Do “racist undertones” lurk, as a New York Times headline claims, in President Trump’s rhetoric on diversity, equity, and inclusion? The Grey Lady says that Mr. Trump blaming DEI for the air crash at the District of Columbia has a “clear” meaning, “that diversity equals incompetence,” and “was an unmistakable message of racism.” These columns don’t buy that charge. Would the Times say that the lack of diversity caused the crash?

Yet the problem of DEI is a hot issue. It’s all over the web. While Democrats wielded DEI as a toxic triad of reverse discrimination and Marxist redistributionism, the three words in and of themselves reflect goals that — depending how they are achieved — can be commended. As the Danish pastry Hamlet put it, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” DEI programs, goes the thinking, were flawed from the get-go.

That’s in large part due to the word at the core of DEI, “equity,” which was consciously adopted by leftist activists to replace the concept of “equality” that was the longstanding goal of the Civil Rights movement — and, not to put too fine a point on it, at the heart of the American experiment. That pledge is found in the Declaration’s assurances “that all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”

Yet for the proponents of DEI, which sprang from the so-called “social justice” movement, Vox reported , “equity is held up as a superior goal to mere ‘equality.’” The concept of equality implies that “everyone gets ‘the same thing,’ but with equity, everyone gets ‘the things they deserve,’” is how one “racial justice activist,” DeRay Mckesson, parsed the distinction, per Vox. That’s Marxism in its purest form, and it underscores why DEI has failed.

To far-left activists, the rallying cries of Civil Rights and American freedom — like “equal rights for all,” “equal treatment for all,” and “equality of opportunity” — were, per Vox, an irritant. It’s no wonder, then, that DEI programs and efforts troubled Americans not only on the right, but in the center, and even some liberals — anyone, in short, keeping faith with the nation’s founding ideals and the old “melting pot” model of acculturation.

DEI became a byword for ignoring merit in college admissions and hiring. DEI gave Americans the sense that groups disfavored by the far left, like whites, Asians, and Jewish Americans, were being discriminated against. Yet from President Biden’s first day in office — despite running as a moderate — he was all-in on DEI. He signed an executive order “on advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities through the federal government.”

Did that lead to de facto hiring quotas? That’s the claim in a lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration arguing that such policies “denied 1,000 would-be air traffic controllers jobs because of diversity hiring targets,” the Post reports . Hence Mr. Trump’s gripes, whether founded or not, about DEI and air safety. Voter fatigue with DEI’s misuse helped hoist Mr. Trump back into office, and even earned him more support from Blacks and Hispanics.

So it’s understandable that Mr. Trump, on his first day, would dial back DEI. Mr. Trump’s executive order marked Mr. Biden’s DEI efforts as “illegal and immoral discrimination programs.” Jettisoning the left’s version of DEI, though, doesn’t have to mean mocking so-called “DEI hires.” Minority voters, after all, helped hand Mr. Trump the presidency. Wouldn’t it behoove the right to put forward an improved version of DEI?

That would mean fostering diversity — racial, religious, and political — and inclusion yet insisting on colorblind merit. As for equity, conservatives have long backed the free market, unfettered by governmental interference like taxes and regulations, as the vehicle to help minorities get ahead on merit. With America becoming a majority-minority society, the GOP could well fare better by offering a vision combining diversity and merit.