Boeing has had its fair share of negative news coverage lately, as the company’s decades of corner-cutting, outsourcing, and neglect led to some recent terrifying mishaps.
You might wonder what this has to do with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Well, it seems that efforts to create more just and equitable workplaces are the scariest thing imaginable to certain right-wing influencers. So terrifying, in fact, that they could lead to aviation disasters.
Elon Musk, the CEO of a car company whose vehicles have a tendency to catch fire, tweeted, “It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE.” The obvious innuendo is that Black people are responsible for Boeing’s failures. Musk has also referred to DEI as “just another word for racism.”
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But Musk didn’t stop there. He amplified a tweet that suggested Black students have lower IQs, attacked HBCUs, and argued Blacks have “borderline intellectual impairment.” This is eugenics, plain and simple. It’s pseudo-science used to dehumanize Blacks, not dissimilar to when pro-slavery white people argued that Blacks were more suited for field work because they couldn’t learn and had smaller brains.
Not to be outdone, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk—a vocal Donald Trump sycophant—used Boeing’s issues to argue against the employment of Black pilots. During a podcast, Kirk said, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’” Other MAGA celebrities expressed similarly racist concerns.
Just 3.4 percent of U.S. airline pilots are Black. White men have flown the friendly skies almost exclusively since the Wright brothers’ first flight in 1903. Even with mitigation efforts to make air navigation more reflective of the society it serves, training programs, recruitment strategies, and airlines have fallen short.
United Airlines and Delta Airlines, specifically, have advanced diversity in hiring, but even there the needle hasn’t moved much in diversifying the pilot class—it’s still overwhelmingly majority white male.
So why are the likes of Elon Musk, Charlie Kirk, and others using the pilot workforce situation as the target of their DEI takedown?
The simple answer is… because they can. There is a shortage of airline pilots, a growing number of pilots are of retirement age, and the pipeline must be expanded to keep up with consumer demand. These realities scare certain white men who are hellbent on believing they are the master race, and that all others are inherently inferior.
And the attacks on DEI are coordinated and relentless.
As of this week, Florida’s 28 public colleges are prohibited from using government funds for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. And because everything’s bigger in the Lone Star State, Texas boasts 30 new anti-DEI laws. Thirteen states’ attorneys general signed a public letter in July 2023 after the fall of affirmative action in college admissions. The letter had nothing to do with college admissions, but the Republican AGs used the Supreme Court decision as a platform to directly voice their collective opposition to DEI in the workforce.
These efforts don’t even scratch the surface of the anti-DEI architects’ ultimate goal—stratifying the American workforce and reducing access to the C-suite, STEM careers, small businesses, and opportunities previously afforded almost solely to white men. America is more diverse today than it has ever been—and the fix is in to ensure diversity isn’t reflected in high-paying jobs, the highest levels of government, or leadership in America’s top educational institutions.
To be Black in America is to live in a constant threat of attack on your civil rights and humanity, the questioning of your abilities, and a belief that you are unworthy solely because of the color of your skin. Regardless of how often Nikki Haley says, “America isn’t a racist country,” the red, white, and blue time and again finds itself painfully erecting barriers to Black achievement, health access, and any marker of equity.
