This is an opinion column.

“They ran out the back door…”

“They are so afraid….”

“They are running scared.”

They are Alabama Republicans. On a day when they were to squash diversity, equity, and inclusion—daggumit—throughout the state; when they were going to defund programs that create safe, welcoming spaces for employees, students, and citizens; when they were going to emphatically ramrod Alabamians with a bill based on their ill-informed, unfounded fears, they shrank, hid, and squirreled away.

They avoided more than 100 students—children!—from colleges and universities across the state who came to the statehouse in Montgomery Wednesday to protest divisive (yes, I’m boomeranging their word back on them) SB129. To share what DEI is to them. To tell their elected officials how DEI, as University of Alabama senior Sean Atchison bravely told my AL.com colleague Rebecca Griesbach, “saved my life.”

They ducked, dived, and dodged the mosaic of students waiting patiently in the hall outside Room 200 where legislators were lunching. When they were done, “They ran out the back door to avoid us,” said University of Alabama-Birmingham sophomore Sydney Testman.

Related: Alabama college students rally against anti-DEI bill: ‘We won’t stand for it.’

Added Atchison: “They are so afraid of students showing our voices and being heard on SB129 because they know the damage they are trying to do to this state and to students, and they are running scared from us.”

They were, quite simply, an embarrassment.

SB129 is the prime cut in the Alabama Republicans’ 2024 red-meat legislative session—and they choked on it.

They gagged on an opportunity to define and defend the unnecessary bill to voters whom it will most affect—because they cannot accurately define or defend it without resorting to empty catch-phrasey “talking points.”

I’ll give Alabama GOP chair John Wahl a bit of grace for at least engaging with the students in the hallway—though watching Griesbach’s video of the encounter is almost comical (if it wasn’t so pitiful).

“If you create a social agenda,” Wahl said, “if you push a social ideology, whether conservative or liberal, I think that’s outside the proper role of government.”

Huh?

That is exactly what Alabama Republicans have done in the last few years by eliminating a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion, forbidding families from obtaining gender-affirming treatments for their children, attacking libraries (and librarians), doubling down on a “Don’t Say Gay” law to “purify our schools”, and trying to whitewash American history (well, the Black part) by screaming “critical race theory” without having a clue what it is.

“Our government should be neutral, a referee, if you will.” I’m crying real tears now.

There was also this gem of an exchange: “As a country, we’re growing less and less comfortable with open dialogue,” Wahl said.

To which a student adroitly responded: “That’s why we have DEI.”

“I’m actually not here for this,” Wahl finally said.

Remember, almost 200 UA students and faculty marched across the quad on campus chanting “Defend DEI” and a student petition protesting the bill now, as I type, has almost 5,500 signatures. (You may sign it here.)

To be fair (I do try), Testman, the UAB student, said “a couple” of Republicans were “really receptive” to speaking with her. “I was really surprised to hear that some of the reps didn’t really understand the effects this bill would have.”

She shouldn’t have been.

Senate Republicans shoved SB129 through the upper chamber last week. On Tuesday it was debated before a House committee.

In support of the bill, Rep. Ed Oliver, R-Dadeville said an unnamed Missouri professor claimed DEI programs on college campuses were “radical and divisive offshoots of critical race theory” (See; above) that had only deepened divisions and served to “indoctrinate students into a far-Left political ideology.”

So, a cowardly anonymous professor (if they exist at all) flinging unsupported claims is your foundational argument for flushing diversity, equity, and inclusion?

No student, at any level, would get away with such an empty citation.

Rep. Russell Bedsole, R-Alabaster, whined that DEI training made him uncomfortable. “It made me feel a way that I didn’t think I should feel,” he said.

Poor thing.

The bill slid through the committee like a Happy Meal. It was approved and slated to reach the floor Wednesday for a final vote. It didn’t make it—maybe Republicans left it on the lunch table as they crept out the back door to avoid defending, justifying what they simply cannot.

I’m a member of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary. My column appears on AL.com, as well as the Lede. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj