“This is Baltimore’s DEI mayor commenting on the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge,” the user wrote alongside a clip of Scott speaking. “It’s going to get so, so much worse. Prepare accordingly.”

The post was immediately fact checked and even came with an advisory.

“Brandon Scott was elected as Mayor of Baltimore in 2020 with > 70% of the vote,” the advisory reads. “He did not come in to office through any DEI practices, appointments, etc.” This isn’t the first instance of a racist swapping out the N-word with “DEI”—but it certainly is one of the most brazen.

  • Addv4@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Diversity, Equality, and Inclusiveness is what I think DEI meant. Correct me if wrong, took me a minute to figure out what the tweet was actually implying.

    • EmptySlime@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      8 months ago

      You’re correct. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The outrage is entirely manufactured just like with Critical Race Theory. Invented out of whole cloth almost entirely by the likes of Christopher Ruffo. It’s straight up just DEI is when minorities… Anything.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        These fascists don’t know the difference, though.

        They think that equality of opportunity is the same thing as guaranteeing superiority of outcome by deliberately punishing people for being white. Or for being cishet. Or for being Christian. Or for being a man. Or for being rich.

        Basically, the more privileged you are, the more persecuted the far right echo chamber pretends you are.

  • Frozengyro@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Hard to imagine a city that’s nearly 2/3 black electing a black mayor /s

    It blows my mind there are still such shitty people out there who think like that user.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      8 months ago

      You don’t understand, it doesn’t matter if it’s 100% black community, the only qualified people to run anything are white cis men and everyone knows that. Strangely enough even black people understand that even with their learning disabilities and all. Just look at the kings of Europe, see any black people there? Checkmate wokeyMcwokewoke!

      -Some racist moron probably.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      You could post a YT video of the cutest bunch of puppies ever and there would be comments suggesting you kill them.

      There’s no shortage of shitty people.

        • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          Thank God Musk got rid of all the Twitter bots. /s

          I mean technically… there are no Twitter bots anymore. There are only X bots.

  • Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Kinda like the word thug. Most people who use that word as hyperbole, use it as a replacement for the N word

  • silliewous@feddit.nl
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    8 months ago

    Wait, you’re telling me that “banning” a word will not stop the behaviour it was caused by?

      • Dran@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        He’s not wrong though; you have to battle ideas not words. Education is the solution.

        • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Too bad the electorate keeps putting in idiot racists who want to sabotage the education system.

          • Dran@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Indeed, they recognize that education is the antithesis of their ideals.

          • silliewous@feddit.nl
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            8 months ago

            Maybe that is because nuance is not part of the US dictionary. Always have to choose a side.

        • Asafum@feddit.nl
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          8 months ago

          But the “idea” here is that the n-word is hurtful and there’s absolutely never a proper use for it.

          The idea that the racists have is that anyone not white is inferior, that’s a whole different argument than just using a word that only has the purpose of hurting people.

          • Dran@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            I disagree, I think words having powerful, negative meaning like that is a symptom of a deeper problem, not a root problem in and of itself. We shouldn’t be tackling the problem of people using words, we should be tackling the problem of why do they want to use those words in the first place?

            • Asafum@feddit.nl
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              8 months ago

              It’s not the root problem, but that’s what I mentioned as a separate issue.

              As another one put it ¿Por que no los dos?

              The word has no place in society, but also the reasons one chooses to use it is problematic. It’s not so much “banned” but it’s a “fuck around and find out” word. There are repercussions for the words you choose to use, just like if a presidential candidate started tossing “fuck” around a lot. That word isn’t banned, but you know that would kill their campaign completely.

            • knightly the Sneptaur@pawb.social
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              8 months ago

              You’re not wrong, but people who hold a conservative ideology tend to react very poorly when you tell them that their emotional fear/disgust response to the existence of minorities is the problem.

        • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          Por que no los dos?

          The n-word is atrocious and we’re better off without it - even if people use stand-ins in its place that word had far too much baggage. We should also be battling ideas and teaching people to be less shitty.

      • cyruseuros@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        What bothers me here is that one of you got downvoted into oblivion, the other got upvoted just as much, and from where I’m standing, it seems like both of you are on the same side.

        • preach224@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          my read was that by putting “banning” in quotes, there was a subtext to the comment.

          no one is “banning” words - the milieu is that we don’t use certain words for certain (in this case obvious and terrible) reasons.

          by pushing the focus to the “banning” and not the obvious dog whistle, this comment seems to be shifting the convo away from people being racist shits to a discussion on language.

          hence this entire comment chain.

          i just want people to get the takeaway that jesus fuck people are racist, not “liberals can’t ban words, see?”

          • cyruseuros@lemmy.ml
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            8 months ago

            Maybe I’m being overly generous here, to me the user just sounded frustrated with the boundaries of civil discourse masking but not solving a problem. I assumed the problem was self-evident/they weren’t denying it.

            To me that feels like a call for more action, not less. It’s all too easy to pretend something isn’t happening when the verbiage around it becomes more palatable (exactly what dog whistles are for).

            But again, maybe I’m being too generous.