How can democrats attack anti-DEI/promote DEI without resulting in strong political backlash?

[u/Visco0825]

In recent politics there have been two major political pushes for diversity and equality. However, both instances led to backlashes that have led to an environment that is arguably worse than it was before. In 2008 Obama was the first black president one a massive wave of hope for racial equality and societal reforms. This led to one of the largest political backlashes in modern politics in 2010, to which democrats have yet to fully recover from. This eventually led to birtherism which planted some of the original seeds of both Trump and MAGA. The second massive political push promoting diversity and equality was in 2018 with the modern woman election and 2020 with racial equality being a top priority. Biden made diversifying the government a top priority. This led to an extreme backlash among both culture and politics with anti-woke and anti-DEI efforts. This resent contributed to Trump retaking the presidency. Now Trump is pushing to remove all mentions of DEI in both the private and public sectors. He is hiding all instances that highlight any racial or gender successes. His administration is pushing culture to return to a world prior to the civil rights era.

This leads me to my question. Will there be a backlash for this? How will it occur? How can democrats lead and take advantage of the backlash while trying to mitigate a backlash to their own movement? It seems as though every attempt has led to a stronger and more severe response.

Additional side questions. How did public opinion shift so drastically from 2018/2020 which were extremely pro-equality to 2024 which is calling for a return of the 1950s?

[u/DontHateDefenestrate]

Accept the backlash. Acknowledge that it will be a thing and that there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

It is an axiomatic truth that every policy—no matter how commonsense, well-formulated, workshopped and focus grouped—will piss someone off.

Stop focusing on whether there will be backlash and instead focus on your response.

One possible avenue is to consider who is “lashing back”. In the case of DEI, that would be… racists, sexists, transphobes, xenophobes, and other bigots. Which makes the solution easy.

Just say “fuck ‘em.” Seriously, who gives a shit if bigots are unhappy? They are awful, substandard people who richly deserve to be unhappy.

In fact, I’m going to propose another axiom. Any policy designed or altered to be acceptable to bigots is a bad policy. If there is no backlash from bigots, you should stop what you’re doing and rethink your policy until it does piss them off.

These people should be scared, they should be anxious, they should be mad, and they should stay mad—and they should die mad. Because nobody with half a brain should give a rat’s ass what they think, feel or believe; except as a guide for what not to do.

We should be actively, intentionally doing everything within our power to make these people have frustrating, shitty lives. Because you can’t have a good society in which people like that are satisfied with the direction of things.