“Black history, by definition, is political. Black people, by definition, are political,” author and creator of The 1619 Project, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Howard University Professor Nikole Hannah-Jones said in a recent interview on America’s Untold Truth.
The founder of the Center for Journalism & Democracy at Howard said, “We are the most inconvenient people to the story of American exceptionalism, so they want to ban our history; we give the lie, reveal the lie of this country, and are heroes of the story.”
During this critical historical moment, the second Donald Trump administration is in Chapter 11 of the Project 2025 manual. This is the one on the Department of Education, stating that federal education policy should be limited and that the department should ultimately be eliminated.
Opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is a strategy to deconstruct all federal administrative agencies, notably the education department. Having recently fired half of the department’s employees (with a judge ordering them reinstated), one of the many executive orders chastises the Department of Education for its bloated staff and what the president calls “illegal” DEI initiatives.
No, DEI isn’t illegal, but it’s disbanded without legislative protocol. The National Association of Legal Assistants has gathered all the legal responses and injunctions filed in response to these DEI executive orders.
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The strict deadlines and demands that colleges and schools end DEI programs are not only alarming but also deeply unjust. Last month, many schools received a Dear Colleague letter from the Acting Assistant Secretary of the Department of Education (DOE), Office of Civil Rights, giving a two-week warning to end diversity programs. The administration is investigating more than 50 universities and colleges now that the timeframe has expired.
This move is a direct violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was designed to prevent unlawful practices of treating anyone differently due to race under Title VI.
Originally as intended, discrimination against communities of color andnoncompliance would jeopardize federal funding and possibly result in fines equal to the institution's entire endowment. The Civil Rights Act is acatalyst for DEI.
Black Americans primarily advocated the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which included Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., other civil rights leaders, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). This act was a significant achievement for people facing employment discrimination, segregation, and voting restrictions, and it pushed for legislation to address historical inhumane treatment. This act also included other communities of color.
The new Department of Education is pushing for race-neutral educational institutions in defense of avoiding discrimination against white and Asian students, many of whom they claim have experienced discrimination and come from disadvantaged backgrounds and low-income families.
The call to end Affirmative Action began in 2015 when Edward Blum, founder of Students for Fair Admission (SFFA), used this argument in the Supreme Court case of Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) v. Harvard.
In actuality, Blum co-opted the movement and some legal strategies from Jeff Chang, writer, affirmative action activist, and founder of the Student Coalition for Fair Admissions (SCFA) at the University of California, Berkeley.
The new co-opt is to destroy the 1964 Civil Rights Act under the disguise of anti-DEI and eliminate race-conscious decision-making in America. Some presidents and chancellors at colleges and universities in the U.S. advised their campuses to comply to avoid others paying the price, as the best course was to act preemptively.
Danielle Holley, president of Mount Holyoke College, a liberal arts school in Massachusetts, said, “Anything that is done to disguise what we’re doing simply is not helpful,” who is Black. “It validates this notion that our values are wrong. And I don’t believe that the value of saying we live in a multiracial democracy is wrong.”
For the past several years, there has been a progression to alienate higher education faculty and administration on curriculum or programs surrounding any history involving Black Americans from critical race theory (CRT) to DEI, referred to as “leftist indoctrination” in education.
Today’s moves expand on earlier efforts in the first Trump administration. In 2020, Betsy DeVos, former Secretary of the Department of Education, introduced the 1776 Commission to promote patriotic education in schools to counteract The 1619 Project.
Today, there is a new “End DEI” Portal for parents, teachers, students, and community members to report discrimination based on race or sex, critical theory, rogue sex ed, divisive ideologies, and receipts of betrayal that happened in publicly funded K-12 schools.
What needs to end is this unprecedented erasure of history and truth. What needs to end is the invalidation of Black history. As with any other group of people, Black history is equally valid.
Adrienne N. Spires is CEO of Lapis Analytic Consulting, a Public Voices Fellow on Domestic Violence and Economic Security with The OpEd Project, and author of Roaring Resilience: Finding Grit in the Lion’s Den.
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