President Joe Biden has made diversity, equity, and inclusion a focal point of his administration, but throughout his tenure, programs with the same aims have been dismantled.
When first ascending to the Oval Office, Biden promised to use his post to address racial disparities within the United States, but outside of his powers, DEI initiatives, such as critical race theory and the Black Lives Matter movement, have faced setbacks, including the Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action last year.
The week after his first 2024 Democratic primary win in South Carolina, attributable to the state’s black Democrats, Biden underscored his record with the constituency that has become crucial to his party during a White House event commemorating Black History Month as critics raise concerns about low turnout in the first Democratic sanctioned contest despite the president rearranging the nominating calendar for it.
“I promised an administration that would look like America. I’m proud to have the most diverse administration in all of American history,” he said on Tuesday in the East Room. “I am president, and Kamala [Harris] is vice president, because of you. You’ve had my back, and we’ve had your back, and we always will.”
While Biden clings to DEI initiatives, several GOP-led states have scaled back or outlawed diversity programs at public colleges and government offices on legal and moral grounds, including Utah, Texas, and North Dakota. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) made his anti-DEI efforts part of his failed presidential campaign, claiming that “DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion, and indoctrination.”
Biden’s advocacy of DEI programs is a poll-driven decision because they are popular nationally, according to Suffolk University Political Research Center Director David Paleologos.
Paleologos cited Suffolk University Sawyer Business School and USA Today’s Main Street Survey of Consumer Issues last September, in which a majority of respondents told pollsters DEI is “very important,” with a total of 80% describing it as “at least important.”
That trend held across demographics, particularly black voters and young people, “two groups of voters that he needs to shore up,” Paleologos said. “Among young people, 84% said DEI business practices are important and 86% among black voters.”
But Ari Fleischer, former President George W. Bush’s White House press secretary, disagreed, contending identity politics is “a big vulnerability for the Democrats and always has been.”
“Identity politics is a loser,” Fleischer said. “This is why the Democrats have lost blue-collar workers and have become the party of upper-income, college-educated voters. They’re still losing support among blacks and Hispanics. DEI is popular among college-educated progressives, and that’s it.”
The one advantage Democrats have is the likelihood former President Donald Trump will become the 2024 Republican nominee, per Fleischer.
“I do believe that these disaffected groups will come home,” he said of Biden’s appeals to black voters and young people, among others. “That’s the power of Donald Trump. Donald Trump instills massive loyalty among many Republicans, many blue-collar voters, many voters without college degrees. He has jumbled up the mix and will create huge turnout for him. He will also create huge turnout against him.”
To that end, Biden’s campaign defended the president’s achievements regarding racial justice and diversity within and due to his administration, from Harris to other high-ranking members of his Cabinet.
“The president is responsible for confirming the most diverse slate of judges in history, including the historic nomination of Supreme Court Justice [Ketanji Brown] Jackson,” a campaign spokeswoman said. “That type of commitment to advancing equity is part of why we’re seeing the type of enthusiasm that we just saw, and the type of turnout that we just saw in South Carolina last weekend.”
“I just would tell you that and then point you to the president’s DEI executive order in 2021,” she said.
That executive order reiterated that it is Biden’s policy for the federal government workforce to draw “from the full diversity of the nation,” for instance, by hiring chief diversity officers and through diversity recruitment pathways, in addition to encouraging employees to undertake diversity training and professional development, as well as enhancing data collection. It came after he took similar action during his first day as president, signing a separate strengthened order two years later, specifically concerning racial diversity.
“It is imperative that we reject the narrow, cramped view of American opportunity as a zero-sum game,” the White House said last year in a statement. “When any segment of society is denied the full promise of America, our entire nation is held back. But when we lift each other up, we are all lifted up.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre additionally referred to the executive orders when asked about black voter dissatisfaction with Biden, most recently over his response to the Israel–Hamas war and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
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“When we walked in, the president wanted to make sure that the White House used the full force of the federal government to deal with racial equity, to deal with racial justice,” Jean-Pierre said. “You’ve seen 2.6 million more black Americans have jobs. That’s because there is, make sure there’s equity at the center of all policies again, economic policies. And so the president wants to make sure that all communities are not left behind.”
The Supreme Court’s decisions last year that ruled affirmative action was unconstitutional in the college admissions process have had consequences for diversity and DEI programs across the country as state governments and private companies distance themselves from the initiatives, coinciding with the broader political change best evidenced by last year’s National Defense Authorization Act and the military.
