From Boardroom To Ghetto - Ho's And Bro's, The Tale Of LaShonda Evans And The Demise Of DEI

LaShonda Evans was former President Joe Biden's poster girl for DEI - not just a black woman, but an uppity, nasty one from the inner city, an affirmative action hire to show America that he meant business, no white wannabees in his White House. 

LaShonda was the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, a sinecure and no-show job that paid well and required no effort.  She was hired to show that the White House was not white but rainbow colored, and that anyone no matter of background, parentage, or particular promise would be welcome. 

LaShonda was given a corner office looking out on Pennsylvania and Lafayette Park, a team of eager young people who had begged and pleaded for appointment, and a generous expense account.  All she had to do was to show up on occasion, cut a few ribbons, and with the help of the President's speech writers, give an occasional update on DEI affairs. 

LaShonda was all that Biden had hoped for - a big, high-shelved black woman from the ghetto with an attitude.  After growing up in the projects with a drug-addled mother and absent father, watching two brothers die in gunfire on MLK Avenue in broad daylight, and in and out of the law for sexual favors, she was intimidated by no one.  Even the President, the man whose finger was on the nuclear button and who was the leader of the free world, took a few steps back when she walked into the Oval Office. 

'I ain't got me no flowers', LaShonda said to the President. 'Y'all done forgot me'; and with that the President buzzed his aide de camp who hustled into the room and bowed his head in contrition as Biden lambasted him for gross incompetence and racial ineptitude.  'We are here to make a difference', the President said, 'so get to it'. 

Expecting at least a thank you from the woman, Biden paused, and gave his trademark ear-to-ear smile; but LaShonda only touched up her hair, adjusted her brooch, and said, 'Whatchoo call me in here fo'?'

The President nonplussed, paused for a moment, trying to regain his presidential demeanor and confidence, then mumbled something about welcome, duty, and America, some incoherent patter at which LaShonda frowned and said, 'You ain't makin' no sense'. 

This was at a time when Biden's staff had circled the wagons and insisted that he was in fine mental fettle, sharp as a tack, on top of world affairs, a man to be respected if not honored; so LaShonda's response was the shot heard 'round the world after it had been repeated by the Chief of Protocol who had been invited to the meeting and shortly thereafter had become the surreptitious meme of the White House. 

 

LaShonda was the crack in the dike, the first to call out the Emperor's new clothes, to see him as naked as a jaybird and with even less sense.  

Of course the staff closed ranks and muffled their whispers and innuendoes - after all, their livelihoods depended on Old Joe - but over a shot and a beer at the Old Ebbitt Grille they became conspiratorial and unhealthily honest. 

Meanwhile LaShonda, after redecorating her office and tossing the funeral home-smelling bouquets and posies in the trash, she settled in, tried out all the phones and intercoms, turned on the wall-sized television to a BET sitcom, nipped at her Courvoisier and felt as happy as anyone on God's green earth. 

Now, she was supposed to feel at home what with all these people of color, gays, transgenders, and women around, but she wanted no part of these fey fairies and white wannabees who flitted about, a pretentious, buggering lot that belonged back at Harvard or wherever they came from, not a one of them who had ever set foot across the Anacostia into the real America

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As soon as she realized that she was untouchable - as a black woman there was no way she could be demoted or cashiered - she showed up less and less, called out her white colleagues for racism and demanded an increase in pay and benefits because of the hostile environment in which she was forced to work, changed offices to larger and larger spaces until she was finally Queen Bee, Cleopatra on the Potomac. 

She was the first to go when the Trump storm troopers came to town and claimed prime offices for themselves.  DEI was not only to go but go in a ceremonial bonfire, a gleeful barn burning of the icon of the old guard, so LaShonda was ushered out onto Pennsylvania Avenue and told to take a bus back to the ghetto while all the bling and cheap tchotchkes that lined her walls were tossed in the trash. 

She took the L56 to Arnold Avenue and was welcomed back with open arms.  Half her expense account monies had been sent to her homies.  She never forgot where she came from and was happy to be back, an inevitability she had planned for and awaited.  Four years was plenty of time to pad her bank account, ship thousands offshore, and still take care of her friends, so an early retirement in Bimini was definitely in the cards. 

 

'The sham, the fraud, the idiotic Ponzi scheme of DEI is history', said the new President, 'and an American culture of equality of opportunity will once again be the law of the land. Bye-bye to the racial hangers-on, the do-nothing, make-nothing seat-fillers who simply took up space.  A new age of enterprise, intelligence, and ambition is here'.  

LaShonda chuckled and high-fived her sisters when she heard this and saw this bevy of white, blonde girls on the dais with him.  'Talk about seat-fillers', she laughed, those ofay bitches gonna do some lap dancin' on the old man'; and so it went, LaShonda without rancor or regret back in her old neighborhood, tapped for no good reason to go uptown, served her time and was where she belonged. 

DEI had made not a whit of difference to the ghetto, an invention of white wannabees for Uncle Toms, and so it came and went without notice except for the stuffed envelopes of cash that came down from the White House thanks to LaShonda Evans.  The homeboys in fact loved Donald Trump, a man cut from the same cloth - imperious, with attitude, a dude with arm candy and yachts. 

LaShonda did what she said - took her gains, bought a beachfront property in Bimini, drank rum Cokes, screwed the locals and lived happily ever after.