(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Kentucky Legislator Reveals Rationale for Defunding DEI [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-02-04 Republican State Representative Jennifer Decker, who represents Shelby County in the Kentucky Legislature, asked to come to the Monthly Meeting of the Shelbyville NAACP to talk about House Bill 9, the measure she introduced which would, among other things, prohibit funding for any DEI program in public post-secondary education in Kentucky, which includes both Universities and Community and Technical Colleges. When I heard about this I decided I needed to go and hear for myself what she had to say. Admittedly there is something to be admired for her wanting to bring this message to an audience that may not want to hear it. At the beginning of the meeting it was announced that she was running late with business at the legislature (in Frankfort, about 30 minutes east of Shelbyville) but rather than canceling did plan on attending. From the start of the presentation it was clear she was not asking for input from the audience. Instead she was there to justify her bill. It wasn’t until the Q&A part of the presentation that her thinking and motives became clear. She started by thanking the group for letting her come late and give her presentation. She then apparently established her bona fides by reminding everyone that she’s been a state representative since 2021 and that she has lived in Shelby County for 38 years. She said she was the director of Operation Care, a Christian non-profit that runs homeless shelters for women and children, a medical clinic for the uninsured and financially disadvantaged, and two food pantries. She then spent about 40 minutes going through a set of slides she admitted were meant more to help her remember what she was talking about than to inform the audience directly. Summarizing her arguments: In 1979, what she called “Office of Civil Rights of the Federal Government,” by which she probably meant the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, found that Kentucky post-secondary schools were segregated and entered into an agreement to use race-based admissions to integrate the schools. In 2008 the “OCR” released Kentucky from this agreement. Despite that, the Kentucky Council for Post Secondary Education, who she said was in charge of all post-secondary education, has mandated more diversity, and as part of those efforts implemented DEI programs in all schools under their supervision. Minority enrollments in all public post-secondary schools in Kentucky continue to fall despite DEI programs. She doesn’t know how much money is being spent on DEI programs, but she thinks it’s in the hundreds of millions of dollars. She asked all the public post-secondary schools how much they were spending on DEI. The only direct response she got was from the University of Kentucky who said they had about 110 people employed in their DEI program at a cost of $10M/year. Other institutions referred her to their overall budgets, but she said she was not able to use those to figure out what those DEI programs cost. The percentage of underrepresented minorities in schools is higher than the percentage of the populations of the areas surrounding the schools. This has been achieved by schools recruiting underrepresented minorities from out of state, even if those students “have money.” She quoted from a Doctoral dissertation by Felicia Toliver, who she identified as the “highest ranking DEI officer in the state.” The quotes described DEI programs as disorganized and not able to accomplish their goals. Then the questions started: Question: I know you mentioned being from here in Shelby County, and Kentucky clearly has a long history in slavery and exploitation. I was curious what if any role your family may have played in the slave trade. Rep. Decker: I’m glad you asked that question. My father was born on a dirt farm in Lincoln County. His mother was the illegitimate daughter of a very prominent person who then was kind enough to allow them to work for him as slaves. So if you’re asking, did we own slaves? My father was a slave , just to a white man and he was white. I get that. The way my family got out of poverty is education. I want everybody to have that right. And you know discrimination does not bring about non-discrimination. It’s just a different discrimination. Follow-up question: And so do you think being white advantaged you in any way to get an education or to further your education? Rep. Decker: (pause) I think we all have, you know what? There are people who are black who are far richer than me. And I think they’re particular, they have privilege of various things. I think we all can claim some privilege. Do I think that my race helped me get an education? No. I don’t. Does anybody else have questions? Yes there were other questions. Several noted that most of what she was talking about was minority admissions, but that she didn’t say anything about any connection between DEI programs and falling minority admissions. Her reply was “DEI is not helping.” Her quotes from Dr. Toliver’s dissertation (which you can find a preview of here) were at best a misunderstanding and at worst a misrepresentation. Even the preface of the thesis clearly described DEI officers as being expected to accomplish far more than one person could, and not getting the institutional support they need. A quick Google search shows that Dr. Toliver has been the Director of Cultural Diversity at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College since 2014. Where Rep. Decker got that “highest ranking DEI officer” description is anybody’s guess. At no point did she ask for the support of the NAACP as an organization, or even support from individuals in the audience. The president of the chapter, who welcomed Rep. Decker so graciously at the beginning of her presentation, was just as gracious in her declaration that the NAACP would not be supporting this bill. But since there was apparently some kind of personal relationship between the two, the president said she still looked forward to having meals together, and working with her to improve the community. My take on Rep. Decker is someone who came from an impoverished background and is blind to the privilege her whiteness brings her. The repeated references to taxpayer money going to underrepresented minorities, and “black people who are far richer than [her]” betray a resentment of anyone she considers as not white being better off than her. Had she been sincerely interested in diversity, which several times she declared she was, she would have been there to ask for perspectives and solutions, rather than trying to justify what she was imposing. But then again, any request for help, especially from the NAACP, would have been an admission that she is not superior and deeply hampered her image of herself as a white savior. But by far the most disrespectful and outrageous of all her comments in that hour was her description of her father as “a slave.” For one thing, her father couldn’t have been that old. I’d put her somewhere in her 60’s. (That picture I got from the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission is at least 10 years old.) She also admitted that her father was white. So far as I know, white people have never been enslaved. In one stroke, this characterization both dismisses the experience of enslaved people in this country over the last 400 years by equating it to her father’s experience, and also makes an equivalence between her experience and that of the descendants of enslaved people. Because she sees herself as successful she sees it as just as easy for anyone living with the legacy of their enslaved ancestors to be successful. There is therefore for her no need to acknowledge, much less address, the harms that racism has created in this country. Which means any existing efforts to address the harms of racism must themselves be shut down. That’s what’s really behind her bill. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/2/4/2221334/-Kentucky-Legislator-Reveals-Rationale-for-Defunding-DEI?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/