President Donald Trump has successfully built his MAGA political empire on the 100% lie that anything titled or remotely related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is both racial replacement and racial discrimination against American Whites. A new U.S. Department of State policy illustrates the logic of DEI policy and the goodwill inclusion-of-all that pro-DEI policies create, versus the illogical exclusion, disruption, and discrimination that President Trump’s anti-DEI policies create.
4 years and 8 months ago, in April 2021, former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken created and appointed the first U.S. Department of State Chief Diversity Officer. Blinken said a Chief Diversity Officer would help “change the culture, our norms, our behaviors, our biases,” which he described as “one of my greatest responsibilities as Secretary of State”. Since the State Dept. bureaucracy had a reputation of being too “pale”, too “male”, and too “Yale”, many, like President Trump, falsely assumed the purpose of the State Dept.’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion program and its new Chief Diversity Officer was to remove American Whites from the State Dept. by hiring people of color to replace them.
The many and President Trump are wrong, there are no state or federal government agencies empowered to remove and replace anybody for any racial, philosophical, political, gender, or sexual orientation reasons. The job of policing and enforcing anti-discrimination laws and employment practices is left to the one federal and fifty state departments of labor, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), or a corporation’s human resource director.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has nothing to do with replacing or terminating people; in fact replacing or firing anybody is antithetical to the DNA of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) because in terms of workplace employees there is only one purpose and goal of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), to create or maintain a work environment that everyone, red, yellow, black or white, gay or straight, old or young, male, female or nonbinary, and faith believer or atheist can see and feel themselves accepted in the work environment. The second purpose and goal of DEI is to ensure that the external policies of a government, corporation, or institution reflect the diverse population they serve.
A prime example of the purpose and logic of DEI was demonstrated when the State Dept. implemented a policy change recommended by its Chief Diversity Officer. In 2023, the State Dept. announced that it would stop using the serif typeface Times New Roman in written communications and replace it by using the sans-serif typeface Calibri instead. What most people refer to as a font is actually a typeface. Typeface is the family of letters, e.g., Arial, Georgia (which is the typeface this column is written with), Times New Roman, or Calibri. Technically, font is the style (italic or regular) and size, e.g., 14-point (size of letters in this column) or 26-point (size of letters in the title of this column), of the letter within the same family. The Chief Diversity Officer announced the change was being made to State Department written communications to make them more “fully inclusive”.
Since making sure that all State Department employees felt racially accepted was only a part of what the State Department’s DEI program was established to do, in the course of doing their additional DEI work, DEI diligence discovered that as many as 20% of Americans most likely either had difficulty or could not read at all written communications from the State Department, simply due to the typeface the State Department was using to print its written text communications.
According to the Yale University Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, 20% of Americans live with Dyslexia, meaning the 20% along with other Americans with learning disabilities, impaired vision, or those who need assistive technologies like screen readers to read text, have trouble reading certain written text typefaces. Many speech pathologists, such as Natalie Fitzgerald, have discovered that people with dyslexia, as well as those with other reading disabilities, find it much easier to read and comprehend what they are reading if the text is written with a sans-serif typeface with a minimum font size of 12-point. The sans-serif typeface Calibri is considered more accessible for people with reading challenges because of its simpler shapes and wider spacing, which makes its letters easier to distinguish.
With the INCLUSION goal of making sure that all written State Department communications are more “fully inclusive” to Americans with dyslexia, learning disabilities, or impaired vision thus guaranteeing that they have the same reading access to written text State Department communications as all other Americans, the Chief Diversity Officer recommended and former Secretary of State Blinken responded by dictating, that all future written communications from the State Department change from being written using the serif typeface Times New Roman, to be written using the sans-serif typeface Calibri, Blinken also ordered that the font size be raised from 14-point to 15-point.
Unfortunately, the State Department’s DEI act of logic and compassionate inclusion for Americans previously denied access was voided 2 plus years later, by an act of anti-DEI insanity and selfishness!!!
Last week, America’s current Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, sent out a memo titled “Action Request” with a subject line that said “Return to Tradition: Times New Roman 14-Point Font Required for All Department Paper”, domestically and to all diplomatic posts around the world, dictating from that point forward, all State Department written communications must revert back to using the serif typeface Times New Roman. Rubio’s rationale for the change was that serif typefaces like Times New Roman are “generally perceived to connote tradition, formality and ceremony”, that Times New Roman was used by the White House, Supreme Court, state and federal government entities, and in the script on the side of Air Force One. In the memo, Rubio described the Biden administration’s change from Times New Roman as “radical” and a “wasteful” standard operating procedure to diversity.
