of their homes.
And the eviction court watchers go beyond the doors of the courtrooms. They take the proximity-provided lessons and use them to advocate with elected officials and the judges themselves. Rabbi Aaron Spiegel, who as director of the Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance coordinates the court-watching program, connects the volunteers with lawmakers to push for housing reforms like mediation before eviction orders, sealings of past eviction records, living wages, and more and better affordable housing.
“Court watchers often know more about systemic housing issues than the elected officials they are talking to,” Spiegel says. Earlier this year, court watchers mobilized to lobby Indiana legislators in opposition to a bill that would have criminalized sleeping in public spaces. Last month, the legislation was withdrawn by its sponsor.
Court proceedings are open to the public, and several other communities across the country, in places like Greensboro, North Carolina; Houston, and Chicago, have court-watching programs, often connected to justice advocacy.
Kingen and many of the other court watchers are motivated by their faith or moral principles. “We are called to care for the poor, the orphans, widows—and in today’s society, we would include any group that is shunned or rejected,” she says. “I try to see Christ in the faces of every person I meet.”
Rabbi Spiegel says this same call to action crosses faith and moral traditions. “All religious traditions teach that we must take care of the ‘least among us’ and as such, housing is a human right,” he says.
The proximity Carolyn Kingen experiences in court allows her to see in those facing eviction not just the divine but herself as well. Kingen recalls a time when she could not pay her rent, but was fortunate enough to have a family member step up to help. “Each time I court watch, I try to remind myself that I could be that tenant appearing before the judge,” she says.
Placing herself in the shoes of those facing homelessness is far easier to do when she can be in the same room and hear their stories, Kingen says. Court proceedings are open to the public, and several other communities across the country, in places like Greensboro, North Carolina; Houston, and Chicago, have court-watching programs, often connected to justice advocacy.
Check and see if there is a program in your community. And if there isn’t, maybe consider helping start one yourself.
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