Signalgate is a consequence of anti-DEI hysteria: White mediocrity has become a national security risk

Signalgate is a consequence of anti-DEI hysteria
White mediocrity has become a national security risk

By Rann Miller
Published March 31, 2025 5:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) Lloyd Austin, the former defense secretary and a four-star general with 40 years of military experience, was nonetheless labeled a DEI hire of the Biden administration. Pete Hegseth, the current secretary of defense, lacks adequate expertise and experience, on top of the fact that he’s had allegations of sexual assault and is known as an excessive drinker. A former National Security Council member and a Senate member deemed Hegseth unqualified for the position. However, according to Donald Trump, Hegseth had a tremendous track record that qualified him for the position.

The MAGA crowd called for Austin to resign because he failed to share that he had an emergency medical procedure, yet they explain away Hegseth’s failure to keep the details of a war plan confidential. Clearly, the ability to keep a secret wasn’t a qualification for Hegseth to get the job as defense secretary. What Signalgate, the recent scandal involving the Trump administration discussing war plans in a text thread with a journalist mistakenly added to the conversation, made abundantly clear is that the only qualification for Hegseth is that he was what Mishel Williams calls WEI: white, entitled and incompetent.

The rationale of white people who’ve accepted privilege in exchange for power in solidarity, what W.E.B. DuBois coined the racial bribe — the deliberate and strategic method of the planter elite class to extend special privileges to poor whites to drive a wedge between them and enslaved African people — is that a Black person in a position of power and authority is unqualified. Specifically, it is the belief that affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are merely a euphemism, implying that a Black person, or a person of color, was hired for a position or selected to attend a prestigious institution solely to fulfill a quota. Rather than accept that affirmative action and DEI initiatives address the systemic racist practices and policies of the past that prevent African Americans and other historically oppressed and underrepresented groups from gaining access to positions they are qualified for, many white individuals believe that only they are capable of holding positions and occupying spaces of power, privilege and authority.

What this scandal shows is that the practice of hiring unqualified and mediocre white people — and calling it making America great — can, and has, compromised national security. And yet, many white people are so convinced that Black people and other people of color are wholly unqualified to lead, specifically those who don’t think like or act like them. ...........................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/03/31/signalgate-is-a-consequence-of-anti-dei-hysteria/