Thank you so much for your work on this.

My post that you are replying to is mostly a tongue-in-cheek commentary on how programs that have existed for decades self-labeled as something that the right was able to rally against, thereby making themselves a single large target instead of a decentralized force distributed across agencies.

I just know that I first started seeing "DEI" as a label pop up in the first Trump admin. Frankly, in 2018, it was called "Climate and Diversity" in my local environment. Shortly thereafter it got relabeled.

DEI has been around since the 60s, in principle.

Yup! Remember how I said that before it was labeled there was a complex network of programs doing this job? DEI is more of a label than a program. I fully agree.

So, what constitutes DEI?
What the right is defining it as? What it has been since the 60s? What Biden enacted? What the government bodies enacted during sleepy trump?

It's not well defined! It's a scare word. It's a label that we lined up behind that unintentionally made it easy for antiracist programs to be identified and targeted.

Being against DEI is like being against Antifa, or declaring Antifa a terrorist organisation. It's not really a thing.
DEI is the awareness that previous centuries of discrimination no longer applies.
DEI isn't a tangible thing. It's humanity.
It didn't happen during trump's first term. But it did progress.
It didn't happen during Bidens term. But it did progress.
That is humanity. Humanity progresses. Humanity is love, equity and freedom for all.

I can't agree more! The label of DEI just makes these programs easier to find. This us true both for people seeking assistance from these programs and for people seeking to dismantle them. Such identification is a double-edged sword, and that's what my depressed brain was trying to communicate.

Progress in the next 4 years is gonna be slow.
But everyone has worked on this before. It's a hiatus. It will come back, and will be easier and more streamlined than before. Loads of people are backing up data, so it can be (relatively) easily restored. None of this has to be worked out again, nothing shared on the internet can truly die, ideas can't be killed.
It's gonna be 4 years of shit.
Hopefully Americans learn, and don't vote in more conservatives.
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Hopefully Americans get a chance to vote in another party.

I love you. Thank you for this message of hope. I'm sorry to qualify it by saying: just because data can be restored, doesn't mean that people or careers can be.