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< | Good Riddance, DEI. See you never! | >
> | Reimagining Equality | | | -- By PaulAkere - 19 Feb 2025 | |
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< | Maybe we should be thanking the Trump administration for taking a hard stance against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. Maybe this is a net positive for social justice. Maybe this is a more forceful message than his many racially disparaging comments. Maybe this will compel us more than the hundreds of videos we’ve seen of police brutalizing black and brown men and women. Maybe this reaches places those videos couldn’t. Maybe this time it sustains us. Or maybe this is the fire that Mr. Baldwin described. | >
> | Now that we have recognized that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”) was not built to last, the next question is how to build a version that will. It is time to reimagine how we will acquire equality; the many attempts at equity have been met by an overbearing opposition. The question may demand more than one thousand words, but I have the beginning constructs of an answer — a concerted effort to rebuild our primary schools. I recognize that this has been attempted throughout the years, but I am proposing a new driving source. A force that has garnered widespread support and captured the hearts of Americans. One that feels much more attainable than becoming the next Black president. | | | | |
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< | “These a*******... they always get away" "Are you following him" "Yeah" "Ok, we don’t need you to do that.” Like many in my generation, Mr. Zimmerman’s audio is the first one that I remember hearing. That’s when I first conceptualized the duality of the criminal justice system. I learned that it was more lawful for Mr. Zimmerman to ignore police orders than for his victim to walk home. But this was only the beginning. Then there was Darren Wilson, Brian Encinia, Timothy Lohmann, Michael Slager, Jason Van Dyke, Daniel Pantaleo, and many more. Except in these cases, it was the arms of the state committing the violence against Black men and women. Rarely serving jail time for their crimes. | >
> | More on What We're Up Against
Unfortunately, the loneliness that I felt as an undergraduate and now as a law student is ubiquitous among Black men. Black male graduation rates lag behind those of our peers (UNCF, 2021). Our experience in higher education is made more difficult by the proliferating isolation. Spaces that have historically welcomed this demographic are seeing downturns in enrollment. Howard University is a striking example, Black males now make up only 19% of the campus (Doe, 2025). But it is not just Howard; Black male enrollment at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) is down to 26% from a near 40% mark in 1976 (Windsor, 2024). | | | | |
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< | Years passed, and many nights, a different police brutality case filled the television screen, familiar, yet ever new. At the time, we were living under the first Black President of the United States. Truthfully, I thought this indicated that the only way was forward. I read the statistics from previous generations, but they weren’t living under the first Black President of the United States, I was. I saw the state-ordained violence, both foreign and abroad, but I saw this same country elect a Black president. I saw police officers being granted immunity for their extrajudicial killings– but we elected a Black president. | >
> | This decrease poses grave consequences for any attempt at bridging economic inequality. Economists have found that the income gap between White and Black America is driven entirely by the difference between men’s economic circumstances (Chetty, 2018). Any vision of equality for African Americans has to address the economic outcomes of Black males. | | | | |
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< | Conversations about criminal/racial justice cycled through my conversations just as they cycled through the news. The news sometimes felt like a distant country. My neighborhood was quiet. My high school was a bit more noisy. 4,000 of us packed in there. My closest friends in the school didn’t all come from neighborhoods that were as quiet as mine. The police frequented theirs more than mine. Their perspectives undergirded their feelings about racial progress or the lack of it. Somehow we all shared a similar hopefulness, but when we spoke about the frequency with which we interacted with the police, I couldn’t always relate. I had my experiences, but they seemed to have many more. | >
> | Working to Our Strengths | | | | |
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< | At the time, I thought we were all in agreement that we would go to college and find our respective corners of the world.The first Black president indicated that the world was ours to have. He went to the most prestigious schools, so why couldn’t we? I quickly began to realize that we actually did not all agree that college was our path forward. | >
> | Luckily, we have found success in a field that has proven to be integral to the social fabric, American sports. In NCAA v. Alston, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) restriction on education-related benefits for its athletes violated the Sherman Act. NCAA v. Alston, 594 U.S., 141 S.Ct. 2141 (2021). This decision created a pathway for colleges to offer a wider array of educational support to student athletes, like graduate school scholarships, paid internships, and other general educational resources. More importantly, it created a lane for novel and legal forms of payment to student-athletes. | | | | |
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< | I chose college, but when I looked around a couple of years in, I noticed that many of my friends did not. The statistics that I read about on the struggles of Black men in higher education were coming to life, despite the former president being Black. While I was fortunate to escape frequent encounters with the Police, I had to face the solitude that came with being in the higher education. As fortunate as I was, it was still a great challenge. It was made easier by the courageous people who blazed a trail before me by braving the space during more difficult times. Many campuses, including the one that I attended, honored their bravery by dedicating rooms to affinity groups. | >
> | In July of 2021, the NCAA issued guidance to allow student athletes to receive compensation for their name, image, and likeness (NIL). The athletes now partner with businesses to market their likeness through partnerships and sponsorships. Since issuance, the market has bubbled and is estimated to be worth $1.67 billion. This number should not come as a surprise. The revenue-generating sports in the NCAA bring in billions of dollars annually, and the NCAA brings in over $4 billion annually (NCAA, 2021). Black men make up 55% of all NCAA football players and 56% of all NCAA basketball players (Inside Higher Ed., 2018). These billion-dollar industries are built on the labor of Black men. For decades, these billion-dollar industries have perpetuated existing economic inequality. Recent changes in legislation have created an opportunity for athletes to direct what economies they will revitalize. | | | | |
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< | At the time, these communal spaces felt integral to our survival on campus. A haven that doubled as a headquarters, a place where we could peacefully strategize how to improve Black performance in higher education. We talked about everything, increasing college matriculation, better academic performance, parties, police brutality, more diverse food options, Barack Obama, job opportunities, history, and everything else we could think of. | >
> | Where to Next | | | | |
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< | I now find myself in law school. State-ordained violence persists. The duality of the criminal justice system persists. But now the state is on an even wider rampage. The sitting president wants to repeal the few attempts the country has made at making higher education and professional spaces more diverse. For me, and many like me, it doesn’t matter how many encounters we’ve had with the police, this is a direct attack on the hope we were given. The existence of a formerly Black president cannot stop the current president from mandating that schools do away with programs that seek to increase Black access to higher education and beyond. They told us that a great education was the way to equality and now already limited access is being further restricted. | >
> | The power balance has shifted, and in our favor. If schools are paying their players to continue their education, this can positively influence student athletes to remain in college and complete their degrees. But this does not have to be the only benefit. The athletes can concentrate their wealth and radically shape the communities they come from. There are millions of dollars that can be directed at improving the educational systems that propelled these athletes to college.
