“DEI is the latest in a long line of dog whistles,” coded words and phrases with a set political message intended for members of certain group to understand, “meant to trigger resentments rooted in racism and sexism, but presented instead as defenses of high principle,” according to Ian Haney López, a UC Berkeley Law professor of public law and author of “Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class.”