Is DEI a Toothless Project? Toward Antiracism and Changing Relations of Domination

• In Event: Marx SIG Paper Session

Abstract

The extrajudicial killing of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter protests, and recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to invalidate race-conscious affirmative action admission programs in colleges and universities further confirm America’s open secret: Racism is fundamental to the racial-colonial capitalist patriarchal system. This paper elucidates how federal laws, policies and programs such as affirmative action and DEI evolved from its original rationale as a remedy for historical injustice and enduring racial subjugation against African Americans to one that centers liberal diversity ideology. Moreover, it illuminates how diversity-based laws and programs paradoxically ensures a white supremacist racial hierarchy, and thus ensures the undoing of its original “stated” intent.

Authors

• Lilia D. Monzo, Chapman University

• Kena Gomalo, Chapman University