Democrats Can’t Move On Until They Admit DEI Was a Mistake

Democrats must confront their moral confusion on DEI if they want to regain credibility.

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About the Author

Dr. Colin Wright is the CEO/Editor-in-Chief of Reality’s Last Stand, an evolutionary biology PhD, and Manhattan Institute Fellow. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, the New York Post, Newsweek, City Journal, Quillette, Queer Majority, and other major news outlets and peer-reviewed journals.

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The Democratic Party appears directionless and unmotivated in the aftermath of their political defeat to Trump. Many within the party are attempting to rekindle the energy felt in the summer of the 2020, but their efforts feel forced. The crowds are smaller, the enthusiasm diminished. Beneath the surface, a deeper realization may be setting in: the DEI, anti-racism, and equity initiatives they got swept up in were built on morally bankrupt principles. At the time, social pressure made dissent nearly impossible.

Some left-wing commentators have cautiously started signaling the need for reform, only to be met with fierce backlash. Consider California Governor Gavin Newsom, who recently launched a podcast and, in a rare move, invited conservative commentator Charlie Kirk for a discussion. In their conversation, Newsom conceded significant ground, particularly on whether men who identify as women should compete in women’s sports. The reaction from the left was immediate and brutal, revealing the Democratic Party’s current crisis—any attempt to course-correct is met with immediate hostility from the loudest ideological enforcers of the progressive movement.

Noah Smith, a left-leaning political commentator, also gently pondered about reforms, writing on X: “I don’t believe it’ll be hard for Democrats to abandon DEI programs, because that doesn’t mean abandoning the fight against racism.”

This statement, however, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) truly represents, and why the Democratic Party’s moral hangover may last a very long time.

The central reason is this: DEI is not merely an imperfect attempt at combating racism; it is a systemic form of racism itself. To suggest that one can abandon DEI without abandoning the fight against racism presupposes that DEI was ever a legitimate tool for fighting racism in the first place. It never was.