Analysis: All six lawmakers appointed to finalize bill banning MS DEI programs are White

The leaders of the Mississippi Legislature — House Speaker Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann — are not practicing diversity, equity and inclusion in legislative efforts to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Is anyone truly shocked?

For the conference committee process — that is, the appointment of three House members and three Senate members to negotiate final details of a bill that seeks to ban DEI programs in Mississippi — neither White nor Hosemann appointed a single Black Mississippi lawmaker as one of the all-important six conferees.

The conference committee does include two women: Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, who was appointed by Hoseman, and Rep. Shanda Yates, I-Jackson, who was appointed by White.

Otherwise, the committee consists of four white males.

This end-of-session practice, especially for legislation opposed by Black lawmakers, is not new.

White and Hosemann have been reluctant to appoint members of the minority Democratic Party, who are predominantly Black, or members who oppose their goals to conference committees. Last year they refused to appoint a Democrat to the conference committee that tried and ultimately failed to reach an agreement to expand Medicaid to provide health care for the working poor — regardless of the fact that Democrats have been working on and advocating for expanding Medicaid for years while Mississippi Republican legislators have sat on the sidelines.

It might seem logical for a legislative leader not to appoint someone who opposes his goals for the conference committee. But a member opposed to the wishes of the leadership does not have the power to foil the work of the conference committee. Conference committees are formed to hammer out the differences between the House-approved and Senate-approved versions of a bill.

For a conference committee to reach an agreement and advance that compromise to the full House and Senate chambers to be voted on, it must be agreed on by two members of the conference committee from each chamber. In other words, a conference committee agreement will advance in the process even if one member from each chamber refuses to sign off on the compromise.

But even those members who might oppose the overall conference committee goals, such as banning DEI programs in the state, could offer valuable input that might influence the other members of the committee.

In 2002, during the infamous 82-day special session where businesses were provided more protection from lawsuits, Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck made Sen. Bennie Turner, D-West Point, a conferee even though she knew he would not sign the final report. He did not believe most of the proposals being considered to provide businesses more lawsuit protection were needed.

Still, Turner, a highly respected senator, participated in the process and offered input that had an impact on the final legislation.

A conference committee on DEI seems to beg for such diverse input from those who might have had experiences dealing with racism or a lack of diversity, equity and inclusion that white legislators have not.

After all, in the long run, what can those opposed to banning DEI actually do when the majority party, the Republicans, have a two-thirds super majority in each chamber of the Mississippi Legislature?

Since taking office earlier this year, President Donald Trump and his administration have waged an all-out war on DEI programs. Trump’s attacks on DEI programs included recently removing the name of Mississippi military veteran Medgar Evers, a civil rights legend who was tragically assassinated for his efforts to gain voting rights for Black people, from a section on the Arlington National Cemetery website.

On the state level, Auditor Shad White began attacking DEI programs on university campuses more than a year ago. Now the Legislature is considering banning many of those programs. Some fear that banning those programs will diminish the true teaching of Mississippi history and its racially embarrassing past.

Auditor White recently was asked if he thought striving to be diverse, equitable and inclusive were bad aspirations.

“I don’t think those things are what DEI programs do,” White responded. He then added, “If you are asking me if I think diversity is a bad word or people feeling good and included is a bad thing, no human on the planet thinks people feeling included is a bad thing.”

White has argued that such programs are wasteful spending.

Others also had contended the programs are not needed. They say minorities do not face any extraordinary obstacles and programs striving for diversity, equity and inclusions are not needed.

But perhaps a committee examining the issues of diversity, equity and inclusion would benefit from having members who would be more directly impacted than the members of the current DEI conference committee.

This column was produced by Mississippi Today, a nonprofit news organization that covers state government, public policy, politics and culture. Bobby Harrison is the editor of Mississippi Today Ideas.