Defending crime in the name of DEI
Kaylee Gain is just the latest victim of a system that levies lighter punishments for certain racial groups
If asked to describe the real world impact of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), most Americans would probably cite the ideology’s forced requirements on corporate hiring or university admissions. It’s the most obvious answer for good reason; after George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, DEI became all the rage. These institutions made public pronouncements and pledges about promoting black Americans and other individuals who belonged to so-called underrepresented groups.
While the effect of DEI on these institutions have been well-documented, the same cannot be said for the impact DEI has had on crime and law enforcement.
The brutal beating of 16-year-old Kaylee Gain at the hands of her black classmate is a prime example of what happens when violence is tolerated in the name of equity.
I joined American Sunrise on Real America’s Voice News to discuss the shocking attack, and why it has largely been ignored in the media. I hope you’ll watch that segment below. There is also a larger point to all of this that I did not have time to explain in the segment. More on that below.
The attack
For those who have not seen the viral video of the beating, the video begins with Gain being surrounded by what appears to be, given the details, a few other male and female students. By the third second of the video, Gain is wrestling another girl (again, presumably a student). The attacker, a black female, quickly throws Gain to the ground and begins punching Gain’s head. By this point, all Gain can muster is to put her hands up to attempt to block the incoming blows. As the attack is unfolding, the other witnesses engage with each other, some apparently attempting to stop the fight and others fighting to allow it to continue.
Just a few seconds later, less than twenty seconds into the video, Gain’s attacker delivers the near-fatal blow. The attacker, who has since been identified as 15-year-old Maurnice DeClue, is now fully on top of Gain. DeClue then grabs Gain’s neck and shoulder area, and repeatedly slams Gain’s head into the concrete pavement.
The video is, of course, difficult to watch. The sound of Gain’s skull slamming into the pavement can be heard on video. What is equally shocking is the fact that a number of students watch this unfold, and film it. One student is overheard yelling “dayum.”
Later on, as a group of about a dozen or more black students engage in an all out brawl, Gain is seen lying on the ground. Aside from some slight twitching, she is motionless.
DeClue’s attack might as well be classified as attempted murder. She put Gain into a two week coma, of which Gain is only now recovering. Gain suffered a fractured skull and frontal lobe damage. The New York Post reported this week that Gain is showing “signs of significant cognitive impairment” and continues to repeat herself since regaining consciousness in the hospital. The paper also reported that Gain does not realize why she is in the hospital.
Kaylee’s school pushed DEI on law enforcement
Shortly after the attack went viral on social media, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey claimed on Fox News that DEI programs were responsible for the attack. Bailey said Gain’s school, Hazelwood East High School, along with the Hazelwood School District, pushed a “radical social agenda” over proper discipline. A few days later, Bailey announced he was launching an investigation into the school district’s programs.
At the center of Bailey’s claims is a 2021 requirement that the Hazelwood School District attempted to impose on local police officers assigned to work at the school. The rule, which was part of the school district’s response to George Floyd’s death, required officers to have completed ten hours of DEI training to work at the school. The training included topics such as “Adultification of African-American children” and a “partnership to combat the school to prison pipeline.”
Despite the Hazelwood School District’s demands, local police chiefs resisted the new requirement. Police chiefs from neighboring St. Louis County, Florissant, and Hazelwood responded to the school district arguing that their officers “receive training that is more than adequate and addresses the critical matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Unable to reach an agreement, the police departments ultimately refused to participate in the new DEI trainings. As a result, according to the Associated Press, the Hazelwood School District ended up replacing the school resource officers (SROs) with 60 private security guards. Though some Hazelwood police officers ended up returning to schools in the district in 2023, no SROs returned to Hazelwood East. Bailey argues the DEI rule as evidence that the school district was prioritizing DEI over school safety. And while it is hard to say if any police officer would have stopped the attack on Kaylee Gain, it is an indisputable fact that the Hazelwood School District put their students at risk by trying to impose this DEI training on local police.
DEI dictates that minorities, like Gain’s attacker, be treated as victims
One of the under-discussed aspects of DEI is how the ideology’s oppressor-oppressed worldview affects crime.
