DEI And Civil Rights Are Not The Same
In 1964, following tumultuous protests against racial segregation in the deep South, the bombing of Black churches in Birmingham, the dramatic march in Selma, and Martin Luther King's March on Washington, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. It stands as a major achievement for African-American civil rights following centuries of enslavement and oppression under Jim Crow segregation.
The Act required the removal of Whites Only signs, outlawed discrimination in hiring, and otherwise demanded the breakdown of legally sanctioned racial segregation in America. One section, Title 4, was reserved specifically for education. The Southern Education Foundation (SEF) worked to have that section included, advancing the Supreme Court's decision in Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) to allow African-Americans equal access to quality public education which they had previously been denied.
In enacting Title 4, Congress funded regional Desegregation Assistance Centers to provide school districts with technical support to dismantle the structures and practices that limited educational opportunities for generations of African-American students.
In 2022 SEF received an Education Department grant, authorized by Title 4, to direct the center for the southern region, which serves 11 states and the District of Columbia, comprising more than a third of the nation's public-school students and over 1 million students of color.
Earlier in 2016, the centers' name had been changed from Desegregation Assistance Centers to Equity Assistance Centers (EAC), no trivial change because, in February, the Trump administration falsely claimed that the work to help school districts comply with federal civil rights laws violated those very laws by focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, and terminated funding of the centers.
I could not disagree more with this decision, or with its rationalization, which recklessly blurs the lines between civil rights enforcement and DEI. The EAC for the southern region has violated no law, and the centers are not DEI programs. These centers are authorized by Congressional mandate to uphold Title 4 of the Civil Rights Act, while DEI policies, however laudable, are not. The current administration either doesn't understand the difference or pretends not to, and SEF has filed a federal lawsuit to halt this assault on the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Let's return to that name change, which reflects the Education Secretary's proposal to revise the program — 'revise' in this case meaning 'to remove the regulations that govern the State Educational Agency Desegregation (SEA) program, authorized under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.'
Between the lines, this suggests that all the impediments to educational opportunity that historically were directed against African-Africans are now neatly addressed, that segregation practices no longer harm anyone. Changing 'Desegregation' to 'Equity' suggests that education inequalities plaguing Black students are so under control that federal funding designed to address these inequalities can be extended beyond the Congressional intent and into the expansive arena of DEI. This could not be more wrong. Vestiges of the practice of lawful segregation still harm Black students to this day.
It is important to note that desegregation did have its pros and cons. Education attainment levels soared for African-Americans during the nation's efforts at desegregation. Unfortunately, desegregation, or more precisely resistance to desegregation, caused the unsettling of many communities due to disinvestment, 'white flight' and divisive politics. It should also not be forgotten that thousands of Black teachers and administrators were wrongfully terminated during the desegregation processes. Nonetheless, better and more informed practices are available to address the continued presence of racially segregated and unequal public education.
As for those regulations, many would find it astonishing that in 2025, 132 U.S. school districts remain under federal desegregation orders, 130 of them in the South. It's not uncommon to see one side of a district receive funding for STEM courses, music programs, and technology, while Black students across town do not. Several of these districts have sought assistance from SEF in the past two years, underscoring the ongoing impact of racial segregation.
There is a grave inconsistency between these 132 open court orders and the termination of the very funding designed to address them. The Department of Education is wrong to label Title 4 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a DEI program, and much as I may admire some DEI policies, the Civil Rights Act's historic step toward desegregation did not have DEI as a goal. Confusing a congressional edict to end segregation with DEI policies that have no genesis in the Black Civil Rights movement to end Jim Crow is historically ignorant, disrespectful, and harmful to the urgent need to focus on resolving continuing racial inequalities in public education.
It is my hope that this lawsuit brings clarity to the conversation around the differences between civil rights and DEI. This issue deserves national attention because it requires us all to believe three essential truths, without which democracy cannot work for everyone.
Words matter. Facts matter. History matters.
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