If you wanted to sum up the sad state of our nation’s politics, you need look no further than the controversial May commencement speech by Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker to the Benedictine College graduates.
One line stood out: “The world around us says that we should keep our beliefs to ourselves whenever they go against the tyranny of diversity, equity and inclusion. We fear speaking truth because now unfortunately truth is in the minority.”
Like the Willie Horton ads from 1988, the Jesse Helms white hands of 1990 and critical race theory in the 2020-2021 election cycle, DEI will be the political boogeyman of 2024.
Injecting race into politics is nothing new in America. But the focused and fierce campaign against DEI is more than just slogans and ads. It is a rewinding of historic progress for white women, people of color and marginalized communities. And it is a rewriting of civil rights laws to “protect all people,” including white men, from racial discrimination.
Case in point: In April, Iowa universities announced that they were closing DEI offices in part to help “young white men, who need a safe space where they belong.” You read that right.
Credit: Stephanie Honikel Photography
Credit: Stephanie Honikel Photography
As the United States turns 250 years old in 2026, we must truly confront the issues that we have spent centuries avoiding. One of the biggest issues we have yet to address fully as a nation in a forward looking, non reactionary way is the issue of racial justice and equity. Yes, we fought a Civil War that ended slavery. Yes, we had a short period of Reconstruction 1865-1877 that gave Black men the right to vote and created a series of civil rights laws that expressly protected Black citizens and ensured they would be equal in the eyes of the law. Unfortunately, that process of racial restorative justice was cut short by the implementation of segregation policies, often referred to as Jim Crow laws introduced at the state and local levels in the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation. What followed was an almost century long period of further racial degradation, terror and disenfranchisement of Black Americans.
Fast forward to 2024, America is now in a period of what I like to call Post-Reconstruction 2.0. The progress we’ve made on women’s and other marginalized group’s rights are being rolled back, re-characterized as reverse discrimination and, worse, used as a means to divide Americans writ large. Targeted legal challenges are being made against existing civil rights, dating back to 1866, and legal attacks on equitable philanthropic opportunities for Black women in corporate America, like the Atlanta’s Fearless Fund. At the same time school boards, universities and other institutions are banning “DEI” from their curriculum and campuses for good. The University of North Carolina is the latest Southern university ban DEI. In my home state of Virginia, two of public universities will not teach courses around diversity and race because the state’s governor and attorney general have those courses under review.
So where do we go from here? That is the question we must answer as America will become a majority minority nation in the next decade. We can both embrace DEI and protect our civil liberties as we find our footing to fight back against the loudest opponents of DEI and those who are actively rolling back women’s reproductive health protections. The reality is that white conservatives and conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation were well organized in their efforts to dismantle affirmative action programs, which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down 6-3 last June. Now, Heritage is coming for DEI programs.
As I said on a recent CNN debate on DEI programs, we have been “window dressing” diversity and inclusion instead of doing the real work of getting people understand what DEI means and embrace it. And, more important, how DEI positively effects social and workplace interactions — and the corporate bottom line.
Instead, opponents see DEI as a set of authoritarian rules and practices, otherwise dubbed “wokeness.” They argue that they are tired of being told what they must accept, what rules they must follow, or what they can and cannot say, think or do when it comes to aligning with workplace DEI policies and statements. Or worse, they fear that exercising their own sincerely held religious views and practices can be grounds for removal from their jobs or universities. This is where we have to have honest conversations about where we go from here. Because the different realities and experiences of marginalized groups are at odds with this prevailing orthodoxy being championed loudly by white men.
We have to start living up to the values and ideals espoused at our founding. We have not yet done so. DEI must be re-imagined, redefined and reengaged by all of us having a seat at the table. The far left progressives and the far right conservatives will never agree. It is up to those of us who see the value in moving toward a more just, equitable and fair America to meet in the middle and build bridges. Have courageous, hard and historically accurate conversations that educate, inform and drive us to address how those historical wrongs still affect us to this very day. We must not give up on DEI. It is necessary and needed.
Sophia A. Nelson is an award-winning DEI trainer, a former adjunct professor and the 2024 Varner Vitality Lecturer at Oakland University in Michigan.
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