For centuries, we have put our faith in the judicial system and national/local governments to ensure equality in education. The lesson from the DEI movement is that we must stop waiting. There is a window of opportunity to invest in our future, and we have now been empowered to make the investment. Student-Athletes can direct fragments of their NIL revenue to the schools that aided in their success and make seismic differences in those communities. | | | | |
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< | I thought that past generations fighting this fight meant that I would not have to fight it too. For a while, I also thought that the existence of this fight was deplorable. I now realize that we are more equipped than ever to handle it and in a more permanent way. The statistics also show that there have been increases in Black American success in higher education. There are more of us in the fight than ever before. Candidly, I thought that there were better people than myself to vocalize the urgent issues plaguing our community. I understand now, every voice must be lifted. | >
> | While it will be hard to reach the entire country, the majority of top college athletes come from Texas, Florida, and California. A concentrated effort at improving the underserved primary schools in these states can be a model for the rest of the country on the impact that student athletes can have in the fight for equality. As un-American as it is to direct others how to spend their money, it is worthwhile to explore the potential that these targeted investments can have. As public education continues to face existential threats, recent capital from sports has empowered a community with the tools to create an equality that will last. An equality that is not given to us but earned. At the heart of this movement for equality is the recognition that we all owe the next generation an offering of hope, a hope that signals anything is attainable. This hope would not rely on corporations signaling their commitment to diversity, but rather a hope that illuminates a belief in self-empowerment. | | | | |
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< | So again, maybe we should be thanking President Trump. Or at least, maybe I should be thanking President Trump. There is no way for me to avoid the proximity of this attack. Turning off the TV will not help. | >
> | There will be concerns about the scale of impact that student-athletes can have. We should look no further than Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the home of the Alabama Crimson Tide. Alabama Football has been to the pinnacle of college football, winning six national championships in ten years. Through ticket revenue, admission booms, and local tourism, the Tuscaloosa economy has experienced unparalleled growth. In the 2021 school year, the University was responsible for nearly $2.1 billion in economic impact in Tuscaloosa (Welbourne, 2024).. With five home games in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the football team was directly responsible for $134.5 million in economic impact. Id. | | | | |
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> | Just as Tuscaloosa has benefited from athletic success, other marginalized communities should also get the chance. We have the power to determine which communities will benefit, we should use this to our advantage. | | | | |
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It seems to me that this draft is meant as a prologue. It explains why the next draft needs to exist. | | | | |
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< | Racially retrogressive policy-making by the US federal government will indeed summon the efforts of another generation of Americans for whom multiracial democracy must be fought for an won if it is to be handed on to their descendents. But we won't get it by reminiscing about why we thought we had it for a while. Seeing how easily parts of the economic and political infrastructure of our society turned away from their post-2020 positions, how easily the "anti-woke" agitation drove them altogether off the field will prompt not only re-immersion in the history of the civil rights movement, consideration of how to build new coalitions that will last, but also reconsideration of our recent adventures in social thought. We must wonder whether we were too quick to anticipate that the universalism of equality could be replaced by the particularisms of multiple "equities," in which we blunted the broad advance of everyone together and were thereby divided from one another and conquered by the same old tactics used so many times before.
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> | Works Cited
Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Jones, M. R., & Porter, S. R. (2018). Race and economic opportunity in the United States: Executive summary. Opportunity Insights. Retrieved from
https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/race_summary.pdf
Doe, J. (2025, March 30). Black men and the college degree gap. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/30/us/black-men.html
Inside Higher Ed. (2018, March 12). Graduation rates for Black athletes lower than most students', study shows. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/12/graduation-rates-black-athletes-lower-most-students-study-shows
NCAA v. Alston, 594 U.S., 141 S.Ct. 2141 (2021)
NCAA, Division I Manual 209 (2021), https://web3.ncaa.org/lsdbi/reports/getReport/90008 [https://perma.cc/X3PS-K2JQ]; see id. at 206–07
UNCF. (2018, November 29). African Americans and college education by the numbers. Retrieved from https://uncf.org/the-latest/african-americans-and-college-education-by-the-numbers
Welbourne, B. (2024, March 20). UA’s impact on state economy approached record despite pandemic. University of Alabama News Center. https://news.ua.edu/2024/03/uas-impact-on-state-economy-approached-record-despite-pandemic/
Windsor, D. J., & Reeves, R. (2024, August 22). HBCUs at a crossroads: Addressing the decline in Black male enrollment. American Institute for Boys and Men. https://aibm.org/research/hbcus-at-a-crossroads-addressing-the-decline-in-black-male-enrollment/ | | |
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