Photo courtesy of USC
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Contributing Columnist
On March 28, I stood in front of the entrance to USC. I made one simple call.
That was for major USC donor, booster and powerful member of the USC Board of Trustees Rick Caruso to speak out and speak out forcefully against USC’s decision to dump its commitment to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
I called out Caruso not solely because of his powerhouse influence on USC policies, but because he harbors strong and very clear mayoral ambitions. In fact, I’m certain that Caruso will almost certainly toss his hat back into the mayor’s race in 2026.
He gave it a good run the first go round in 2022. He has the money, political clout and business and professional connections to potentially make the mayor’s race a real horserace again.
That’s exactly why I felt it important to directly challenge Caruso to oppose USC’s bowing to President Donald Trump’s bullying and intimidation of USC and other universities to scrap their DEI programs.
USC obliged and buckled in the face of the Trump bullying. But the issue was bigger than just one university caving in to the pressure.
The issue is Los Angeles. It is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the nation. Its business, political, and cultural structure reflect that ethnic diversity.
USC is no exception. It has one of the most ethnically diverse student bodies of any university. It has long had an office that’s sole purpose is to promote, recruit and provide financial support for students of color. That office took a strong stand against the USC administration’s decision to drop DEI.
Caruso has a golden opportunity to affirm his uncompromising backing of ethnic diversity in every area of economic, political and cultural life in Los Angeles. As a mayoral candidate, he will be repeatedly called out on the issue.
And the demand rightly so would be for him to affirm his support of diversity, equity and inclusion across the board in all areas of Los Angeles life. That includes everything from education to businesses to government in Los Angeles if he ever sat in the driver’s seat at City Hall.
His silence on the issue whether it be USC’s back pedal from diversity, equity and inclusion or with his many upscale development and business projects is crucial.
Let’s look at why Caruso would be on safe ground to take a hard stand against USC’s abandonment of diversity, equity and inclusion. Trump repeatedly peddles the dumb, bigoted and totally lying notion that diversity, equity and inclusion opens the floodgates to hire packs of unqualified, ill-prepared, incompetent Blacks, Hispanics and women all of course at the expense of supposedly supremely qualified and competent white males.
This dredges up the old strawman notion that diversity, equity and inclusion as its predecessor affirmative action, is just a sneaky way of slapping quotas on companies to hire women, LGBTQ and nonwhites. This, so the claim goes, mocks the ideal that merit, hard work, education and training and preparation must be the only criteria for advancement.
There is absolutely no evidence that companies ever deliberately went out of their way to pack their work force with nonwhites at the expense of qualified white males. If anything, it was the opposite.
Surveys found that Blacks and other minorities in skilled positions at major companies repeatedly complained that they had to work even harder and have even greater top notch proven education and skills than their white counterparts. That was to dispel the deep-seated suspicion and often open charge that they were diversity, equity and inclusion hires and therefore suspect.
The words and terms that Trump and the growing hordes of anti diversity, equity and inclusion opponents routinely toss around is that DEI fuels the belief that whites are inherently racist, enjoy boundless white privilege and that whiteness is the fount of all evil.
That latter point is especially galling because to hear Trump tell it this encouraged schools to shame and indoctrinate into white students that American history is one long train of unspeakable horrors, brutality and abuses of Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans by malicious whites.
Given that insidious attack and a storehouse of deliberate misrepresentations about diversity, equity and inclusion, it is now more important than ever for Los Angeles officials, as well as business and education leaders, to take strong stands in support of diversity and inclusion programs.
Caruso spans the spectrum. He is a business leader. He is a prime education booster. He is a deeply connected political mover and shaker. He has deep pockets. He also wants to be the city’s future mayor.
The USC bombshell on ending its formal commitment to promoting campus diversity was the perfect opportunity for Caruso to take a tough, and unyielding stand backing diversity, equity and inclusion. Who knows, it might have given timid, fearful USC administrators and trustees, of which he is a major one, enough backbone to say no to Trump.
It’s not over. Caruso still has that opportunity. Will he as a possible L.A. mayoral candidate take it?
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the host of the weekly The Hutchinson Report Facebook Livestreamed.
