The Supreme Court recently ruled to allow President Donald Trump to withhold grant money intended to help train teachers in rural and impoverished areas. The administration classified these grants as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, claiming they undermined “merit, fairness and excellence” in teacher hiring policies. Although policies like these — anti-DEI or anti-gender-neutral-bathroom policies­ — appear to attack the things they are seemingly directed at — minority communities — they are really rhetorical moves by the Trump administration. While these policies do attack historically subjugated communities and harm people’s lives, these policies also, less loudly, harm communities of people that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Under the surface, these policies are rhetorical moves used by the Trump administration to distract their voters — predominantly non-minority communities — from the ways they are attacking them, and most other Americans.

  Over the past decade, the “Make America Great Again” movement has strategically spoken to rural, impoverished, working-class communities, claiming to protect their interests by framing concepts like “happy holidays,” DEI and gender-neutral bathroom signs as a threat to those communities’ status. In reality, though, these things pose no real threat. Yet, when the Trump administration passes legislation restricting these purported threats, their supporters now see it as promises fulfilled and as Trump himself calls it, the stamping out of “woke culture”— which he has convinced his voters to perceive as the real threats to Americana. Meanwhile, as these communities cheer victories in the war on wokeness, the Trump administration lines pockets and secures power while these distracted communities do not always notice rising inflation and egg prices that do actually impact their lives in more pertinent ways than DEI or restrooms. But here’s the catch: MAGA has also distracted liberal voters and those that condemn this administration and its policymaking. The left risks only seeing this policy as an attack on DEI and minorities, not the white, Midwestern working-class that will also suffer under these policies.

Although these policies do have real-world effects and do cause suffering for minority communities, their intended function is as a rhetorical illusion that hurts all communities: liberal and conservative, minority and majority. My hometown is one of these impoverished, rural communities that money could be withheld from. In my overwhelmingly white, Trump-supporting community, roughly 60% of students cannot afford any school meal without support; a comparable number never pursues higher education, be it college, trade school, apprenticeship or vocational training; and from my high school freshman class of over 120, only around 90 graduated. The president is attacking minorities, but he is also harming these people. This grant money is designed to give rural, impoverished communities qualified teachers, and help students receive basic amenities, like food yet the president has disguised this attack on rural communities as an attack on DEI, thus distracting everyone from a real and present threat.

We must protect all those at risk right now, including people of color, the LGBTQ+ community and immigrant folk, as well as the rural white working class, who is also suffering. This is the population that voted for Trump. This is the population that, just like the left risks doing, falls for the illusion that this administration is ending “wokeness,” when really, they are robbing Americans of their lives. This population will suffer, but silently so because neither they nor the left are aware of their suffering. And their suffering is not their fault. They are not idiots or self-saboteurs who enabled their own suffering. They are people that once saw no support from the left and so turned to the right, falling for the illusory promises the right made. Let us be compassionate now, because we will never fight back for our liberties of speech, education and the American dream if we do so with condescension. It is vital that you fight with, not against, the communities that voted differently than you.

Charlie Menzel ’28 is a religious studies and history major from Greencastle, Indiana. He can be reached at menzel1@kenyon.edu.