MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota representative and Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips on Wednesday addressed why he scrubbed the reference of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion from his campaign website.
Politico reports that the change to the website comes after one of Phillips’ biggest financial backers, hedge fund investor Bill Ackman, said the DEI reference was a mistake and Phillips was getting “educated” on the issue in a post on X earlier this week. Now, the section is called Equity & Restorative Justice.
Phillips addressed the website change in an interview with CNN, saying he’s been educated on the issue, not influenced.
“First of all, we didn’t change the language. We did change the dropdown and I’ll tell you why,” he said. “Because I believe in diversity, I believe in equity, I believe in inclusion. But what has inclusion done for the Black community in this country? What have both parties done to close the racial wealth gap? I want to take it a step further. I made that change to restorative justice.”
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Phillips says there has been litigation of slogans when people should be focused on solutions.
“The most important education I’ve received is how the Black community has been suffering because of the long tail of slavery that we have never rectified, we’ve never repaired,” he said. We’d had generations of Democrats and Republicans making promises that have never been kept. And it is time to do something and that is why I’m running for president. This is about repair.”
Phillips said he’d set up “American Dream Accounts” for every child birthed in America.
“I want to see the federal government endow an account with $1,000 to create equality from the very beginning of life, so that every young person has an investment account invested in U.S. markets,” Phillips added. “They will study investment in high school and elementary school and track their investments. And when they graduate, as an incentive, they’d get their money.”
Phillips says other equity initiatives would be creating housing for all, including building 7 million housing units, as well as tuition-free schooling from pre-kindergarten through college.
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