The American Right Is Into Reparations Now
Victims of DEI, the Trump regime has said in so many words, must be made whole again.
I walked into the veterinarian's office and walked right out. I was the ubiquitous GIF of Homer Simpson's father, and it was because a certain kind of American flag greeted me at the vet office's entrance.
It was fall 2020, a few weeks after a summer of chaos brought to you by a killer virus that was allowed to run rampant through every community and a national racial justice and reconciliation movement that would, for a moment, sweep away the country's tyranny-curious president. Americans of color had told white folks that their lives mattered too, an apocalyptic moment for racists both proud and closeted.
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My little dog Ziggy needed some shots so I set up an appointment at a nearby vet's office. I didn't know anything about the place except for the (mostly) positive online reviews from fellow dog enjoyers. I pulled into the vet's parking lot, picked up my eleven-pound good boy and entered the office. There in the lobby was a giant Blue Lives Matter American flag. It practically smacked you in the face the moment you entered the place. Maybe that was the point.
These Blue Lives Matter flags had slithered out of the fascist imagination during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and the slow killing of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer, one streamed live for everyone to see. The aftermath of BLM's rise of international prominence saw a flurry of panicked right-wing activity meant to counter the movement and its messaging: Republican state lawmakers proposed and sometimes passed bills that allowed and even encouraged motorists to drive their vehicles into BLM protesters; they made laws banning the wearing of masks in outdoor spaces to better identify those who would dare say the lives of black Americans mattered; and they passed bills making police a protected group, the same way people with immutable traits have been protected by federal hate crime laws.
These blue-lined American flags – a total desecration of a national symbol created by those who claim to love the flag – were everywhere in those days. The message was terribly clear: You think your lives matter? Not only do I disagree, but I believe the lives of the people using state violence against you matter. The unsubtle subtext of the Blue Lives Matter flag was that Black Americans' lives do not matter. Those who flew the flags – and still do – would never say as much. That would give away their sordid little game, one that positioned American police officers as the victims of an out-of-control, radicalized protest movement.
Denny Carter
I write a lot about the American right's online-based unreality because it matters now that the blackpilled among us are in charge. All of the insane, conspiratorial beliefs that animate the right's unreality were kept at a safe distance from official federal policy making from 2020 to 2024. At the bloody heart of that unreality is the unwavering belief that in the third decade of the 21st century, it is white people in the United States who are a dominated and aggrieved minority that deserves government support and protection. Peel back the layers of this racist little onion and you'll find all manner of bad-faith politics, the kind that allow Education Secretary WWE Lady to say white students in the US are the victims of systemic discrimination and white settlers in South Africa are in desperate need of refuge after suffering unspeakable indignities (sharing some resources) at the hands of the country's government run by vicious Black South Africans.
The right's bad faith-fueled unreality took a dark turn this week when the Trump regime's U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission – a body charged with enforcing federal laws making it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or employee – announced plans to do reparations for white people, specifically white men marginalized by programs and policies designed to give people of color a fair chance at a job.
These pitiless victims of DEI, the regime said in so many words, must be made whole again. They must be avenged. It is the natural endpoint of a bastardization of the push for equality, equity, and fairness in the United States; this trick is pulled off by ignoring – and simply not knowing about – historical context.
The regime's USEEOC is operating deep within an unreality in which white Americans have been brutally suppressed in the workplace since the racial justice uprisings of 2020. The diversity programs that proliferated in the aftermath of 2020 – that DEI existed for years before this never enters the discourse – crushed the economic prospects of white workers in in the US, according to the right's unreality.
The regime's apparatchiks cannot say what they mean about matters of race and equity and equality because what they mean to say would be nakedly racist and horrifying to any well-adjusted person, even those who might vote Republican and support (some) conservative causes. So they must operate in total dishonesty, flipping the power structure on its head so that people of color in the US call the shots, leaving beleaguered white Americans to toil away for the crumbs that fall from their master's table.
Denny Carter
The USEEOC urges white Americans to file their complaints and receive compensation for their economic suffering. The right wing is finally in favor of reparations; it's for white people though. The faith has never been worse.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is a broad term that is not defined in the statute. Under Title VII, DEI policies, programs, or practices may be unlawful if they involve an employer or other covered entity taking an employment action motivated—in whole or in part—by an employee’s race, sex, or another protected characteristic. In addition to unlawfully using quotas or otherwise “balancing” a workforce by race, sex, or other protected traits, DEI-related discrimination in your workplace might include the following: Disparate treatment, Limiting, Segregating, and Classifying, Harassment, and Retaliation.
Where this will go, I have no idea. Maybe, like a lot of regime policies and half-baked ideas, it will fizzle before the federal government can shovel millions and millions of dollars to white folks who claim to have been victims of DEI discrimination. Having to compete with qualified people with brown and black skin? These indignities have no end.
The underlying message of potential reparations for white workers is evident, and painfully so. We are here to protect and defend you, the regime is saying to white men in the US. You will get the spoils of our domination. Our power will be your power. That is the message.
I'll leave you with this: The regime has set up a hotline for American workers who have purportedly suffered under what they might consider the inhumane domination of DEI programs. That number is 1-800-669-4000. Do with that what you will.
Follow Denny Carter on Bluesky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.
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