Linda McMahon knows exactly what kind of diversity she wants

Testifying on Capitol Hill last week, the Education secretary seemed undereducated on significant events in Black history.

Linda McMahon testifies on Capitol Hill. (C-SPAN3 screengrab)

By Shalise Manza Young

There is a print hanging over our dining room table of a little girl taking the final step into her new school; she accessorized her collared white dress and black Mary Jane shoes with a look of apprehension.

There are two marshals outside the door she’s walking into, and beyond them a scowling mob, with some in the crowd holding Confederate flags aloft.

The little girl is Ruby Bridges.

And the education secretary seemingly has no idea who she is.

Linda McMahon was on Capitol Hill last week testifying in front of both House and Senate committees, ostensibly to discuss her department’s budget proposals. She was at turns combative, snarky, and disrespectful of those who dared question her.

Many of McMahon’s comments reinforced the Trump administration’s aims regarding who deserves education, who should receive needed supports, and whose opinions should be heard. But she also showed herself to be ignorant of some of the most significant events in American history involving Black people.

Ruby Bridges is not an obscure figure. Her story of integrating the New Orleans public schools in 1960 at just 6 years old is well-known, and the fact that Bridges turned 70 only last year is often used to highlight just how recent the fight for Black Americans to get civil rights (on paper at least) really was. She has been continuing her activism in the public eye for decades.

After plainly stating that the current administration has “revived the culture of racism we haven’t seen since the Jim Crow era,” Rep. Summer Lee (D-Penn.) dug into what exactly McMahon means when she repeatedly says that some things are “illegal DEI.” The two had this exchange:

Lee: How about the book, “Through my eyes” by Ruby Bridges for instance?

McMahon: I haven’t read that.

Lee, after huffing in disbelief: Have you learned about Ruby Bridges?

McMahon: If you have specific examples you’d like….

Lee: That was a specific example. That was an incredibly specific example. I named a specific book.

Mcmahon: … submit your questions and I’ll look into it and get back to you.

McMahon also did not say yes when Lee asked her if she knew what the Tulsa race massacre— one of the worst incidents of anti-Black violence in this country’s past—was.

A couple of minutes earlier, McMahon told Lee that it isn’t DEI if “both sides” of an issue are being taught. Lee wondered aloud what both sides of African American history would be.

But don’t be fooled: McMahon knows exactly what kind of diversity she wants.

When Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) noted how nonsensical it is that in one letter to Harvard McMahon demanded the school end all of its diversity programs and institute viewpoint diversity. McMahon told on herself in spectacular fashion.

“The diversity programs that we've asked and demanded to be eliminated were the DEI, where they were -- those programs actually were pitting one group against another,” McMahon said. For the record: That’s not true. “Viewpoint diversity is exchange of ideas, that’s actually better. Absolutely,” she said.

Diversity is exchange of ideas, that’s actually better.

Yes, Linda, you’ve got it! That’s exactly what it is. A Black college student from rural Alabama has not at all had the same lived experience as a white student raised in Silicon Valley or a Chinese student whose family settled just outside of Boston, and they all have their own views to contribute to the discourse.

“Harvard only has 3 percent, by its own numbers, 3 percent conservative faculty. Do you think they are allowing enough of viewpoint diversity through that teaching on campus?,” she finished.

Damn, so close.

Just as the MAGA crew use “DEI” almost exclusively as a stand-in for “Black,” “conservative” translates to white, Christian, and, these days, Trump acolyte.

Though Ruby Bridges had no way of knowing it at the time, as she walked through that angry mob for weeks, protected by federal marshals, learning in her classroom, alone, for the entire year after all of the parents pulled their children out of school and taught by the one teacher who didn’t refuse to work with the new Black student, she was a pioneer. Her family suffered for its bravery—her father lost his job, their usual grocery store banned them from shopping there, and even her grandparents, Mississippi sharecroppers, were forced off the land.

The Tulsa massacre was two days of unbridled violence; white vigilantes killed as many as 300 people and destroyed over 30 blocks of the Greenwood district, a thriving neighborhood of Black-owned businesses.

Yet there McMahon was on Capitol Hill, blithely revealing she’s uninformed about two major events that played a role in shaping this country.

It’s a problem that she doesn’t know about them. The bigger issue is it appears she doesn’t care to know about them. And, if she has her way, your kids won’t either.

Shalise Manza Young was most recently a columnist at Yahoo Sports, focusing on the intersection of race, gender and culture in sports. The Associated Press Sports Editors named her one of the 10 best columnists in the country in 2020. She has also written for the Boston Globe and Providence Journal. Find her on Bluesky @shalisemyoung.

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