Why the focus on ‘divisive concepts’ in New Hampshire? Why the attacks on diversity programs?

Why is the modern Republican Party so invested in reframing American history? (Getty Images)

Years ago, when I worked as a newspaper opinion editor, a conservative reader sent a letter to argue that 21st-century America was a post-racial society. I don’t recall the details of his email except that his case was built around individual accomplishment, particularly the success of Black entertainers (including Bill Cosby) and the election and reelection of President Barack Obama.

His point, no doubt in response to something I had either published or written myself, was that structural racism — to the extent it ever existed — most certainly did not exist now.

I’m not sure how I responded exactly, but I do remember being baffled by the evidence he offered for his conclusion. To arrive at “post-racial society” via Cosby and Obama seemed both absurd and dangerous — a reductionist presentation of recent history, yes, but also a stubborn refusal to seek out the realities of other eyes.

And I’m not even talking about empathy — that’s like the advanced course. I mean just seeing through the experiences of others that there is not one America, that this nation exists differently for different people, and that opportunity is not a single, shared thread. 

While we have struggled mightily as a nation to even chip away at yawning opportunity gaps — not just for Black and Indigenous people but women, immigrants, the working poor, the list goes on and on — historically there seemed to me, naively as it turns out, to at least be agreement that the gaps existed. The frequent and sometimes violent conflict over that reality and its causes could be offered as ample proof, I thought. But now, an entire political party has built its brand on denialism and erasure — and found in its followers a population more than willing to sacrifice their future if it means the relief of forgetting the past and averting their eyes from the present.

My letter writer from years ago wasn’t a fringe anomaly but a harbinger. 

The most obvious example nationally is the Trump administration’s carpet-bombing of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and the countless ways those attacks have rippled out and laid waste to lives and livelihoods. Meanwhile, New Hampshire is mimicking the efforts and with the same toe-deep understanding of what purpose the programs actually serve. In one memorable February exchange, Auburn Republican Rep. Jess Edwards had to talk down fellow…