Wait times at Social Security are longer than ever. It seems Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives are to blame. When asked about the delays, a spokesperson for Lee Dudek, Trump’s then-acting Social Security Commissioner, said that it’s because former President Joe Biden “[advanced] radical DEI and gender ideology over improving service for all Americans.”

Record low staffing at the agency under Biden seems to have played no role. One may also dismiss Trump’s severe service cuts and buyouts. Yet, DEI and other racialized programs are useful because they provide explanations for social maladies.

Trump blamed DEI for a collision between an airplane and army helicopter that killed 67 people last January. When he was asked how he knew DEI was to blame for the crash, Trump responded that it was all crystal clear because, as he put it, “I have common sense.” Everyone should know that hiring people for their melanin but not for their qualifications is at epidemic levels.

That’s why things are so broken.

Common sense says that people are bad. They will get up to all sorts of shenanigans to climb up a rung or two on the social ladder. They will use whatever program, law, loophole, connection, or story to get there. And if they don’t have to work for a thing, then they’ll get it by making others lift the heavy end.

That’s DEI in a nutshell. That’s also welfare, food stamps, and public housing. People are bad and they cheat. They live at the expense of those who work hard and play by the rules.

It’s just common sense.

There is no shortage of people on TV, social media, barstools, or in the US Congress who will tell you that, too. Trump is not only their mouthpiece, but he—and many others—have skillfully manipulated Americans’ economic precarity by serving up people with pretend motivations to blame for real grievances.

They say that “those people” don’t want to work. “They” don’t value the same things as contributors to society. Those who make these assertions engage in a self-flattery that is hard to miss; it’s the rest of the world, especially those who don’t burn so easily at the beach, on whom we should keep a close eye.

The School of Hard Knocks (SHK) taught them about human nature, and they will tell you all about it. An SHK education means that a person doesn’t have to waste time listening to those who know something about their own experiences or that despite different zip codes, people might have something in common.

Here’s a typical example.

I am on a Facebook group about Chicago architecture. A contributor posted a picture of Cabrini-Green, a housing project located in what is now a wealthy area of Chicago. It was named for Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, an Italian immigrant nun who was famous for her work with the poor. The housing complex had a reputation for being a scary, deadly place. It was in the news all the time and for sure had awful problems. Lots of them.

Although some of the original row houses remain, much of the project was torn down many years ago and the property sold to developers. Expensive homes have gone up there and people now go jogging with their dogs.

This is a brief exchange from the comments section of that post and photograph. Curiously, some who never went near the neighborhood know a lot more than people who grew up in the neighborhood.

Victoria (a former resident of Cabrini-Green): I enjoyed living there. Had lots of fun, beautiful memories, good friends.

Robert (responding to Victoria): Really? How many murders did you see and drug deals?

Addis (a former resident of Cabrini-Green, responding to Robert): The media [had] pre-consumed notions perpetuated on us to be portrayed as a bunch of savages … Many families [and] good people [lived there] … a few rotten apples in the bunch.

Bruce (responding to Addis): Dogs were afraid to go in there.

There is more, but you get the idea.

Almost the entire exchange was composed of people who had lived at Cabrini-Green attempting to convince their incredulous interlocutors that the place was not filled with beasts of prey. They explained that they were human beings who lived three-dimensional and even sometimes happy lives in challenging circumstances.

However, some of the Phi Beta Kappa graduates of SHK weren’t having it. Common sense dictated that what the former residents said was false, even the opposite of reality. The more charitable were amazed by the reports that people had fond memories of any kind. A woman named Martha said Victoria’s recollection was “A surprising comment.”

But her surprise should not come as a surprise if we consider the incessant flow of common sense about race and social help programs that are evacuated into TVs, iPhones, and computers every day. People then draw seemingly logical conclusions from these piles of words about human nature as essentially bad, corrupt, and even worse if the humans whose nature is examined ever received public aid.

However, this commonsense narrative does not frequently describe people’s lives. That should matter. As the last of Cabrini-Green’s buildings were demolished, The Chicago Reader interviewed some of its longtime residents, a few of whom lived in the area for decades.

A woman named Margaret Wilson said, “When we came here from the south side in the early 60s, I found it to be a quite interesting and family-oriented community.”

Jazz pianist and three-time Grammy Award winner Ramsey Lewis recollected that when he was “growing up in Cabrini [he] never realized [he] was from … a poor family as far as money was concerned. [W]e were God-fearing, law-abiding people, and that’s how we lived.”

Curtis Mayfield, another Grammy Award-winning musician, reflected on his life experiences, including his years at Cabrini-Green, in an interview shortly before his death. His memories of community bonds and mutual aid were palpable. Mayfield concluded that

“[A]lthough sometimes all the bad things seem to be in a majority, it’s still really a small minority. The majority still has high hopes … and wants to do the right things and be about success stories. The poverty may hold them back, but the dreams are still there.”

Mayfield and so many others long knew what lots of social scientists now say: people are basically good, not bad.

Historian Rutger Bregman, in his book Humankind: A Hopeful History, makes this observation about rich and powerful people who claim to have a monopoly on the allegedly commonsense notion that people are bad: “For the powerful, a hopeful view of human nature is downright threatening. It implies we’re not selfish beasts that need to be reined in, restrained and regulated. It implies that we need a different kind of leadership.”

Bregman cites writer Rebecca Solnit, who claims that those at the top of the pecking order “see all of humanity in their own image.” In other words, many of the most powerful figures in our country reduce ordinary people to the terms of their own corrupt, self-serving, and violent behavior. All-people-are-bad stories justify their control.

Who is making millions on reducing regulations and firing watchdogs?

Who benefits from a form of legalized bribery called lobbying?

Who facilitates violations of international humanitarian law and approves the sale of high-tech weapons that continue to cause the hideous deaths of innocent people in Gaza?

I can tell you who does not engage in that sort of behavior: Anyone who lives in public housing, receives food assistance, lives on Social Security, or had benefited from a Head Start program when they were children.

Decent people are everywhere and knowing that is how we can build a better society.

That’s just common sense.

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