Funding for To the Contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation.

This week on to the contrary DEI or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is facing challenges and setbacks in both government offices and corporate CEO suites.

Then concern in the trans community.

Following the tragic school shooting in Nashville.

(MUSIC) Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbe Welcome to To the Contrary.

A discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

Up first, diversity, equity and inclusion.

Republican lawmakers and governors are targeting college diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

They say these programs are stifling free speech and indoctrinating students.

The Florida legislature is advancing a proposal from Governor Ron DeSantis to ban funding for DEI programs, as well as any majors or minors deemed to rely on critical race theory, radical feminism or gender theory.

Similar proposals are being made in at least a dozen states and in the corporate world, despite promises of big changes.

Hiring for Diversity Officers has stalled.

What was once the fastest growing C-suite position in 2020 and 21 have now reversed itself.

There's now a 4.5% decline in hires.

DEI is also experiencing high turnover rates.

Joining us today are former Representative Donna Edwards, Democrat of Maryland, Senior Fellow at the Independent Women's Forum.

Carrie Sheffield, Co-founder of Reproaction Erin Matson and Washington Examiner columnist Tiana Lowe.

So Donna Edwards, what do you think the impact of all of these red states getting rid of DEI trying to decide what schools can and cannot teach will have on the 2024 presidential election?

Well, I'm not sure yet.

I mean, I do think that it's kind of an irony that some of the same people who are complaining about DEI are also complaining that conservative voices are being shut down on college campuses.

It does seem to me that we're going to have Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action coming later on in the summer that actually could play into the presidential related to to DEI.

But I am not surprised at all by the pushback because whenever people who've been excluded try to push for the rights to be heard and to be included, that there's a pushback from the other end.

And the question now is going to be whether some of these people who've been employed DEI in their practices, in their hiring, were really committed to it.

And what we're seeing is a retrenchment of those commitments.

Well I just came back a couple of weeks ago from Florida, and I spent about an hour and a half with Governor DeSantis on a panel specifically talking about DEI and what he was doing in Florida.

And I praised him.

I said, I think what you're doing is very important because DEI and the way it's being expressed and forced down the students throats is that it's a political ideology.

You know, in Florida, they do require the teaching of African-American history.

And I agree with that.

I think it's very important.

The difference with CRT and DEI is that it is rooted in Marxist ideology.

Critical race theory is one strand of a much bigger umbrella philosophy called Critical Theory, which originated in Germany at the Frankfurt School in 1929.

And yes, in America, it was adopted first at law schools.

And it's disingenuous when people say, well, it's not taught at K-through-12 level.

And it's like, yeah, it's not taught at the law school level.

It's adapted for K-through-12 in the same way that physics or physical science.

You're not going to teach a five year old the same level of physical science, but you do teach them some basic principles.

And that's what's happening.

And it is deeply pernicious and its racist.

And that's why I think that I agree with Donna that the Supreme Court ruling is going to strike down a lot of these programs because it is racist to exclude a candidate based on their, you know, characteristics that they cannot change.

In particular, Asian students have been very hurt by a lot of these policies.

Do you agree, Erin, that this the DEI is racist?

Absolutely not.

And the attack on D.A.

is racist.

Whether people who are attacking it admit that to themselves or are aware of it or not, the fact is that white supremacy is a reality.

It has not been three years since George Floyd was murdered on camera for the world to see.

And people vowed to do something different.

And I agree with Donna.

It's heartbreaking to see that these companies are backing away from DEI.

That's another piece of the puzzle.

And it does what I agree with Donna on it.

It seems to show a lack of commitment in the first place.

What is happening is, you know, you have teachers who are being forced to hide their libraries in Florida right now.

Governor DeSantis put pressure on AP, which has now removed Black Lives Matter from AP African-American studies curriculum and has under pressure, put it in conservative viewpoints and pressure.

And the fact is this is all interconnected.

It is very much about censorship and elevating existing power structures that have always existed in this country DEI is a good thing And I'm grateful for the organizations that continue its commitment.

But there are some, particularly Christian fundamentalist families who feel like their kids are coming home from school feeling guilty about something that, of course, happened 150 plus years before they were born.

Are progressives open to modifying it as opposed to letting it die completely?

I will just say as a parent that this is critical teaching that needs to happen and it's conversations that need to be had.

I would say DEI, the process that's taking place inside my organization is all about conversation and learning and growth from one another.

So I would imagine it would be a static process anywhere.

What is happening now is that, in fact there's a push back on teaching history as history happened and we can't I mean, that's just not acceptable.

