By Claire Yi

I just recently moved to California from Tennessee. My home state, however, is one of the many states experiencing book bans and paving the way for anti-DEI sentiments in its legislature. My mom is a high school teacher, and in December, she called me about the book bans happening at home. Tennessee is not the most diverse state in the country, and while I wasn’t completely surprised by the news, I was more shocked at the books included on the list. Titles included books that I had read or teachers encouraged us to read: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, The Kite Runner, Late Night at the Telegraph Club, The Bluest Eye, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, and The 57 Bus. These books range from experiences about people of color to LGBT+ identities. I quickly logged onto social media, seeing multiple hometown friends express their concerns about the list. A bill was also just introduced in Rutherford County of Middle Tennessee to prohibit DEI hiring methods in education! They are hoping to limit hiring methods to solely focus on “merit.” Living in California and witnessing this from so far away – I feel like I am stranded on an island, watching my friends and family struggle against the tide.

The history of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is an expansive one that precedes the current state of American politics. Though many cite the Civil Rights Movement as the beginning, researchers Mussie Tessema et al. from Winona State and University of Wisconsin-Parkside point to the early 1900s when women were given the right to vote and ability to take the Civil Service Examination. Post-WWII sparked the desegregation of armed forces, and Executive Order 9981 was officially signed by President Truman, mandating “equal treatment…without regard to color, race, national origin, or religion.” Various orders ensued including equal pay, school equality, and employment opportunities. This laid the groundwork for emphasizing diverse hiring practices, starting in the 1970s. Not only did this appeal to younger generations, but they expanded their employment beyond white men (Tessema et al).

Abdallah Fayyad of Vox writes that companies’ implementation of DEI first came from a place of “social responsibility,” but this shifted quickly. Companies realized that they could profit off of DEI – they noticed that sales increased when they changed their hiring practices (Fayyad). The American population holds extensive power in their hands as consumers, but can the same be said for legislative matters? These executive orders can seem from a long distant past, but they are relatively new within the United States’s history. We are realizing that we cannot take these foundations for granted. For example, I assumed that we would progress as a country post-2020, but the current administration and conservative mindsets are reversing this work.

While DEI initiatives have especially boomed since 2020, they have also received exponential backlash from conservatives, becoming a major talking point for every conservative news outlet. The United States’s cultural reckoning about racism, and specifically anti-blackness, was met with both support and anger. This goes hand-in-hand with the pushback against “Critical Race Theory” (CRT), a hot topic that led to its ban in 18 states. Emanuele Berry in This American Life explored the repercussions faced by Black Americans bearing the brunt of this backlash, particularly in education: