It's the first time I'm seeing accessibility put under the same umbrella as DEI. Is "DEIA" in the executive order, or is NSF overreacting, or... is being disabled and wanting to have some quality of life "woke" now?
"DEIA" has picked up steam in government circles over the past few years, and made it into the executive order because of that. I don't think I'd ever seen it used by a non-governmental organization.
Accessibility has always been part of DEI. (Certainly it's been a repeated topic of conversation in my campus's Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board.) And yes, any effort that involves spending time or money to make sure that every person gets to "have some quality of life" falls under this same umbrella. That is literally what people are referring to when they call things "woke".
There is still a difference between actually doing hard work to help disadvantaged and marginalized folks and thinking that “being annoying about one’s pronouns” or “making lists of coworkers who are not woke enough” (both examples are quotes from self-proclaimed social justice activists) solves any problems.
However, thinking that this crop of politicians would take a nuanced stance on anything at all is idiocy at its purest.
Sure! There are always people out there who obsess over linguistic and behavioral purity, and they tend to be very loud. I'm not certain that I've ever met one of them in person. (I've certainly met people who might say (e.g.) "Here's why I've started including pronouns in my email sig," but I think that's not what you're talking about.)
If the current "anti-woke" movement were just about shutting down those obnoxious purists, I think it would be a lot less controversial. But from what I've seen, the political rhetoric (and the associated policy positions now being implemented) strikes just as hard or harder at the folks actually trying to do the hard work.
