From NPR.

President Trump and his supporters have connected diversity efforts to recent tragedies like the D.C. area plane crash and the LA fires.

Commentary on national news stories is a tried and true way for partisan media figures to drive engagement online. But stoking anger about diversity efforts in particular is also shorthand for a much larger story, said Ian Haney López, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of "Dog Whistle Politics."

"Again and again, we see these efforts to trigger people’s latent resentments against groups that historically have been socially marginalized, socially reviled in terms that do not embrace a blatant direct bigotry, but that instead seek to clothe themselves in some form of neutrality or even a commitment to fairness or excellence," Haney López told NPR.