Texas Governor Greg Abbott chose the politically potent word “cleansing” to describe his contention that the DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies that progressives promote are not only unnecessary, but harmful.
Abbott contends that DEI programs, rather than rebalancing historical injustices, instead function as a tool that “political extremists” use to “purge” those with whom they disagree. The Governor links to a story about a University of Texas professor who claims to have suffered retaliation for speaking out against the university’s DEI policies.
According to Abbott, DEI programs are superfluous because “diversity is already protected by federal & state law.” (Progressives generally argue that protection is not promotion.)
Abbott further scorns the so-called Woke agenda, saying that DEI is “nothing more than a political cleansing tool.”
This right here is the problem.
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) February 15, 2023
Political extremists use programs like DEI to purge professors with political philosophies they disagree with.
It’s nothing more than a political cleansing tool.
Diversity is already protected by federal & state law.https://t.co/i3yezeCzXM
As they say at the corral, them’s fightin’ words. Beyond its new-age meaning in Hollywood parlance (to flush your colon, i.e. “a cleanse”) and its more general use to describe the work of detergents and soap, “cleansing” has a strong — and brutal — political resonance.
In the political context, “ethnic” is the word most often found before “cleansing” — and in the phrase ethnic cleansing, cleansing is often a euphemism for killing. (It’s strongly associated with the Holocaust and genocides around the world, especially the murderous 1990s conflicts between Serbs and Bosnians.)
[Note: The History Channel describes ethnic cleansing “as the attempt to get rid of (through deportation, displacement or even mass killing) members of an unwanted ethnic group in order to establish an ethnically homogenous geographic area.”]
When Abbott, a graduate of Vanderbilt Law School, describes DEI as being used for “political cleansing,” his word choice is purposeful. Abbott doesn’t accuse the Left of an ethnic or racial cleansing, an important distinction. But in both Abbott’s “political cleansing” and “ethnic cleansing,” the “cleansing” has as its goal the achievement of certain purity or homogeneity.
With his “cleansing” claim, Abbott laments a homogeneity of political opinion on the Left, a purported cleansing of the diversity of opinions permitted in the public square. Ironically, DEI’s intent — a multitudinous heterogeneity in not just ethnic and racial types, but also in opinions and philosophy — is what Abbot says DEI prevents.
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