Rubio also referenced President Trump’s executive order, which requires federal buildings in Washington to maintain a classical style of Greco-Roman architecture associated with the marble columns and austere hallways of the Supreme Court and U.S. Capitol, as additional justification in making the change, because serif typefaces such as Times New Roman cite their origins to Roman antiquity.
In other words, Secretary Rubio has determined that it’s acceptable to switch from using a typeface that 100% of the people he works for (American Citizens) can read, to a typeface that 20% of the people he works for cannot. Because, in his personal opinion, the typeface he prefers looks more professional, because other federal departments or federal objects use a typeface that 20% of Americans have trouble reading, and because the typeface that 20% of Americans have trouble reading is a style President Trump prefers.
It’s this type of decision-making that the State Department’s Chief Diversity Officer (as well as other DEI programs located in state and local government or corporate America) was meant to prevent. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what looks professional or not is a matter of personal taste; whether buildings or typeface should be Greco-Roman styled is a matter of personal perspective. Whether or not a person can read a certain type of typeface is not based on personal taste; it’s based on a person’s personal ability to do so. The purpose of DEI is to ensure that no one’s or no group’s personal characteristics, likes, and biases prevent the inclusion of anyone or any group because they have different personal characteristics, likes, and biases.
Unfortunately, Secretary Rubio abolished the Chief Diversity Officer position, had he not done so, there would have been someone to advise him that he would be making a selfish decision if he failed to prioritize the reading accessibility for American citizens with dyslexia or other reading disabilities by choosing to use a typeface they either can’t read or have trouble reading simply because, in his personal opinion, the typeface he likes looks more professional. DEI would have advised that the fully inclusive, more considerate, and more humane decision would be to use a typeface readable by the largest number of American citizens. It’s the same DEI inclusiveness, consideration, and humanity shown by most public officials that has become commonplace throughout America, while they stand at a podium making public pronouncements, with a person standing next to them performing sign language for American citizens who are hearing impaired.
Since the purpose of DEI is to foster an environment or create a government policy where all races, cultures, genders, religions, ages, political affiliations, sexual orientations, and physical afflictions are both respected and included, it makes what Secretary Rubio and all of President Trump’s many other anti-DEI abolishment initiatives anti-DEI INSANITY!!!
Even if President Trump continues to keep the border closed until he terms expires, even if he continues to only let in white immigrants from South Africa who lie and claim they are fleeing racial discrimination, or decides to only let in white immigrants from the European countries he favors until his term expires, nothing can change the cold hard fact that in 20 years or less American Whites will no longer be the majority race in America. The die has already been cast, and the trend is already well in motion, since 2015, babies of color outnumber white babies born in America, since the 2014-15 school term, students of color outnumber white students in America’s public school systems, and since 2018, the majority of the U.S. population under the age of 15 are people of color. When you combine this with the fact that more and more people who appear to be American White are identifying as mixed race, it’s probably more like as little as 10-15 years when American Whites will lose majority population status.
While American Whites will remain the largest racial group in America, America is approaching the point where no race will be able to unilaterally dictate what happens in America. Females will, as they are now, continue to be the overwhelmingly majority gender population, but since females come in all races, religions, political affiliations, and sexual orientations, they can never be a consistent unified block that will dictate terms in America. And although the vast majority of faith-believing Americans are Christian, American Christianity has within it Christian denominations that, in 2025, still will not ordain a female to preach the Christian gospel, rendering it impossible for the Christian faith to be a consistent unified block that will dictate terms in America.
Which means once American Whites lose their majority population status, all races, all religions, all genders, all sexual orientations, and all atheists will have to work together to maintain America’s democracy. Which means they all have to have a seat at the table. Which means it’s essential that DEI is a component of both government and corporate America to ensure they all have a seat at the table. Which means all the anti-DEI insanity that is occurring within the Trump administration, and all the anti-DEI insanity the Trump administration is using its immense government power to force upon colleges and corporate America, must be stopped and reversed, if for no other reason than to ensure that the precious American White culture that Rubio and Trump claim their anti-DEI insanity is meant to protect is not replaced and is properly represented at the table.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion exists to protect and make room for all people of color and all their cultures, so Secretary Rubio and President Trump are dead wrong in their attempts to ban DEI, DEI definitely protects, preserves, and makes room for American Whites and their culture because at the end of the day when it’s all said and done American Whites are people of color too, the white color!!!