Will DEI’s demise defer our dreams?

Credit: Contrib

Credit: Contrib

For me, that feeling strikes especially deep. I am a student at Morehouse College, but that story began long before me. My great-grandfather, James Caslin, was the first in our family to attend college, nearly a century after slavery had ended. It took that long for someone in our bloodline to attain a real chance at higher education, in a country that promised freedom but withheld opportunity.

He was a Black man with a brilliant mathematical mind and no clear path forward, until a school on a red clay hill in Georgia opened its doors. Morehouse welcomed him when few other institutions in the country would. It gave him not just an education, but a future. He became an aviation engineer for the U.S. Air Force and, in doing so, cracked open the door of possibility for the generations that followed. I am who I am because he walked through it.

I walk those same grounds now. I sit in the chapel where men before me were taught the lessons that inspired them to think, to feel and to lead. Some noteworthy examples include civil rights icon Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.; Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor; and more recently, Georgia’s first Black United States senator, Rev. Raphael Warnock. Morehouse didn’t rise because the world made room for it. It rose because someone believed that Black boys deserved to become whole men, and they gave whatever they had to make that real. That’s how so many HBCUs survived, not through privilege, but through purpose.

Yes, I could have gone anywhere. I received an International Baccalaureate Diploma, and peers with my same grade-point averages and similar extracurriculars currently attend Ivy League and other top institutions. But I chose Morehouse. Not because I lacked options, but because this place carries the stories of my ancestors. We’ve laid down roots here. Traditions passed like heirlooms. Dreams sharpened by legacy. Just like families who pour into Harvard or Princeton, we too have invested generations of faith into our institutions. But now, while their foundations deepen, ours feel like they’re being chipped away.

Some say DEI has run its course. That maybe we’ve gone too far. That it’s time for fairness to look like neutrality again. I get it. I really do. I’ve rolled my eyes at panels featuring people as diversity decorations fraught with empty buzzwords such as cultural competence, equity lens and colorblindness. But what’s being removed now isn’t performance. It’s not symbolic. It’s tangible. It’s the mentor who made time to help you figure out FAFSA. It’s the stipend that let you accept the internship you couldn’t afford to do for free. It’s the fellowship that reminded you your voice mattered in rooms you were never meant to enter.

I’ve heard all the rebuttals. I’ve even believed some of them. That it’s not just Black and Brown students who struggle. That poor white kids in Appalachia, in the Rust Belt, in farm towns across the South face steep hills too. And they do. I’ve seen it with my own eyes: students who come from trailer parks and single-parent homes, who work double shifts just to afford books. I’ve never questioned their pain. In fact, what few seem to say out loud is that many of those students also quietly benefited from DEI. Because while the language was about race, the programs often supported those who simply came from less. Those who were first-generation, Pell-eligible, or one step away from giving up.

What’s being dismantled now isn’t just about race. It’s about access. It’s about care. It’s about the belief that some students, regardless of skin, need more than a lecture to thrive. When we tear this down, we aren’t making things fairer. We’re making them less attainable for many who are deserving. And those who will feel it first and hardest are the ones who have always been closest to the edge.

So yes, I understand the criticisms. I know what it feels like to be told your success is political. I’ve felt the weight of walking into a room and wondering if people think you’re only there because of a quota. But I also know what it feels like to carry the full weight of your opportunity and rise to meet it. I’m a full-time student with a full course load. A college athlete who balances practices with late-night study sessions. I’ve earned straight A’s, received recognition for my work, and still wake up wondering if I’m doing enough to justify the space I occupy. That’s what people don’t always see. Even if you believe DEI should end, how can it end like this: quietly, suddenly, and with no plan for the students still climbing?

The irony is that the gestures celebrating diversity remain. The glossy murals. The filtered brochures. The Instagram posts in February. We keep the image of progress, even as we pull the scaffolding down.

And so here we are, back in our familiar surroundings, all of us a little older. We’re still dreaming. Still laughing. Still home. But now, beneath it all, there’s this question none of us know how to answer: If the support that made our stories possible disappears, who will get to tell theirs next?

Braxton Broady is a rising junior at Morehouse College majoring in history with minors in French and Spanish. He served as a translator on behalf of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic, helping register school-aged refugees and supporting community efforts to build a school. He also worked as a Public History Fellow at the Castillo de San Marcos, where he organized the first-ever Gullah Geechee Cultural Showcase.