President Donald Trump departs the lectern after speaking during a briefing about the mid-air crash between American Airlines flight 5342 and a military helicopter in Washington, in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on January 30, 2025, in Washington, D.C. | Source: ROBERTO SCHMIDT / Getty
On Wednesday night, an American Airlines regional jet carrying 64 people and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter collided in mid-air before both crashed into the Potomac River. Recovery officials don’t expect to find any survivors in this tragedy that both President Donald Trump and his newly sworn-in secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, appear to agree was “preventable,” as conditions in the sky were reportedly clear and the helicopter pilot was reportedly warned by air traffic control about the plane being in the area before the crash.
Government officials and folks on social media have engaged in a lot of discussion about failings at multiple points and who’s to blame for what happened, but one thing has been curiously left out of all the chatter.
No one is being called a “DEI hire.”
Duffy is currently getting cooked online for, among other things, saying during a news conference, “It is not standard to have aircraft collide.”
Now, Duffy may have simply made an off-the-cuff remark without giving it much thought, so it might not be fair to suggest his “No sh*t, Sherlock” moment indicates he’s incompetent. But it was just a few short weeks ago that “DEI FBI” was trending on social media after the New Year incident in which a Muslim man intentionally rammed his truck into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing more than a dozen people.
Why was “DEI” trending? Well, early on in the investigation — literally hours after the attack — FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Alethea Duncan, a Black woman, remarked that the attack was not, at the time, considered a “terrorist event” by the FBI and that the investigation is still underway. And all it took was that one sentence — uttered during the very start of the investigation regarding a determination Duncan didn’t likely make unilaterally — for white people across the web to start calling Duncan a “DEI hire,” leading with the assumption that she’s not qualified for her position based on absolutely nothing but the fact that she’s a Black woman.
During the press conference, Duffy also said he had not yet even spoken to air traffic controllers, and he’s gotten a lot of flack for that online — but not by people who suggest he was put in his position because he’s white and male.
And what of the helicopter pilot? Remember when white conservatives and wannabe white conservatives like Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens were talking about how terrified they would be if they saw a Black or female pilot because they would assume they were DEI employees? (Because, for some reason, conservatives think DEI recruiters are just walking up to random Black people and asking, “Hey, wanna be a pilot?”) It’s almost as if DEI isn’t coming up because the aviation world is overwhelmingly white and male, with fewer than 4% of pilots being Black and fewer than 5% being women.
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy speaks at a press conference with other government officials on the rescue efforts following a collision between an American Airlines plane and an Army helicopter in Washington, D.C., on January 30, 2025. | Source: Anadolu / Getty
Actually, Trump just alluded on Thursday morning, without evidence, to the possibility of diversity efforts in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) because, honestly, this man just wakes up in the morning and immediately thinks of new ways to make a thing racist), but that was clearly a new brain fart of his — as well as an opportunity to politicize the crash by taking swipes at the Biden administration — because when commenting on the crash on Truth Social shortly after it was reported, DEI didn’t come up at all.
“The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport,” he wrote. “The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time.”
“It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane,” he continued. “This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!!”
Again, it’s almost as if Trump had initially forgotten to be racist because of how overwhelmingly white and male pilots are, then he was like: “Oh sh*t, we gotta throw in a ‘DEI’ angle.”
Again, the “DEI hire” attacks on Duncan were immediate, as they were when leveled at Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass following the wildfires in California. And who could forget when a major bridge in Baltimore collapsed last year and Republicans immediately tied the tragedy to DEI simply because Maryland’s port commissioner is a Black woman and Baltimore’s mayor, Brandon Scott, is a Black man? (Basically, even if you’re an elected official, you can be labeled a “DEI hire” because racists don’t let facts and logic get in the way of their seething racism.)
For “DEI” attacks to be immediate, there must be a Black person, person of color or woman in a visible position of leadership. When it comes to white male incompetence or even the perception of it, suddenly the narrative becomes colorblind. Go figure.
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