Time to Ditch DEI in Favor of Something Better

For almost a half century, Republican presidents consistently attacked racial preference programs rhetorically but did little to roll them back. That was true of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and even Donald Trump in his first term. Trump’s second term is different. The new administration has unleashed a flurry of executive orders and a “Dear Colleague Letter” upending racial preferences and associated trainings and bureaucracies that constitute modern diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

How should Democrats respond? Championing existing DEI programs, some of which are completely indefensible, is a political trap that must be avoided. At the same time, Donald Trump has overreached by attacking not only racial preferences (which are unpopular) but also race-neutral efforts, such as class-based affirmative action programs to promote racial diversity (which are broadly supported).

To thread the needle, Democrats would be smart to jettison unpopular and divisive DEI programs in favor of something better—a policy of “integration, equal opportunity, and belonging” that restores the original values of the civil rights movement including judging people based on merit, not race, emphasizing what we have common across racial divides, and championing free speech and dialogue rather than indoctrination.

Such a policy would embrace racial integration without racial preferences—which is precisely what the public wants.

Racial preferences—which are at the heart of DEI ideology—have always been deeply unpopular. Democratic presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama knew it, but when they tried to suggest moving away from such policies, they were constrained by the “shadow party” of interest groups, foundations, and left-wing media.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ended racial preferences in college admissions in the 2023 case of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the justices provided Democrats with a major political gift. The Democrats’ political albatross should have been lifted because racial preferences were no longer legal.

But the ideology behind racial preferences lives on in DEI practices and trainings. These indoctrination schemes often embrace Ibram X. Kendi’s “antiracist” view that all racial and ethnic disparities are the result of discrimination. This contention is hard to square with the relative academic success of groups that themselves have been victims of discrimination, such as Asian Americans and Jews, and many black students. New York City public schools are 18.7 percent Asian American, and yet the top exam-based school, Stuyvesant High School, is 75 percent Asian. Jews make up 0.2 percent of the world’s population, yet have won 22 percent of Nobel Prizes. The insidious implication of some DEI trainings is that something nefarious must be afoot when groups like Asians and Jews overperform.

DEI trainings also often seek to harden differences between people of different racial groups—claiming, for example, that punctuality and hard work are aspects of “white culture,” a notion that would ring true in a Ku Klux Klan meeting hall. Meanwhile, too many DEI trainings casually demonize all white people. Penn State University’s DEI training, one federal judge noted, ascribed “negative traits to white people or white teachers without exception and as flowing inevitably from their race.” And the use of the word DEI “trainings” is telling. They are not meant to involve robust discussions of thorny issues that include mainstream liberal and conservative perspectives. Instead, students are instructed that they need to embrace a highly-ideological perspective. Such policies manage to merge violations of civil rights with violations of civil liberties.

Donald Trump and congressional Republicans would love nothing more than for Democrats to defend these unpopular and race essentialist policies. Some already have. Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett Texas, for example, stood up for DEI with the absurd claim: “If you are competent, you are not concerned. The only people crying are mediocre white boys.” Democrats should recognize that they paid a political price when former president Joe Biden signed an executive order implementing DEI policies across “the whole of our government” on his very first day in office, thereby rejecting the historic commitment of civil rights legislation and the U.S. Constitution to equal opportunity rather than Kendi-like equality of group results.

Fortunately for Democrats, Trump has taken a winning issue and undercut it by making outrageous statements of his own. After a tragic airplane crash, at a moment when the president should have been consoling the country, Trump cast blame on DEI policies despite lacking any evidence. The administration then hired an acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy who recently wrote, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.”

The biggest substantive overreach came on February 14, when Trump’s Department of Education issued a “Dear Colleague” letter which threatened to cut off federal funds to schools and colleges for employing race-neutral policies, such as eliminating standardized tests, if part of the purpose is to “increase racial diversity.” Absurdly, the directive could also jeopardize colleges that adopted broadly popular policies, such as ending legacy preferences, if part of the motive was racial integration.

The Department of Education appeared to soften its position in a subsequent question and answer document about the “Dear Colleague” letter. But hard-liners have long contended in litigation that a racial diversity motive jeopardizes all race-neutral efforts.

Crucially, the right’s position would also seem to make it illegal for a university to adopt affirmative action policies for economically disadvantaged and working-class students of all races if racial diversity were a motive. This fringe theory has never been embraced by the U.S. Supreme Court. Twice in 2024, the Court declined to hear challenges along these lines.

As I outline in a new book, Class Matters, right-wing overreach gives Democrats an important political opening because it crosses the political Rubicon. Whereas Democrats were on the defensive in supporting racial preferences (which tend to benefit economically advantaged black and Hispanic students), the right has now put itself in the awkward position of explaining why it’s opposed to offering a hand up to its base: students from working-class families of all races who’ve overcome odds to be in a better position to succeed in life.

Rather than defending unpopular DEI programs that harden racial differences or adopting Trump’s punitive approach of opposing anything that might produce healthy levels of diversity, Democrats should champion a middle ground policy of “integration, equal opportunity, and belonging.”

As I outline in a recent Progressive Policy Institute report, “A Way Out of the DEI Wars,” the new policy would differ from DEI policies in several key respects:

• While both would push back against segregation, new policies would be colorblind and provide a leg up to disadvantaged students of all races, a disproportionate share of whom have life prospects stunted by the economic legacy of racial discrimination. Whereas “diversity” highlights differences across racial lines, “integration” emphasizes commonality. It would teach students a common American identity that transcends racial tribalism on the left or right.

• The “equal opportunity” plank of the new program would pursue a middle ground between DEI’s embrace of equality of racial group results and the right’s invocation of equal opportunity in a pro forma manner. It would reject proportional racial representation on the one hand, but would also recognize that “equal opportunity” cannot be an empty promise. It would require a serious effort: adequate nutrition, health care, and housing; sufficient school funding, and reduced economic segregation in schools. And it would consider candidates for college using the concept of “true merit” that measures academic achievements in light of obstacles overcome.

• Finally, the principle of “belonging” would apply universally to students of every race, gender, economic background, and political persuasion. It would reject white nationalism on the right that sees some people as more American than others, and it would also reject the exclusionary aspects of DEI that demonize entire racial groups as oppressors. Rather than stifling conservative views, it would welcome vibrant debate across ideological lines.

On a policy level, Democrats should push for an end to programs that violate civil rights and civil liberties and back policies that reduce economic and racial segregation. This could include banning legacy preferences that tend to benefit rich white students, as Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Todd Young (R-IN) have proposed. Likewise, the federal government should increase the endowment tax at colleges that fail to open their doors to meaningful numbers of working-class students, including those who are black and Hispanic.

A new policy of integration, equal opportunity, and belonging—by appealing to broadly shared American values—would take the wind out of the sails of the right-wing backlash against DEI while simultaneously elevating the righteous values of the civil rights movement.

Richard D. Kahlenberg is the Director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute and author of a new book, Class Matters: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preference, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges.