The Backlash To The Backlash Begins: "I'm a Red-State Mayor. Diversity Is Not Reverse Bigotry." [View all]

One of the things that makes America great is our collective resolve that every American should have an equal opportunity to succeed. We have never fully achieved this, but the Constitution gives us the tools to try, and we have used them. As a result, the arc of American history has bent toward greater equality for 249 years, passing through the Civil War, women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, Obergefell v. Hodges and other milestones.

Of course, that progress is occasionally met with resistance. Oklahoma City, a purple city in a red state, where I serve as mayor, has witnessed Ku Klux Klan activities as well as successful sit-in movements.

As residents of a purple city in a red state, we’ve been hearing a lot of rhetoric that portrays the drive for equal opportunity as a form of reverse discrimination, that says we should not celebrate greater diversity as evidence that we have expanded opportunity, or even that we should not support Pride or other celebrations of our residents’ unique identities.

Sometimes this rhetoric is cloaked in patriotism, but it is really just repackaged bigotry, misogyny and racism. To cast equal opportunity as a threat rather than a goal is to move backward.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/opinion/oklahoma-city-mayor-diversity.html