Dear Dean Magazine: February 2024

V I C T O R I A A . B R O W N W O R T H
since DeSantis began his “Don’t Say Gay” campaign, nearly
every state has adopted anti-LGBTQ laws and book bans
are rampant nationwide, forming a core tenet of
Republican politics. The Republican party has also adopted
a platform that de-centers all DEI initiatives. DEI--
diversity, equity, and inclusion--are organizational
frameworks which seek to promote "the fair treatment and
full participation of all people," particularly groups "who
have historically been under-represented or subject to
discrimination" on the basis of identity or disability.
Republicans assert that racism is not systemic, structural,
or endemic in the U.S. and therefore books and teaching
that suggests otherwise is damaging for students. The GOP
also still adheres to the belief that homosexuality is a
choice and is against God’s teachings and that
transgenderism is a mental illness promoted by “woke”
culture.
During the GOP presidential primary, which began with 13
candidates and now has only two–disgraced and twice
impeached former president Donald Trump and former
UN Ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley,
the first woman of color to run for president as a
Republican–racism, homophobia and transphobia were all
issues. Black candidate Sen. Tim Scott insisted that the U.S.
is not racist and his Southeast Asian challengers–Haley and
Vivek Ramaswamy–agreed.
Haley has a complicated history with regard to race. She
has said repeatedly on the campaign trail that America is
not a racist country, but she has also told the very moving
and disturbing stories of her father being racially profiled
by police–something she witnessed as a child and which
she said humiliated her father.
Haley also took down the Confederate flag as governor,
which many found a brave action, but she declined to say
the mass shooting of Black parishioners of Mother
Emanuel church in Charleston by white nationalist Dylann
Roof was racially motivated. Haley has also sided with Moms
for Liberty on their anti-LGBTQ platform. And on December
28, at a town hall in New Hampshire, Haley forgot that slavery
was the cause of the Civil War.
On the February 3 episode of “Saturday Night Live” in a sketch
of a town hall with her and Donald Trump (played by James
Austin Johnson), Haley was confronted by “SNL” host for the
night, queer Black actress and comedian Ayo Edebiri, playing a
town hall audience member.
Edebiri asked Haley what she would say “was the main cause
of the Civil War. Do you think it starts with an ‘S’ and ends with
a ‘lavery’?”
“Yep, I probably should have said that the first time,” Haley
replied. Ironically, as Haley was attempting a mea culpa for
erasing slavery from the history of the country she says
isn’t racist, President Biden was winning the Democratic
primary in her home state of South Carolina.
Haley’s remaining challenger, Trump–leader of the
Republican party and of the white nationalist Make
America Great Again (MAGA) cult movement--is a
notorious racist, dating back to his being found liable in
1973 by the Nixon Department of Justice for racial bias in
leasing his and his father’s many real estate properties in
New York.
Trump also famously took out full page ads in the New
York papers calling for the executions of the five Black
teens known as the Central Park Five who were coerced
by police into false confessions and wrongly convicted in
the violent rape and brutal beating of Trisha Meili, a jogger
in Central Park in 1989. Meili lost 80 percent of her blood
volume, had 21 skull fractures, and was beaten so badly in
the face that one of her eyes was dislodged. She was in a
coma for two weeks and spent months in the hospital and
then in rehab learning how to walk and talk again. Trump
never acknowledged that the Central Park Five were
innocent of the horrific crime and never apologized for his
role in their incarceration. Even after they were
exonerated, Trump continued to call for their deaths.
Dear Dean Magazine | Feb. 22, 2024 | Page 27