On September 25, 1957, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, saw nine African-American students enter its doors for the first time. These students became known as the Little Rock Nine.
This was a major win for the Civil Rights Movement (1954 - 1968). Through the achievements and lobbying efforts of the movement, the Civil Rights Act was codified into law in 1964.
Today, a mere 68 years after the Little Rock Nine desegregated the Arkansas education system, the Civil Rights Act is under an unparalleled attack.
Integration was mandated by the 1954 Brown v Board of Education Act, and discrimination on the basis of race was outlawed with the Civil Rights Act. Yet schools today are still segregated.
Sean Reardon, a Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project, spoke to Carrie Spector about the state of segregation in today’s America. He said, “School segregation levels are not at pre-Brown levels, but they are high and have been rising steadily since the late 1980s.”
DEI programs seek to limit such separatism by upholding the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion represented throughout the Civil Rights Act.
Today, under President Trump’s second term in office, guided by Project 2025, programs to ensure that hiring, admissions policies, and the like are considerate of these values have been made “illegal.”
In fact, Attorney General Pam Bondi refers to DEI programs as “initiatives that may involve discriminatory practices.”
DEI programs were established to protect people from discrimination based on color, race, national origin, religion, and sex.
According to the Trump administration, these protections are discriminatory. In one of the many executive orders he released within the first month of his inauguration, he proclaimed DEI practices erode “national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”
President Trump postures that “Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex.” In short, a commitment to ensuring redress for historically disadvantaged individuals is discriminatory. Implying that people considered through DEI programs are less qualified furthers the idea that DEI initiatives aren’t merit-based.
Arguably, the admission of the Little Rock Nine would have been the product of DEI, as it sought to integrate Central High School by ensuring the students weren’t being discriminated against based on their race.
Questions like, “Were they allowed in or passed because they’re Black,” would be accepted as fair concerns. In fact, after Charlie Kirk’s comments about concern over Black pilots being qualified, he responded to criticism, via his podcast. He elaborated saying, “When it comes to pilots or surgeons, if I see somebody who is Black, as I said on the show, I’m going to hope that that person is qualified. That’s what I said, which of course is legitimate because they’re begging the question, we’re not hiring based on merit anymore. We’re hiring based on race.”
He puts forward that DEI and affirmative action lowers standards because people may be hired or admitted without consideration to their merits. Meanwhile, DEI ensures that individuals who meet established standards, but are systematically discriminated against, are not overlooked based on color, race, national origin, religion, or sex.
Without the federal government’s intervention in 1957, Arkansas, which sought to rebel against the Civil Rights Act, the Little Rock Nine would have never made it to Central High School.
Today, their admission could be considered as DEI or affirmative action.
“Criteria like socioeconomic status, first-generation status, or geographic diversity must not be used if selected to prioritize individuals based on racial, sexbased, or other protected characteristics,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a July 29, 2025 memo.
Yet, DEI programs were a response to the ongoing discrimination in contravention of the Civil Rights Act.
Living under President Trump’s authoritarianism, we’ve seen unprecedented assaults on civil rights. The Civil Rights Movement was championed by people who were brave and resilient. They did not submit to their circumstances, they resisted and overcame. 68 years later, that ethic is still relevant today.