Opinion: Why Does DEI Exist? Understanding the History and Importance of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

The following column appeared previously in the Greenfield Recorder.

In the first week of his presidency, President Trump said: “We will terminate every diversity, equity, and inclusion program across the entire federal government.”

The Federal government sent a letter to school districts across the country threatening to cut federal funding if they did not end all DEI related programs, giving them two weeks to comply.

As a consequence, schools and universities have been threatened with the loss of millions of dollars of federal funding. Research institutions have had hundreds of millions of dollars of grants canceled, and more cuts threatened.

Nineteen states, including Massachusetts, have refused to obey this order and are suing the federal government over its threat to cut funds.

Given the scope of the attacks on DEI programs across the country and here in Massachusetts, it is a good time to take a look at what DEI programs are, why they exist, and why there is pushback.Historical context

DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion, is the current iteration of a centuries long struggle to bring rights, protection and the ability to participate fully in our democracy to many of those who have been marginalized throughout our history. When I taught high school my students and I decided to vote on how our classroom would operate according to the rules governing voting at the time the Constitution was ratified. We had a spirited debate about how our classroom would function and then it was time for the vote. Turned out I was the only person who could vote. None of the young women could vote, nor could the students of color, nor anyone who didn’t own land. I could make all of the decisions about how our classroom would run, how they would be graded, and everything else. Needless to say, they were not happy having no voice in how their classroom might operate.

While we have made significant progress from a time when only white men with land could make the laws and all the decisions, that progress only came about because of persistent and extraordinary struggle, often in the face of persistent, and often violent, opposition. I am thinking of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass; of young African Americans and their allies sitting in at lunch counters; Judy Heumann sitting in for disability rights; breakfast programs in Oakland; Stonewall; Alice Paul on a hunger strike for voting rights; and hundreds of people who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

This part of our American story is a part of what the Trump administration is trying to erase, to make disappear through the cancelling of DEI programs, the banning of books and the literal whitewashing of curriculum so that our children won’t know those stories or know the heroes from their communities who made the changes happen. That opposition continues to this day, as President Trump’s first week executive orders banning DEI demonstrate. What is DEI and why is there so much opposition to it from the administration? I’ll look at each briefly.Diversity

Diversity is the recognition that we are not all the same, which seems patently obvious, but it also requires that we respect and accept that those with other backgrounds, cultures, and ways of understanding the world, have as much right to their ways of being as we do. The point is to be open to different ways of thinking, different ways of being, different ways of looking, and to use them to help us all become collectively smarter.

Diversity also means learning about our history through multiple perspectives. It’s not enough to learn about an event such as the so-called discovery of America only through Columbus’s diaries; we also have to hear from Indigenous peoples who were already here. We seek out all relevant voices knowing that no one account can possibly tell the whole story. We must include all those voices if we hope to understand who we are. When we erase or ban some people’s stories from being told, we are lying to our children.Equity

Equity is really at the heart of DEI, as it was at the heart of affirmative action, the Civil Rights Movement, and every other movement aimed at increasing the rights and protections for more Americans. Equity recognizes that we live in unequal circumstances and that some people have been severely disadvantaged. We know that some children are coming to school hungry, or traumatized, or dealing with learning challenges, and equity in the room means we give each child what they need. That does not mean ignoring their more privileged classmates, but that we approach each child and offer what they need.

Equity in the classroom is only part of the picture, and we have to also identify the structural and societal reasons for those inequities and address them.Inclusion and belonging

Inclusion means opening the door and saying come on in, you are welcome here. Public schools are mandated to accept everyone and to do everything possible to meet their learning needs. And this is where inclusion intersects strongly with the concept of belonging. Students are going to be most successful and will help others to be successful if they feel like they truly belong. The student has to feel known and valued for who they are, fully included within the culture of the classroom, supported in their learning, and connected with the teacher and other students in the room. Belonging is where the elements of DEI come together, because all of the students feel at home in the classroom, in an environment that serves and supports all of them so that they feel we are all in this together.

Teachers strive to create and maintain such spaces, but it is increasingly more challenging in this political climate. Sarah Inama found this out in her middle school classroom in Idaho recently. “Everyone is welcome here” reads a poster in her classroom. Another reads, “In this room everyone is welcome, important, accepted, respected, encouraged, valued, and equal.” The posters have been up in her room for four years, communicating to her students and their families that they belong and that this classroom is a safe and welcoming space. But Sarah was told by her administrators that they must come down, because not everyone agrees that all children are welcome. The rhetoric coming out of the White House makes that clear. When some books are banned and some aspects of our country’s history are erased or hidden because they make some students uncomfortable, there are other students in the room who are deeply hurt by those erasures.

DEI programs are not perfect; many of them have fallen short of the desired outcomes. Mandated trainings in schools and businesses have too often been surface-level exercises in going through the motions, checking off required boxes, leaving participants frustrated at the waste of time, money, and the opportunity to actually make change. But consider who we would be as a nation if we chose to reject the goals and intentions of DEI; if we did not value diversity but instead opted for uniformity, if we did not value equity but simply accepted that some had more and many had less, and if we did not value inclusion, but instead opted to include and value some while excluding and devaluing others. The intention of DEI programs, to create classrooms and workplaces in which all feel welcome, accepted, seen and valued, is in keeping with the founders’ goal of forming a more perfect union that places all of us at the center of democracy, where we belong.

Doug Selwyn taught at K-12 public schools from 1985 until 2000 and then at university as a professor of education until he retired in 2017. He is the chair of the Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution education task force. You can reach him at dougselwyn12@gmail.com.