Dear President Trump: A Letter about DEI and the Greatness of America
Dear President Trump:
We have not met (although I was at a few of the White House Christmas parties during your first term). Fun fact: we both have the same birthday – June 14, which is also Flag Day.
I always thought that made me especially patriotic as I love my country and I love being an American. No hyphens in my self-identity because I was born and raised in America, which is my home country.
I have lived in no other country; I speak no other language except “Anglish” (American English); three of my four grandparents were born here and the fourth emigrated from Italy as a toddler. That doesn’t make me Italian but does make me very much an American. I know American history; I sing American songs; I know American folklore and I love American literature. I especially love our American philosophy of Transcendentalism, which emphasized “individualism, self-reliance, and spiritual growth” as reported by Google’s Artificial Intelligence Assistant.
While no one is perfect -- which means no country is perfect since they are made up of people -- I am one of the few who still believe in American Exceptionalism. Why do I believe in it? Because American Exceptionalism comes directly from the collaboration and coming together of individuals and is based on ideas rather than ethnicity or other shared demographics; through this collaboration, an amalgamation of ideas, experience, and skills create a more successful outcome which at times is exceptional.
We are not exceptional because we are American; we are exceptional because we collaborate. Successful collaboration requires diversity and inclusion.
It is this DIVERSITY of thought and experience that made America great.
While I am not a road warrior, I am an experienced traveler and have had the opportunity to travel outside our country. I always felt welcome where I traveled as a tourist, and I enjoyed what I saw and learned. But one takeaway I brought home early in life is this: You can move to another country but you will never be one of them because you weren’t born there. However, in our country, you can CHOOSE to become an American. That is the beauty of INCLUSION and it makes our country a wonderful place.
There is a lot of data that shows that Diversity and Inclusion policies – rather than affirmative action or quotas – improve opportunities and open doors for more people. Why is this important for individuals and organizations? Because strong teams do not all look alike, think alike, or have the same skills. As a former real estate developer, President Trump, I’m sure you understand that you can’t hire an entire team of riveters. You need other skills and knowledge to bring that building into being – and the building is much better because of it.
Practicing diversity and inclusion in recruitment simply means you look outside your usual places – it doesn’t mean quotas or preferences. It means finding people in places where you haven’t looked before. It means opening your mind to the possibilities rather than the biases. It means looking beyond appearance and seeing the potential of an individual.
When it comes to Equity, it is an unfairly maligned approach due to a lack of understanding of what it really means. At its heart, what it means is giving people what they need when they need it. As a parent and grandparent, President Trump, you practice Equity with your children and grandchildren. They all needed different support options or education to become the unique people they are today. As they continue to grow, what they need to succeed will change as well. Equity is just paying attention to the needs of the individuals around you.
Sadly Mr. President, you have made a common mistake. You think DEI is code for discrimination and preferences. I can understand that because it is a policy that has been misused, misunderstood, and sometimes used as cover for the unscrupulous. As often happens with acronyms, we forget what it really means.
But in the end Mr. President, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are what made American great in the first place, and these will continue to make it great long after you and I are done celebrating birthdays. You have put together a team that Fox News host Greg Gutfeld called a “merry pirate ship of radicals” which he meant as a compliment as he was pointing out how diverse and inclusive your team is.
What else can you call a team with an autistic billionaire originally from South Africa, a no-nonsense former governor who grew up on a ranch in South Dakota, a former independent (now Republican) also former Democrat from Hawaii who was a member of Congress, a former Army Ranger with on-air media experience and a nonprofit organization background, a scion of a Democratic political dynasty with a passion for improving health across the country, and we’ll end this list with the son of Cuban immigrants who is now the Secretary of State.
Immigrants. Children of immigrants. Women. Neurodiversity. People with different viewpoints on how things can get done collaborating together.
Seems pretty diverse and inclusive to me.
As a fellow Gemini, I hope you will take a moment to look at both sides of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and find the benefits of it for all of us. We here in the nonprofit management profession see the good in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and how it helps us achieve our missions.
Please rethink your approach to these sweeping Executive Orders about “DEI” and preserve what made our country great: offering individuals opportunities.
Sincerely,
Cecilia Sepp, CAE, ACNP
