Celebrating Black History in an Anti-DEI Landscape
Celebrating Black History Month Amid Rising Erasure
Black History Month is one of many things under attack in Trump’s recent executive order aimed at eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. The ongoing attacks on DEI policies represent a broader attempt to erase the hard-fought gains of the Civil Rights Movement, specifically in our educational institutions. While Black History Month was established by Carter G. Woodson in 1926 to celebrate and preserve Black contributions, the current political climate underscores the urgency of moving beyond performative recognition and celebrations and toward sustained institutional commitment. In resisting ongoing erasure, Black storytelling and education remain powerful tools of liberation, ensuring that our history is neither erased nor confined to a single month amidst the anti-DEI movement of our time.
In 2025, celebrating Black History Month has been a mix of feeling connected to my ancestors, and feeling powerless in the face of continued backlash and resistance. This February, educators around the nation are greatly impacted by the anti-DEI movement and attacks on the teaching of Black history specifically. While there is much to be said about the many things being thrown under the umbrella of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), the anti-DEI movement is a deliberate attempt to erase historical gains made through civil rights movements— not only for Black communities but for all marginalized and historically oppressed people. While the attack on DEI is not new, the erasure has become more blatant through the Trump administration’s stream of actions and executive orders, state- and local-level bans such as those in Florida and Texas, and many other political tools designed to divide communities across identity and party lines.
How Attacks Against DEI Rollback Civil Rights Progress
Since 2023, lawmakers have introduced 119 restricting or banning “DEI” programs. These attempts—some of them successful— include banning identity-based preferences in hiring and college admissions, restricting funding for identity-based programs and events, and dismantling DEI departments and positions, among others. These bills have been exclusively introduced by conservative lawmakers, and push the false narrative that DEI gives Black and brown communities unfair advantages rather than working to change long-standing systemic inequities. This “merit-based” argument has historically been used to create division between racially-minoritized groups and is rearing its head in the midst of the anti-DEI movement. In a recent executive order, entitled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity”, Donald Trump is reinforcing a harmful assumption that racial or gender identity, rather than qualifications, determine someone’s hiring outcomes. That framing suggests that if you are Black, Brown, a woman, a person of color, or any combination of these identities, you are only in your position because of DEI policies.
What we now call DEI are policies and practices put in place to address hundreds of years of enslavement, discrimination, and Jim Crow segregation. As a country founded upon ideas of white supremacy and anti-Blackness, the very fabric of our institutions has been built upon inequality and exclusion of “the other”. At one point in time, Black students were not allowed in the same classrooms as their white peers, and without direct policy intervention via Brown vs. Board of Education that could very well still be true today. With DEI and Black History under attack, teaching the truth about systemic racism in the classroom could be banned outright.
As clearly articulated in The U.S. Department of Education’s “Dear Colleague” letter, efforts to erase our history are underway and if these become legally binding mandates, our ability to teach future generations about racism and inequality is at risk. The contradiction lies in the fact that we had to create entire amendments to the Constitution that outlined how Black people should be represented, once legally counting their votes as worth less than those of white men. Years later, the very legislation that was created to address years of voter suppression, discrimination in employment, housing and more, has been rescinded or is at risk of being a target of the anti-DEI movement.
Black History and Storytelling as Resistance
As a Black educator, I have hope in the midst of all the uncertainty. Black history is not up for debate—our ancestors fought for its national recognition, and we are the true owners of our stories. When American history books excluded us, we told stories in Freedom Schools, churches, barber shops, hair salons, and in the kitchens of Black women cooking for the community. Black history was never meant to be confined to textbooks or bound by academic criteria and rigor. It lives in poetry, hip-hop and jazz music, within community organizations in the homes of Black families and beyond. While education has always been a tool of liberation for the Black communities, institutions have too often become spaces of oppression. Even as they try to erase us, our history can never be taken away so long as we continue to walk the paths that were paved for us—in underground resistance, beyond the white gaze, and rooted in justice.
While institutions are pre-emptively complying to avoid losing funding, educators should pause to strategize. The ongoing assault on DEI policies is not merely an attack on a set of programs, but a concerted effort to erase decades of civil rights gains and marginalize Black narratives. Despite these challenges, Black history remains a powerful force—etched in the stories of our ancestors, the creative expressions of our communities, and the relentless spirit of resistance. As educators, activists, and community members, our task is to embed Black history into the very fabric of our society, transforming it from a once-a-year celebration into a continuous, lived experience that honors truth and inspires progress. Our stories are our legacy, and through them, we not only preserve the past but also forge a future defined by justice, inclusion, and unwavering resilience.
About the author:
Shawntae Mitchum (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in the department of Sociology at the University of Southern California with areas of expertise in race/ethnicity and gender. She situates her work in Black sociological traditions where she takes both a qualitative and a historical approach to studying the lived experiences of Black faculty, students, and staff in higher education. Her research project currently under review for publication extends the literature on “racialized equity labor” to interrogate how anti-Black racism manifests in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) work in the wake of the summer 2020 racial reckoning.
Her co-authored publication “The State of Black Sociology: A Critical Reflection of Joyce Ladner’s Death of White Sociology” highlights the historical exclusion of Black Sociology that extends beyond, but is inclusive of, W.E.B DuBois. The paper urges “mainstream” sociology to investigate its complacency in anti-Black racism and the harm it causes on Black graduate students in the discipline when Black theorists, foremothers and intellectuals are excluded from our academic training. As a higher education scholar, her broader research agenda aims to incorporate theories of Blackness and anti-Blackness with existing perspectives focused on higher education research and policy. Her dissertation examines the role of California community colleges in addressing basic needs, fostering a sense of belonging, and supporting students through equity programming.