DEIA initiatives can benefit rural America if reimplemented correctly
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Diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. When Americans think of DEIA, they might picture heated debates about policies balancing systemic prejudice in the workplace. Most studies regarding DEIA focus on racial and gender demographics. One of the most important aspects regarding DEIA, however, has absolutely nothing to do with either of these.
Eighty-six percent of American counties experiencing long-term, multi-decade poverty are situated in rural areas. Although rural Americans make up 14% of the population, they reside in 22% of housing units with severe physical deficiencies. More than a quarter of a century after America landed men on the moon, over half a million rural homes in the United States don’t have clean running water.
These existing disparities become even more concerning given the fact that rural communities in America have to pull their weight disproportionately, compared to larger municipalities and urbanized towns, to gain access to grants.
“The criteria for many federal grants often favor communities with greater population density, and many programs require matching funds that may be a struggle for resource-constrained rural towns to raise,” said Tim Sablik, economic writer for the Richmond Fed.
It’s nearly impossible for smaller, rural communities to compete against municipalities with hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars in their tax base.
Former President Joe Biden’s Administration recognized this issue and combatted it using discretionary scoring criteria and by recognizing new key priorities, such as economic distress, social vulnerability and climate-related disadvantage, that were meant to favor smaller rural communities when applying for major grants. Specifically, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Rural Development altered certain competitive grant frameworks to allow this.
This was intended to direct attention and funding toward rural communities experiencing persistent poverty. New waivers were created to give opportunities to less fortunate neighborhoods. With more focus redirected from urbanized and affluent neighborhoods, there was a genuine hope that these rural areas could overcome systemic challenges. Those aspirations, however, were short-lived.
Although we advocate for policies that benefit us, we also have a responsibility as citizens to do so for others.Kaelen Kinsella, Columnist
President Donald Trump’s Administration saw these reforms through a hyper-partisan tunnel vision. It recklessly failed to look at the possible plethora of good that these initiatives could’ve done. It inevitably came down to one thing: they were related to DEIA.
Along with a slurry of executive orders passed on Inauguration Day, the Trump Administration issued Executive Order 14151, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” In it, Trump described DEIA initiatives as immoral discrimination programs that infiltrated the federal government. He described these programs as if they were diseases.
The USDA Office of Rural Development quietly removed DEIA scoring criteria from 14 major federal funding programs, along with equity-based scoring criteria for dozens of programs.
“The termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear,” Executive Order 14151 said.
The hope for a system to revitalize infrastructure and create a level playing field in rural America was pushing up daisies. And most didn’t even know about it.
This is because DEIA is usually thought of as political jargon. The impact that DEIA initiatives can have on rural communities is often ignored. As much as American society wants to believe it’s impartial, we tend to focus on initiatives regarding racial and gender issues.
It’s OK not to have realized how DEIA initiatives benefit rural communities. It’s hard – nearly impossible – to navigate all the points of view in the hyper-personalized, rapid-fire media landscape we’re in today. Although we advocate for policies that benefit us, we also have a responsibility as citizens to do so for others.
Find your senators and tell them that we can no longer forget our rural communities. Push your representatives to look beyond the general DEIA narrative, and explain how these initiatives can help those who have little. When a government fails one group of people, it’s us who must be the badger in the democratic society we live in.
Kaelen Kinsella is a freshman majoring in journalism and political science. He can be reached at kaelenkinsella@gmail.com.