Generally speaking, this tenet of DEI categorizes people into one of the two groups depending on a person’s racial background, where the oppressors are privileged and the oppressed are always victims. Though membership in either group can vary, oppressors almost always include whites whereas the oppressed always include racial minorities, with blacks being chief among them.
Through the lens of criminal justice and law enforcement, this makes black people victims and white people guilty or deserving of the crimes committed against them.
So in this case, even though it’s unclear if Gain’s alleged attacker Maurnice DeClue had a prior history of violence, DeClue and her defenders believe she should be viewed as a victim in the incident. It does not matter that DeClue was caught committing the attack on video.
After the attack, DeClue’s family set up an online fundraiser for DeClue’s legal defense. DeClue’s mother insisted her daughter was “not a bully.” DeClue’s aunt also defended her actions, saying DeClue beat Gain in self-defense. She added that her niece is an honor roll student with an “exemplary” record. A Change.org petition created in DeClue’s name calls on the local court to use “Restorative Justice” and “Rehabilitation” methods as opposed to a punitive sentencing for DeClue. The petition also laments that “this single event is being used to define her character.” As it should. It turns out bashing someone’s head into the pavement will lead to changes in perception about one’s character. Who knew?
This very victimization of the attacker is also why the media have largely ignored this story. Outside of a few online reports about the attack, cable and network news channels, which usually thrive on sensationalizing crime stories, ignored the story. Again, we don’t have to guess why. In the eyes of the corporate media, which represents the de facto view of the American left, the story is not worth covering because the attacker is a black female. Her identity makes her a victim.
If the roles were reversed, and if it were Maurnice DeClue who was in a coma, there would be a national outcry in her name. Al Sharpton would have organized a march through the streets of Hazelwood. Notorious race-baiting lawyer Ben Crump would have offered to represent DeClue’s family. The story would have played nonstop on CNN and MSNBC for weeks.
If all of this was done even for a man like George Floyd, who had a lengthy criminal record, you can bet these racial arsonists in the media would have done it for a high school girl.
The oppressor-oppressed worldview does not simply dictate coverage and reaction to heinous crimes like the one committed by Kaylee Gain. The belief system has also facilitated an overhaul of the American criminal justice system, which has, not surprisingly, led to more crime.
Even though the First Step Act, bail reform, and soft-on-crime policies seen in major cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, all technically predate DEI as it is currently understood, these policies are arguably the original real world application of DEI. They were DEI before DEI. The very logic that was used to push these policies is the same one that is at the core of what we now consider to be DEI: that black Americans are victims of a racist system, largely at the hands of white Americans.
And before these DEI policies were being pushed in the criminal justice system, they were being implemented in school districts across the country.
Nikolas Cruz and the school to prison pipeline
In 2014 the Obama administration released federal guidance through the Department of Education and Department of Justice that pressured school districts into abandoning disciplinary action for troubled, violent, and unruly students. As opposed to traditional methods like suspension and expulsion, and in severe cases, arrests and referrals to local law enforcement, the Obama administration believed that new methods like “conflict resolution, restorative practices, counseling, and structured systems of positive interventions” would be more effective at maintaining safe learning environments and disciplining students in a manner to avoid the so-called “school to prison pipeline.” The belief was, and still is, that minority students were disproportionately disciplined because of their racial backgrounds which puts them at an increased likelihood of ending up in prison. The ACLU claims that students expelled or suspended are three times more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system within the year.
The belief is obviously absurd. The argument is basically that schools should allow unruly and violent students to act without consequences, because suspending or expelling them would cause them to end up in prison. Not their behavior.
The Obama administration also assumed, as the left does with overall crime rates, that students of different racial and social groups behave equally, so any discrepancy in discipline rates is evidence of some sort of racism. In the federal guidance, the administration complains about the fact that despite making up 15 percent of the student population, black students make up over a third of students that were suspended or expelled. But why is it assumed that this is a disciplinary discrepancy, as opposed to a behavioral one? Could it be, again just as we see in real world crime statistics, that some students act out and misbehave at greater rates than others? Not according to the Obama administration, which claimed that racial disparities in discipline rates “are not explained by more frequent or more serious misbehavior by students of color.”