Any time you have, you know, a school system saying you can't teach the fact that Rosa Parks was sitting in on that bus because of desegregation, and that is actually some of the things that have happened around around the country, that's not acceptable.

Banning books, because they mentioned black people historically in school and teach the history of the Civil War and slavery is is just not acceptable.

And that is what is happening in the K-12 realm.

And now some are even trying to push that same methodology onto onto college campuses.

And I think it's incumbent on us to fight this because, you know, any time you can rewrite history and decide that you're going to teach your version of it instead of the version that actually happened, it actually continues to dehumanize, the people, black people going forward in the students.

And so I'm not I'm less worried about the guilt that white students feel.

They shouldn't feel that way because of the teaching of history.

I'm more concerned about all of our students K-12 having a proper understanding of history so that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past.

So I think that everyone here has completely missed the point.

This is really about the size and scope of government, right?

This the DeSantis guidance going forward does not apply to private schools that do not take government funds.

Right.

He's talking about federally funded universities and K through 12 schools that are funded by the state of Florida.

And also, I know that, you know, the state ran universities not only federally funded, but also state run and state funded.

So the matter is that if you have a government school, it's up to the government to decide what the curriculum is.

I'm opposed to that.

It's right why I think that school choice is a great thing because you can have private schools and vouchers allow parents to vote with their dollars.

And it's equitable because it applies to all parents, not only the ones who are wealthy enough to afford private schools.

The debate is not about the content of the history, right?

You have to teach Eugene Debs in history classes, even though he was a socialist, and I don't think anyone would say that endorsing socialism.

I would be shocked if anyone serious proposed banning.

Frederick Douglass in my book is is a secondary founding father.

Correct?

Everything about the debate of this content really has to do with contemporary history.

Right.

How much do you sideline the history of black liberation, the history of black Americans regaining their God given rights versus focusing on contemporary Robyn D'Angelo and Ibram Kendi, which is really just racial essentialism.

It's just the other side of the coin is white supremacy, right?

The idea that our original sin is our skin color and our original redemption is our skin color, when really it's just a treat like any other.

Overall, I think that DI and a lot of these philosophies are superficial papering over of deep structural issues.

I do agree with Erin on that.

I think what she did was deeply offensive to call me a white supremacist.

I think I reject that.

And I would say, look at the cities.

Look at the poorest neighborhoods in America.

Look at the worst schools.

Look at the most violent, dangerous areas for African-Americans.

They're exclusively nearly exclusively run by progressives.

It's progressives who want to keep their teachers unions, these poor black children trapped in these failing schools.

It's progressives like FDR who created redlining with housing policies.

It's progressives like the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, who was a eugenicist white supremacist and wanted to exterminate black babies.

So I think it's deeply problematic when you bring in a political ideology like critical race theory to try to undermine Western civilization and bring in philosophy that would put in even more socialism.

That's ultimately what happened.

The black family was destroyed by Lyndon Baines Johnson and what he did with the welfare program before welfare, we spent $25 trillion since the 1960s for project Black families had 75% of black babies born into two parent homes.

And now it's the reverse.

It's only 25%.

So you tell me, is it right to continue to spend trillions of dollars when these programs are structured to penalize marriage and to drive the black fathers out of the home?

CRT is the latest flavor of socialism that is trying to put on even more of the government funding .

Tiana, I know you're not a Republican.

You are a libertarian, but your take on whether this will boomerang on Republicans the way that all of Trump's actions, policies, etc., boomeranged on Republicans in the midterms.

So the most obvious boomerang I see is this push for Ivy League universities and elite level graduate schools getting rid of standardized testing.

Right?

Because what's the easiest way to make it so that you can't be proven to be racist against Asian students?

But we all know that's what the game is, right?

Part of this Harvard suit in front of the Supreme Court is showing that Asian-American students got lower scores on their social testing because we're less charming.

Right?

They would get points docked down because of their lack of social appeal, which is obviously bigotry by any other name.

As I understand it, it was all based on test scores that Asians test much higher than any other demographic group, including whites.

Yes.

But Harvard put a quota on them because they're already 28% of Harvard and they're something like seven or 8% of the US body.

And the reason why they were able to make it look like it was a proper meritous score was when they would test the holistic testing outside of the outside of the standardized scores.

Asian essays would be downgraded, Asian interviews would be downgraded artificially.

Donna, It's hard to know to know where to go here.

I mean, but the fact is DEI is not a theory.

DEI is a framework by which businesses and schools can use to more fully include people who've been excluded from higher education in the workplace through C-suites.

And I think the retrenchment on on DEI, to me signals that we're pushing against the wrong thing because it's meant to break, to bring inclusiveness.

