A Bridge Collapsed, and Almost Simultaneously So Did Our Discourse
Somehow the link was made that the crash surely had something to do with the DEI efforts of the company connected to the ship.
Never mind that a group of Latino immigrants, road construction workers, who were repairing potholes when the bridge collapsed, had already perished. They would become fodder in the coming days, with some people posing questions about their legal status and more surmising about the “horrors” of our increasingly diverse nation.
In those first few hours, the fact that the ship was owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd and flew a Singapore flag raised red flags for many online trolls: Singapore = foreign = Asian = bad.
Any negative incident, an accident and not, is now subject to this type of insanity. In reality, the massive cargo ship is simply a reflection of global commerce, the supply chains that fuel our economy.
According to the Associated Press, the Dali was built by a South Korean firm, Hyundai Heavy Industries, and had been chartered by a Danish firm to travel from Baltimore to Sri Lanka. The massive vessel had passed an inspection in Chile after some repairs in June of 2023. The U.S. Coast Guard inspected it in September and approved it for operation.
Understanding these factors, illustrative of the inter-related and multiple layers of international governance that impact trade routes, apparently isn’t nearly as interesting to these sleuths, who love to weave complicated conspiracy theories. Those efforts geared up when the ship’s black boxes were recovered and the National Transportation Safety Board had barely begun what will be an exhaustive yearlong study to dissect the incident.
But wait, there’s more!
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott was swiftly labeled the “DEI mayor” in social media slams posted after the crash. He’s a Black man. Some blamed him for the crash. Shortly after the collapse, Scott appeared alongside Maryland Governor Wes Moore at a press conference and was ridiculed because he wasn’t wearing a spiffy suit at the time, in the early morning hours.
Even worse, some GOP candidates for office around the nation jumped in, somehow twisting the incident to imply that it happened because Scott is Black.
The following day, March 28, Scott spoke strongly in an interview with MSNBC:“But they don’t have the courage to say the N-word, and the fact that I don’t believe in their untruthful and wrong ideology, and I am very proud of my heritage and who I am and where I come from, scares them,” he said.
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