The argument racial disparities in school discipline is a result of racial discrimination is even more silly when you consider the fact that it relies on the belief that teachers, who overwhelmingly are and vote Democrat, are racist. In other words, they are not disciplining students for legitimate reasons, they are disciplining students because they are black. Even in liberal California, for example, black students are suspended and expelled at a rate three times higher than white students. Are we supposed to believe liberal California teachers are racist too? How about deep blue Broward County, Florida?
Broward County Public Schools, the sixth-largest school district in the nation, was one of the leading districts that adopted the Obama administration’s guidelines. The school district’s superintendent, Robert Runcie, was an Obama acolyte from Chicago. Runcie’s former boss was the then-Education Secretary, Arne Duncan.
Runcie had taken the job two years prior, and almost immediately began working to address the district’s racial disparities in academic achievement. Black students were graduating at a rate of just over 60 percent, while white students had a graduation rate of 81 percent.
What was the main factor for the disparity? According to Runcie, it was the “huge differential in minority students, black male students in particular, in terms of suspensions and arrests.” So Runcie decided to replace the school district’s zero-tolerance policy for misbehavior with a policy that reduced harsh punishments, prohibited arrests, and created alternatives to suspension. Broward County Public Schools also ended police referrals for offenses like drug use and assault. Just a few months after the changes were adopted, suspensions and arrests declined dramatically. The White House honored Runcie for his efforts, and invited him to an event to highlight Broward’s “transforming policies and school climate.”
Like soft-on-crime policing, these new education policies were effectively DEI before the term was coined.
Broward’s new policies did not mean the schools were more safe, or that students all of sudden decided to behave. It just meant that schools were reporting fewer incidents and police were making fewer arrests. These policies allowed Nikolas Cruz, who had an extensive history of behavioral problems, to slip through the cracks.
Dating back to middle school, Nikolas Cruz had been involved in school fights, was reported for erratic behavior, and was banned from bringing a backpack to school over fears that he was carrying a weapon. A number of different teachers reported Cruz for his behavioral issues, which The Washington Post described as “insubordination, profanity, disruption, fighting, and assault.” The paper also reported that Cruz’s middle and high school teachers referred him for counseling. According to City Journal, after one fight, Cruz was referred to a social worker instead of the police. Cruz was ultimately expelled from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School after he assaulted a student in 2017. Despite the glaring issues, Cruz was never arrested.
A year after his expulsion, Nikolas Cruz shot and killed 17 students and staff at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. The sheriff’s office had been previously tipped off that Cruz was planning to shoot up the school. It’s unclear if the tip was ever investigated.
People are dying (and will continue to) in the name of DEI
Runcie and Broward County’s radical school discipline policies allowed Nikolas Cruz to become a repeat offender without consequence. In order to produce a fake statistic that suggested safer schools and well-behaved students, Runcie and Broward risked the safety of other students. They allowed problematic students like Cruz, who had no business being in school, to disrupt other students’ education in the name of equity. 17 people died as a result.
The same is true of every criminal released back onto the streets in blue cities with soft bail laws. According to the New York Post, just ten career criminals have committed almost 500 crimes since New York’s new bail reform law took effect. These career criminals commit crimes, are arrested, released, and commit crimes again. It is a rinse and repeat cycle allowed by DEI justice.
Regardless of how many Americans have been victimized by crime, which has skyrocketed since the BLM riots, DEI justice mandates that these criminals be released. As a disproportionate number of these criminals belong to minority racial and ethnic groups, it would be racist to prosecute them and send them to prison.
Kaylee Gain’s beating is the latest example of the growing racial discrepancy in tolerated violent behavior thanks to DEI justice. While it is possible true justice will be rendered in this case, as Gain’s alleged attacker has not yet been prosecuted, the reaction to the beating is already indicative of this discrepancy. Kaylee Gain’s story receives virtually no coverage because she is white, and her attacker black. Her attacker is a victim, whose story is being used to “incite racial divisions.”
How many more students will have to become victims of violence before this discrepancy is discussed and addressed? How many more innocents in major Democrat cities have to be robbed, assaulted, or killed before our leaders examine the effects of DEI justice? Clearly there have not been enough. And perhaps that is exactly the point of the left’s push for equity: punish the innocent and law-abiding and elevate the violent criminals.