Paternalistic White Christians are endangered. Paternalistic White Christians (PWC) in the U.S. have been ceding space geographically and politically to newcomers of color, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims for decades (PRRI.org, 2017). Their embrace of Christianity, guns, White nationalism and paternalism served them well for 300 years and their assumption was that their conservative values would remain dominant for the foreseeable future. Short of banning all airplane travel, blocking all immigration and limiting cross-country internet communications, their recent wide-ranging efforts to suppress minority voices will fail to prevent their own future minority voice status. Like the Giant panda bears that optimized their dominance in the bamboo forests of mountainous regions in central China by specializing in the procurement, ingestion and digestion of bamboo, PWC conservatives in the U.S. have locked themselves into lifestyle values so constraining that they are now at a competitive disadvantage in the changing demographic landscape that is America.
Obama's election shocked the PWC conservatives. Their decline in dominance occurred so gradually that PWC conservatives acceded to corporate pressure to permit U.S. entry to millions of non-White, non-Christian immigrants with specialized skills not sufficiently available in the U.S. labor pool and to permit greater labor participation in the labor force by women. PWC conservatives were shocked into action following the 2008 election of the country's first Black president and again by the 2020 election of a Black woman vice-president. Since 2008, the PWC conservatives have worked ruthlessly to suppress the voices of religious minorities, racial minorities, gun control advocates and sexual minorities. They have won some battles, particularly at the level of the U.S. Supreme Court, but as recent state-level reversals of legislated restrictions on abortion care have shown, they are losing the war. The far-right ideologues currently comprising the Court majority are slowing the erosion of White Christian political dominance but, ironically, their blatant rejection of long-standing legal precedents will make it easier for subsequent Court majorities to return the Court to reflecting contemporary American values.
Most Americans reject PWC conservative culture wars. Most Americans reject PWC conservatives' insistence on unfettered individual ownership of assault weapons (Barry et al., 2019). Most Americans reject PWC conservatives' use of government power to usurp women's 49-year old constitutional right to make their own reproductive decisions (PEW Research, 2022). Most Americans reject PWC conservative efforts to suppress minority voice authors in community and school libraries (ALA, 2022). Most Americans reject PWC conservative efforts to ban workplace efforts to be welcoming and inclusive of minoritized employees (PEW Research, 2023).
DEI programs are so prevalent in workplaces, universities and our armed forces because they work. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs have proliferated because they amplify democracy by encouraging minority voice participation in social and decision-making situations. These programs have proliferated in workplaces, universities, and our armed forces because they improve community buy-in of leadership decisions affecting them. Improved community buy-in of consequential leadership decisions, in turn, is associated with increased workplace productivity and improved public health outcomes. Just look at the changes in life expectancy and per capita wealth over the last 20 years of comparison states, varying in support of DEI programs: Florida versus New York, Texas versus California, Indiana versus Illinois, Ohio versus Pennsylvania (Montez et al., 2022) (Montez et al., 2023) (Brookings, 2017). Social, economic, environmental, technological and cultural forces are ineluctably converging to relegate today's PWC conservatives to the small-voice minority status that they have been so desperately trying to avoid since 2008.