'DEI mayor' insults prove that unapologetic racism is back

[Celerity]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/01/baltimore-bridge-dei-mayor-governor/

https://archive.is/HdSvd



Silly me: I wanted to believe the overt, in-your-face racism that I saw growing up in segregated South Carolina was ancient history. I was wrong. Unapologetic racism is back, thanks to the anything-goes MAGA permission structure and the echo-chamber amplification of social media. This fact was brought home on the morning of March 26, shortly after a massive cargo ship struck and collapsed the iconic Francis Scott Key Bridge spanning the entrance to Baltimore harbor.

Mayor Brandon Scott, who had raced to the scene, went before television cameras to give an update on the “unthinkable tragedy,” as any mayor would have done. But Scott is African American — and for MAGA trolls on X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, that means he can’t be seen as just any mayor. “This is Baltimore’s DEI mayor commenting on the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge,” one such troll posted, along with a clip of Scott’s remarks, to his more than 275,000 followers. “It’s going to get so, so much worse. Prepare accordingly.”

“DEI” is shorthand for diversity, equity and inclusion. For decades, since the triumph of the civil rights movement, those concepts have been lauded in our public discourse as virtues. For the unhinged far right, however, “DEI” has come to mean “any Black or Brown person who holds a position of authority that we think should have gone to a White man.” Scott’s anonymous attacker drew amens from a like-minded crowd on X. “He looks like your average street criminal,” wrote one. “Dude just looks like someone who was there as an eye witness lol,” offered another.

Okay, you could argue that this might be more stupid than racist. Mayors don’t get their jobs through DEI hiring practices; they earn them through a process called democracy. Scott, 39, was elected in 2020 in a landslide, winning more than 70 percent of the vote. In a city whose population is more than 60 percent African American, according to Census Bureau figures, it should surprise no one that the mayor might happen to be Black. One of Scott’s MAGA critics on X, however, took these facts into account and still tried to delegitimize him: “DEI: Who cares when your city is going to sh-t because of drugs, increased crime, defunding police and poor infrastructure when you have a Mayor that ‘looks like you’, WINNING!!!!!”

snip

[The Unmitigated Gall]

1. If he'd worn a full suit, the RT trolls

Would have attacked him.

RT = racist trash.