ACLU: Anti-DEI is Anti-American
The American Civil Liberties Union's "plan to fight back" against Trump's anticipated (and now extant) anti-DEI policies is headed by the image above (ACLU 2024). It is a collage of four distinct images. The background features a parchment and ink copy of the preamble to the constitution—most of the text is small and scrawled or otherwise covered by the other images, but "We the People" stands out centered atop the image, connecting in shared overlap the two main features described next. The left third is dominated by a black and white headshot of a frowning, squinting, suited Donald Trump. He appears to be scrutinizing something in the distance... perhaps you, yourself. The right third is dominated by another black and white photo: a masked protester holding a banner that reads, "no voice unheard." She stands at the front of a crowd with the pillars of a government building behind it. She and Trump are facing away from each other. Cutting up the rest of the image are disjointed square sections of American iconography: the flag's stars and, separately, stripes; the statue of liberty's face—looking away from the rest of the composition—and her torch, which blazes at once beneath "We the People" and between Trump and the protester. Each square is tinted either a faded yellow-brown or crimson: the only colors in the entire image.
Jeffery Alexander's The Civil Sphere, chapter four, offers a Durkheimian account of the binary structure that underlies the American civil realm. Alexander begins with the premise that society can exist independently from economy and politics—that is, civil society can maintain a structure and logic that is not wholly instantiated and maintained by other systems. Seeking to identify the independent moral logic that holds together a sphere of solidarity, Alexander theoretically transforms the general pure and impure discourse into civil and repressive. Springing from western understandings of democracy, certain motives, relationships, and institutional qualities are seen as essential for maintaining a pure, solidaristic democracy. Codes on either side of the civil/repressive boundary make up a skeletal basis of society's cultural system: e.g. motives can be autonomous or dependent; relationships can be trusting or suspicious; institutions can be inclusive or exclusive. Crucially, these dynamics are interwoven through analogy and metaphor, building a body from the skeletal base. Each code is associated with other codes on the same side of the pure/impure boundary, and motives, relationships, and institutional qualities are each connected to the others. However, Alexander makes clear that these associations are not real, rather, they are constituted by the religious division between civil/repressive. The logic that excludes a group because their motives are distorted or passionate (for example) performs an essentialism which is inherently false: any individual is not fundamentally incapable of realism or self-control; a group's actions are not determined and are certainly never wholly one characteristic or another. Struggle in the civil terrain is therefore predicated on winning solidarity by essentializing allies as pure and enemies as impure. Thus, "[political] actors struggle to taint one another with the brush of repression and to wrap themselves in the rhetoric of liberty" (Alexander 2006:65).
The juxtaposition of Trump and the protester resonate with Alexander's argument that politics is, in part, a competition to label others as repressive and don liberty for oneself. The centering of "We the People" and the phrase's overlap with both Trump and the protester indicate this struggle: who are the people? The voices that need to be included via DEI or the voices that are being marginalized because of DEI? But the ACLU is not simply pointing out this argument—they are staking a claim. Indeed, the article attached to the image lays out a plan to fight back against anti-DEI attacks. The image is therefore constructed to frame Trump as anti-American—repressive. Most obviously, the protester—whose solemn stance evokes honor in contrast to Trump's deceitful squint—carries a banner which reads "no voice unheard." That statement rings as an indictment of anti-DEI policy, labeling it anti-deliberative, closed/secretive, and deceitful. Indeed, the protester's anonymity as a masked member of a crowd marks her as a symbol of a larger collective force. In contrast with the close up shot of the now globally familiar personality, the protester represents the impersonal, contract-oriented, rule-bound functioning of a plural crowd. Such a contrast pits "the people" against Trump and asserts that DEI policies serve to bolster a truer democracy: one that is more open, deliberative of other's "voices," and truthful. The nail in Trump's repressive coffin is that he is the primary subject of an image which features a shattering of traditional American iconography. The broken, divided, faded sections of American flag and Statue of Liberty suggests that Trump's (literal and metaphorical) largeness is an affront to American democracy and liberty. Indeed, the face of our most potent symbol of liberty, the statue herself, looks longingly away from the conflict, toward a future not defined by a strongman's assent.
(There is more to be said here about the civil repair inherent to protest and the temporality contained within the constitutional text which underlies the image. However, both would take a much longer elaboration of Alexander's ideas.)
ACLU. 2024. "Trump’s Attacks on DEI Reveal Administration's Agenda for Second Term." From aclu.org. Retrieved March 27, 2024 https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/trumps-attacks-on-dei-reveal-administrations-agenda-for-second-term
Alexander, Jeffrey. 2006. The Civil Sphere. Oxford University Press.
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