Roger Marshall says DEI led to Kansas plane’s deadly crash? Ridiculous and insulting | Opinion
What is up with U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall?
The Republican senator from Kansas deserves to be called out about recent comments he made regarding a deadly airplane crash that killed 67 people.
Without a single shred of evidence, Marshall said a lack of “qualified white men” was a contributing factor to a fatal crash between a United Airlines jet from Wichita and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. The fiery collision over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., left nearly 70 families grieving and the nation stunned.
Yes, Marshall believes diversity, equity and inclusion — the GOP’s latest racially-charged boogeyman — led to the mid-air collision. Sound familiar?
“I think diversity issues did contribute to this accident,” Marshall said Monday, according to The Kansas City Star. This assertion, first made by last week President Donald Trump, and parroted this week by the MAGA-loving Marshall, is unfounded.
Later, and again without evidence, Marshall took to task the Federal Aviation Administration’s hiring practices that he believed kept white men from becoming air traffic controllers. He implied former President Joe Biden’s policies were to blame for the dearth of white men in the aviation field, too.
“They’ve been short of air traffic controllers since I ran for Congress, and this is what I think you’re going to find out is there were a lot of qualified white men that they were not hired because they were holding spots for DEI hires,” Marshall said.
Full stop. I have been on this Earth for half a century. Since I have been alive, not once have I believed that the white man’s pecking order in this country was at stake. Ask most scholars on race relations and they’d tell you that this country was built on whiteness.
This nation’s basic fabric was built on the ideologies of white Christian men. This belief that diversity initiatives are racist and divisive is patently false. Research and studies have shown that increasing diversity, equity and inclusion in both the public and private sector is a positive development.
At best, Marshall’s comments were irresponsible — a strong case could be made that the remarks were simply idiotic. No proof has been presented that diversity initiatives led to the collision. His diatribe was just flat-out wrong.
As The Star reported this week, the official National Transportation Safety Board investigation into the collision remains ongoing. No findings have been released.
Also, publicly-available audio about the crash shows air traffic control warned the Black Hawk helicopter pilot about the jet moments before the collision, according to The Star.
In his haste to cast blame on DEI, which has become the Republican Party’s latest whipping boy, Marshall must have skipped over that bit of pertinent information.
