Y'all are a smart bunch so what I'm about to say is captain obvious material:
This anti-DEI frenzy is an intentional and orchestrated campaign by Republicans to dogwhistle racism to their base just like they always have, just another example of Republican racist ugliness dressed up in distraction, a political lesson they mastered back in the days of Ronnie Reagan and Lee Atwater. This is so transparently obvious and cynical and it's disgusting that the mainstream media won't call it out for what it is.
Very few of these racist asshats know anything about how DEI initiatives work in practice and many are probably unaware of the Supreme Court decision that struck down affirmative action, but the one through-line that binds them all in unstated agreement is the idea that a person of color who has outperformed them in professional life probably did so not for reasons of merit and skill but because they got a big handout along the way on the basis of race. The Supreme Court gave these right-wingers a huge win when it struck down affirmative action practices in higher education, but the Republican party apparatus was never going to let go of using that as a political cudgel and they knew they couldn't just keep talking about affirmative action, so they latched on to every hold they could grab to continue their assault on minority communities in America. DEI, CRT, woke.....99% of America had never heard about any of these arcane concepts until bad faith right-wingers ginned them up into the post-covid zeitgeist fueled by inflammatory Fox News chyrons and social media bullshit. It's all a contrived show to mask their obvious racism at a time when the masks are slipping off.