The utterly insidious result of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is that it politicizes virtually every staffing decision and leaves Americans arguing over racial divisions, even when tragedy strikes. Democrats believe this benefits them politically, which is why they’ve focused on race for as long as there’s been a Democrat Party.

“You have to be a slave because of your skin color.” —Democrats, 1828-1865

“You can’t do this job because of your skin color.” —Democrats, 1866-1964

“Employers have to hire you because of your skin color.” —Democrats, 1965-present

That’s a gross oversimplification, perhaps, but it illustrates the racial obsession that has been a fundamental part of Democrat politics for 200 years.

The race hustlers are also horribly inconsistent. On the one hand, they insist that some people must be hired based on skin color. On the other hand, they argue that minorities must be removed from sports logos and food packaging because of their skin color.

With that setup, let’s consider the tragic accident in Washington, DC, Wednesday evening that claimed the lives of 67 people. Three U.S. Army personnel aboard a Blackhawk helicopter collided with American Eagle Flight 5342, bearing 64 passengers and crew, just moments from landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Investigators are trying to determine the precise cause of the accident, and authorities are still pulling bodies from the Potomac River, but that hasn’t stopped armchair pilots from expressing dogged certainty about what happened and why.

Frankly, that includes President Donald Trump. “We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas,” he said. “And I think we’ll probably state those opinions now because over the years, I’ve watched as things like this happen, and they say, ‘Well, we’re always investigating.’” He went on to blame DEI.

The president would have done better to hold on a minute before doing his typical bull-in-a-china-shop thing. He’s the Great Disrupter. It’s what he does. But sometimes it’s tiresome.

My interest here is the role DEI played not in the accident but in the argument about it.

What do we know about the pilots involved or the Air Traffic Control (ATC) personnel on duty that night? We know the ATC personnel were overtasked — two people were doing the jobs of four. Was that because DEI protocols reduced staffing?

We know that there was nearly a similar crash the night before, as Republic Airways Flight 4514 diverted from its landing descent to avoid another helicopter. We also know that there’s a class-action lawsuit by nearly a thousand Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) trainees who allege they were turned away from ATC positions because they weren’t racially diverse enough.

According to the FAA’s revised authorization under Joe Biden, “The FAA is fully committed to ensuring equal employment opportunity while maintaining the highest safety standards as outlined in the agency’s Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan 2021-2025.”

Yes, that includes the requisite promise about “maintaining the highest safety standards,” but race-based hiring restrictions could create staffing and morale issues in ATC. From a broader standpoint, that’s precisely the problem: DEI staffing issues are both real and perceived.

The ideal way to choose employees is to be color-blind and merit-based. While it’s not necessarily wrong to allow personal connections to play a role, the immutable characteristic of race should not. Sex is also unchangeable, though I’d argue it can sometimes factor into appropriate roles. It does not in this case, so I’ll leave it at that.

Trump did get this right, saying, “We have to have our smartest people. It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are.”

He signed an executive order yesterday ordering Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and the FAA administrator to “review all hiring decisions and changes to safety protocols made during the prior 4 years, and to take such corrective action as necessary to achieve uncompromised aviation safety, including the replacement of any individuals who do not meet qualification standards.”

The danger of DEI has nothing to do with whether people of any skin color can do a particular job. The problem is choosing people based on their color instead of their competence. That priority means DEI lowers standards for minorities, in some cases making them actually less qualified; they don’t need to be to land many positions.

For the countless minorities who do work hard and are highly skilled, they still face unfair perceptions that they didn’t earn their job. Reasonable people have to battle that perception in their own minds. I’m not supposed to think that, but it could be true. The result is, at a minimum, racial suspicion and division.

Next time you wrestle with that, thank the Democrats.

Time and investigators will tell what happened Wednesday in DC. Regardless, American aviation has a remarkable track record of safety. “Since the last crash in 2009 more than 10 billion passengers have flown in the U.S., on more than 150 million flights, that spent more than 225 million hours in the air,” notes Charles C.W. Cooke. “What happened [Wednesday] was a terrible tragedy, but it was an aberration.”

The objective ought to be to keep it that way by making every hire color-blind and merit-based.

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Footnote: As always with tragedies, people say crazy things. Some conspiracy theorists allege that the accident was not an accident. On the Left, they’re blaming Trump with a list of things he’s done that are supposedly relevant: “January 20: Trump FIRES the FAA director; January 21: Trump FREEZES all Air Traffic Controller hiring; January 22: Trump DISBANDS the Aviation Safety Advisory Committee; January 28: Trump sends a buyout/retirement ransom letter to existing FAA employees; January 29: First American mid-air collision in 16 years, 67 fatalities.”

Give it a rest, guys.

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