And frankly, none of these companies have been successful at it.

And I think if you talk to CEOs, you talk to, you know, somebody like the the owner of the Falcons who really has put money into and aggressively advocated for DEI programs through business and and in higher education, the idea is to bring into the workplace, into the into academia, people who've long been excluded.

There's not it's not a theory.

It is a framework for hiring and for including people who've been left out.

All right.

Last word to you Erin and then we're going to switch topics.

We're better off as a society, Bonnie, when we take active steps to ensure that we have diversity in decision making, diversity in education, we are better off.

Kids learn better when they're learning amongst a diverse set of peers, when they're being able, being encouraged to learn history in its full entirety.

And what I'm hearing consistently from the radical right is attempts to close off opportunities to access education in ways that benefit existing power structures.

All right.

From diversity to the trans community, the transgender community is concerned about a rise in anti-trans sentiment.

That's because the shooter in the massacre at a Nashville Christian school was transgender.

Six people, three of them children, died in the shooting.

A group of prominent conservative lawmakers released statements and insinuated on social media that the shooter's gender identity played a role in the shooting.

But according to a UCLA law school study, transgender people are more than four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violence.

Transgender advocates fear this event will be used to erode trans rights.

Those rights were already under attack prior to the shooting.

Just this week, some states ramped up efforts to restrict trans gender affirming health care.

Others have banned pride parades, and the World Athletics Council announced it will bar transgender women athletes from women's elite track and field competitions.

Carrie, is at least the last issue I just mentioned, that is barring trans women from competing against cisgender women in athletics.

Do you believe that's a winning issue for the Republicans?

Well, I think it's a winning issue for common sense.

And the polling suggests that somewhere in the neighborhood of at least two thirds of Americans agree that that is a good policy because it's fundamentally unfair and it's unconstitutional, I would argue.

So the Constitution, it's been recognized, the equal protection clause has biologically recognized the difference between men and women.

That's why we had Title nine is because the equal protection clause allowed for women's sports to receive funding under the Equal protection clause.

And so by allowing biological men, this completely shatters 50 years since Title nine was passed.

It undermines it completely.

So it's unconstitutional to do this and to also, it's not just sports, but it's women's prisons, women's shelters.

The law recognizes that women and men are equal under the law, but they're not the same physically.

We are more at risk of assault in terms of deadly assaults just physically to a biological male.

Okay, Donna, what about the whole transgender backlash, not just the women, transgender women in sports issue, but President Biden reacted saying we've it's a gun issue, it's not a transgender issue and we've got to get control over the number of weapons out there.

Your thoughts and how how will that play for him, assuming Donald Trump is the now Biden is a hunter, so he's not a, you know, a gun unfriendly politician.

But Trump is sure more you know, every every three year old should have a semiautomatic weapon or an automatic weapon.

Well, I think if you look even at the hundreds of mass shootings that have already occurred in the United States, and we're only here toward the end of March one took place that happened with somebody who was transgender.

I think there was another shooting that took place and someone who was nonbinary.

But the fact is this really is a gun problem.

Any time that you can have somebody who can go and purchase legally purchase machine weapons of war as the AR 15, in my view is and go into a school, into a church and kill nine year olds, then we have a problem.

And the problem is a gun problem.

And frankly, the problem is not a problem among the American people.

The American people actually agree overwhelmingly Republicans, Democrats and independents that we need to ban these ban these weapons and have more restrictions on guns on who can purchase them and more red flag laws to identify people who, you know, pose some sort of mental health challenge.

And so I think that it's time for us to do this.

And again, it's not a Republican and Democratic problem.

It is a Republican Party problem of Republican elected officials in Congress who refuse to do what the American people want.

All right, Tiana, your thoughts about what the backlash against the trans community is going to amount to and how that plays out in the 2024 election.

So let's just point out that the shooter did specifically target the school or considered it viable to target because it was a gun free campus.

Right.

Thank God we had the cops that were correct in how they went after the shooter.

But this could have been stopped earlier if people did have guns on the campus, which they didn't.

So in this case, it is a very valid time to talk about conservative Christians being targeted probably for their faith and further ideology.

But there is no question that this is a case of it's an extremely rare case of a biological woman attempting to commit a mass shooting.

Right.

Usually biological men are responsible for almost all mass shootings.

This is just statistically true.

We have no idea what the influence of testosterone was here that could have some influence on this.

Right.

Because most biological women are not committing mass shootings.

It quite literally is not in our DNA.

Right.

That like violent, aggressive gene on this scale.

That being said, most men don't commit mass shooting.

It's just that most mass shootings are committed by men.

