When I was young, diversity meant that I knew some Lutheran kids.

Around here, we were mostly German descended with a scattered few Irish and British. Norwegians lived by Hanska. Native Americans lived on the reservation.

The Sleepy Eye of my youth is gone. Hispanic families started coming for work forty years ago. Thank God, they did. Otherwise, the economy around here would be significantly less than it is. Hispanics are indispensable in every occupation now.

We all grew up learning that America is a “melting pot.” It was a point of pride. As kids, we understood that America is made great by welcoming and empowering a wide range of ethnicities and cultures.

Something happened to those wistful notions that we knew as sixth graders. Now adults, without the understanding of sixth graders, are telling us that America’s doors should close or be barely open. More than that, we favor people with a certain skin color.

Recently, a Presidential Determination reduced our refugee admissions from 175,000 from around the globe to 7,500 white South Africans. The cynic in me (which has been working overtime) would suggest they should at least try to hide the racism.

Since Inauguration Day, we have witnessed a crazed attack on anything resembling support for “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

That phrase has a listing in the Meriam Webster Dicitonary: “A set of values and practices focused on establishing a culture of equitable and inclusive treatment and on attracting and retaining a diverse group of participants, including people who have historically been excluded.”

You tell me how those good and positive words became something to be despised and ripped from our country?

I am reminded of Humpty Dumpty. In Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass.” Humpty Dumpty declares, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean.” Alice questions if words can mean so many different things. Humpty Dumpty replies, “The question is which is to be master. That’s all.”

Till now, diversity, equality, and inclusiveness have been goals of this melting pot country we share. It would be nice, and naïve, to think those come naturally. They don’t.

In my lifetime, Michael Donald was lynched. He was walking home from a store in Mobile, Alabama, forced into a car at gunpoint, driven out in the country, beat, hung form a tree, his throat slit three times. That night a cross was burned in front of the courthouse to “celebrate.”

In my lifetime, two men offered to give Mathew Shepard a ride home from a bar in Laramie, Wyoming. Shepard was gay. He, too, was driven to a rural area. He was pistol-whipped, tortured, tied to a split-rail fence, and left to die.

These are extreme and horrible examples of hatred triggered by the identity of the victim. There are many, many more.

Those attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts would have you believe, “Everything is better in this country now. Racism is a thing of the past.”

Blacks and Natives still live disproportionately poorer and unhealthier lives. Women still make lower wages for comparable work. That is measurably true for Hispanics, too. I suspect gay kids still get picked on, but I don’t have statistics on that.

Events trigger reactions. The deaths of George Floyd, Michael Brown, and Ahmaud Arbury pushed more intentional efforts to promote diversity, equality, and inclusion. They even became capital letters: DEI.

There are a lot of us who want to live in a country that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive. We know it is a goal we will never fully achieve. But it is aspirational. It is what Lincoln called our ‘better angels.”

It’s hard to know why such severe and intense effort is being made to undo anything that hints of a DEI purpose. It feels like a paranoia has swept over those who swim in the ocean of Fox News, Tucker Carlson, and their tributaries. They are all rushing to the defense of white men.

Is there somewhere a white man who did not get a position because of efforts by some company to seek diversity?

I suppose.

Does it come close to equaling centuries of slavery, genocide of Native people, and decades of stifling Jim Crow laws?

Only if you are delusional and completely ignorant of history.

C’mon. There has been no more privileged group in the history of our planet than American white males.

Are all of them living lives of luxury?

Of course not.

But is that the fault of non-whites?

No.

Those who promote this paranoia of DEI are doing a disservice to white males who should be working to better themselves rather than blaming others. Stephen Miller is the leader of this group of whiney white men.

It would be bad enough if the anti-DEI forces only focused on policies of recent years. Unfortunately, we are seeing clawing back of civil rights laws going back half a century. Members of both parties supported those. At times, that took great courage by members of Congress, courage that is desperately lacking today.

Again, civil rights legislation came to be in my lifetime. Laws have made lives better for people of color, gay people, and disabled. If you look at any of these groups and their status in society when I was born in 1956, it was worse.

A problem (there are many) with tearing away a half century of civil rights advancement, it not only diminishes those individuals, but it also diminishes the United States. One can argue against the anti-DEI frenzy on ethical grounds. But there is large damage done to our economy.

The refugees that won’t come here and the foreign students who are banned have historically been among the most creative and industrious people in our society. We already see other countries lining up to attract the young scientists who won’t be coming here.

We benefit when every individual unleashes their potential, not just those of an anointed gender, skin color, and sexual persuasion.

If you want to make America great, forget the “again.” We can be better than we were. We can embrace our diversity, our inclusiveness, and our equality.

— Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye, where he lives with his wife, Pam.