Right-wingers smear Brandon Scott, who was elected with over 70%, as a diversity hire after Key Bridge collapse

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott hit back at critics who called him a “DEI mayor” after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse this week.

Right-wing social media users bizarrely labeled Scott, who was elected with over 70% of the vote, “Baltimore’s DEI mayor” following a press conference on the collapse.

MSNBC host Joy Reid noted that Scott was overwhelmingly elected in a predominantly Black city.

“So by right-wing logic, a ‘diversity hire’ would have been a white man,” Reid said Wednesday.

“I know, and we know, and you know very well that Black men, and young Black men in particular, have been the bogeyman for those who are racist and think that only straight, wealthy White men should have a say in anything,” Scott told Reid.

“We’ve been the bogeyman for them since the first day they brought us to this country, and what they mean by DEI in my opinion is duly elected incumbent,” he continued. “We know what they want to say, but they don’t have the courage to say the N-word, and the fact that I don’t believe in their untruthful and wrong ideology. And I am very proud of my heritage and who I am and where I come from, scares them, because me being at my position means that their way of thinking, their way of life of being comfortable while everyone else suffers is going to be at risk, and they should be afraid because that’s my purpose in life.”

  • cogman@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Much much simpler than that. Remember how just a few months ago everything the right didn’t like was “woke”? And a few months before that how everything the right didn’t like was CRT?

    Well, we are here now. All problems are a result of DEI. It really does not matter that it’s completely insane to view the world like this. Right wing media has it’s current swear word of the month and that word (or in this case acronym) is DEI.

    What’s super effective about this tactic is exactly what the mayor hints at. It’s a way to say the n-word without saying it.

    The angle here is the right is a bunch of racist bigots and framing all the ills of the world in terms of that racist bigotry makes their lizard brained viewers happy (well, angry, but at the right people).

    Quiet literally how Nazi propaganda worked. Blame all the problems of germany on the jews and the non-jews right wing morons will happily nod along with “yer right, it is the Jews’ fault our society is crumbling!” It did not have to make sense or be reasonable. You just constantly plant that fear and suspicion in your dumbass follower’s brains.

          • geekwithsoul@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            You know the whole acronym vs initialism thing is a somewhat new idea? And there’s no hard and fast agreement on it. To correct people on whether something is an acronym or not (especially when they are using it within the term’s original meaning) is simply pedantic.

        • Seeker of Carcosa
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          8 months ago

          We both know who cares. Who would derail a discussion about bigotry by making pedantic observations on grammar or language?