So this is extremely rare.

Maybe testosterone had a part with it.

You know, I think that most transgender Americans really just want to live their lives.

I think especially there's broad consensus that if you're a transgender adult, you have the right to be respected.

Right.

Like I will I will use your given name and I will use your chosen pronouns.

But they have sort of clung on to this more radical wing of should should biological boys be in girls sports classes?

And yes, that does interfere with your title nine rights.

If you're going to a public school, when you cling on to those more radical premises, it's sort of the opposite of the way that the gay marriage debate was operating right?

Gay Americans achieved that success in Obergefell specifically because they focused on their most conservative aims and through a conservative, pro-family framework.

Erin, your thoughts on all this?

Oh, Bonnie, my heart is just broken listening to this and my heart is broken.

I am the mother of a nine year old daughter, so my child is the same age as those three children who are murdered.

And I'm heartbroken just as a human being and a citizen of the world and this this country and this community.

Look, transgender people are horrifically targeted in the United States.

There are currently more than 500 bills that are targeting the participation of trans people in public life.

In Oklahoma, I had a tweet that went viral last summer.

I had shared a biological sex affidavit that now is being required for people in order to participate in sports.

There has been talk about tracking people's menstrual periods in order to participate in sports at the school level, there are children who are literally holding it all day and getting bladder infections because they cannot go to the bathroom.

And the fact of the matter is, what I was hearing, Tiana say was actually direct, almost directly tracking with what Marjorie Taylor Greene and what Josh Hawley were saying immediately following the shooting to somehow blame and say things like Marjorie Taylor Greene said that hormones like testosterone and medications for mental illness were responsible for the mass... .

Erin, I would never blame SSRIs or other medical or other or other psychiatric medications given by a medical doctor.

No, Let me finish.

Let me finish.

Tiana, because this is really important and I want trans people who are watching to know that they are loved and that we will stop this.

The fact is that there is a reality that people who are transgender experienced mental illness at higher rates than other people, and it is perfectly understandable when folks are so deeply bullied and targeted consistently, the overwhelming majority of people with mental health issues are not violent.

The problem is guns.

The problem is a AR 15, which literally pulverize people so that they are unrecognizable.

These nine year olds, just like my child, are being pulverized.

The Washington Post just did amazing work earlier.

Just before this shooting, where they shared the first results of a study on transgender adults.

And the fact is, 78% of them said that their lives were better after they transitioned.

We need to support people in their transition.

We need to stop conflating people living as their authentic selves with violence or persecution against others.

That is ridiculous and I am deeply concerned for people who are watching this who are either trans or love someone who is trans.

We will not stop fighting.

And I'm so sorry there is so much hatred out there.

Carrie, your thoughts quickly, please.

Well, I think it was very disturbing that President Joe Biden, he made a disgusting joke.

I don't use that word lightly.

He joked, joked that if Christians were targeted in this Nashville shooting, he wouldn't believe it as long as Josh Hawley believes that.

I mean, that's really disgusting when you see an uptick in the rise of of Jewish, you know, Victa, you know, Jewish victims attacks at synagogues.

So if you are attacking people for their religious faith, then it should be uncovered.

And that is a type of hate crime.

And so with the president of the United States to make that disgusting joke, I think is truly beneath the office.

And the Colorado Springs shooting that recently happened identified as non binary Aberdeen shooting identified as transgender, the Denver shooter identified as transgender.

And now this Nashville shooter.

I do.

I do.

You know, it's not even a question of agreement.

Factually.

It is true.

What you pointed out, Bonnie, that transgender people are more likely to be a victim of crime.

And I think that's important to point out.

But I do think that that I agree with Tiana that the transgender community in many respects has swung way too far to the point where my organization, the Independent Women's Forum, we have produced a documentary about de-transitioners.

We are out of time, except for Donna.

Please.

A couple of sentences as to wrap this all up.

No, just really quickly, I support what Erin has said about, you know, being supportive of those who are making a transition and identifying that even if you identify four or five trans people who may have been involved or committed crimes with mass shootings, we've had over 130 mass shootings in this country, and most of them have been by by men.

It's really time for us to put a frame on needing to ban the AR 15 and assault weapons, get the guns out of our schools, protect our children, whether they're in Christian school or they're in public elementary schools, wherever they are, protect our citizens and church and synagogue, at the grocery store , and July 4th festival.

It's because of guns.

And if we don't do something about that, then we can't say that we're on the side of protecting our children.

All right.

That's it for this edition.

Whether you agree or think to the contrary.

See you next week.

(MUSIC) Funding for To the Contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation the Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation