An aggressive campaign by the federal government and states across the country is seeking to eradicate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from American society. These welfare policies were never guaranteed to be perpetual or intended to actually pull Black America out of economic decline in the first place. From the start, DEI initiatives have functioned as token reforms—symbolic gestures never designed to approach the Black economic problem at its root, which is structural. DEI is also aligned with an ultra-integrationist ideology that allows the main beneficiaries of diversity policies to be non-Black while discouraging Black people from organizing to build something for themselves. By this, I mean DEI created a society where cherry-picked Black people (including the one writing this article) are granted pathways to individual success while most still live paycheck-to-paycheck, in poverty, or in prison.     

The whiplash of White backlash is rapid and fierce. Many people in America, including the President and his party which controls the Congress and the Supreme Court, believe DEI provides an unfair and discriminatory advantage to special groups of people while “qualified“ (usually White) people are passed up for opportunities lost to so-called “DEI hires.” This view is, at best, lacking nuance—and at worst, openly racist. But it is the reality of the situation that we face and nothing is going to change that. The retreat of major corporations from the promises they made to pursue social change in the wake of the racial protests of 2020 are proof of this.

Many words have been wasted writing to articulate  the benefits of DEI and its importance to the Black American economy. Most of the energy of our frustration will be channeled into boycotts, social media posts, and other superficial actions that do little to affect the structural economic problems faced by our people. Boycotts and targeted economic action are important to take a moral stand; but, the most important thing we must do now is build a new Black economy whose success is not based on the goodwill and handouts of White America and our country’s government. 

We Are Strong and Smart Enough to Stand on Our Own Two Feet

In the past, withdrawal of White American support could mean doom for Black people, but today is a new day. Black Americans have $2 trillion of combined spending power (if we were a country, we’d be the 11th richest in the world). 38% of young Black women and 26% of young Black men have college degrees. Black unemployment is only 6%, higher than other racial groups but still among the lowest in our history. You may call this Black excellence, I call it Black power. 

The broken promise of DEI-fueled advancement is an opportunity from God to revolutionize Black life in the United States of America. One might ask: How can discrimination be an opportunity? Discrimination may destroy opportunities for Black people in the traditional corporate world, but that same discrimination opens the opportunity for us to build a new economy that not only benefits Black professionals but the entire Black community. 

This opportunity is real, but the window for us to stand up and take advantage of it narrows with each passing day. New technologies will continue to eliminate the need for human labor and Black spending power will eventually suffer. Because the Black dollar circulates less than one time before it leaves our community, when our spending power is gone, it’s likely gone for good. The opportunity is real—but seizing it requires a rapid transformation in our mindset, our values, our actions, and a renewed commitment to owning our own destiny. The longer we wait on others to solve the problems we face, the longer our people will continue to live in poverty.

Black neighborhoods yearn for productive institutions, yet Black professionals seek to escape the community and spend their time, energy, and careers building the very institutions that are now betraying their DEI commitments. Decades and decades of labor and what does our community as a whole have to show for it? A new Black perspective is needed. One that views our communities not as deserts lacking the necessities for survival, but as oceans of opportunity to build self-sustaining Black wealth while bettering the lives of all Black people.

Building A New and Equal Nation

Therefore, the backpedaling of American institutions away from DEI will only hurt Black people if we allow it; if we refuse to listen to the lessons of history and continue to wait passively for others to save us. Instead, Black professionals must return to our people, seek out their needs, and address them by building institutions that serve them. Our communities need banks, schools, hospitals, grocery stores, warehousing and distribution, and businesses that uplift the positive elements of our culture to the forefront of our minds and our hearts. 

Not only is this transformation possible, but economically sensical. It would generate hundreds of billions of dollars of Black wealth, improve living standards, and ensure employment opportunities for Black professionals and the Black working class alike. Researchers estimate a $260 billion opportunity exists in filling the gap of critical services in Black communities. This doesn’t account for the multiplication of benefits we would see throughout the community when our new institutions push out the parasitic ones that have long dominated. As the economy stabilizes and new bank accounts are opened, payday loan lenders will run out of consumers to exploit. As jobs flow in, liquor stores will be sapped of clientele as people take advantage of new opportunities. As a more vibrant community is built on the foundation of true education, kids won’t grow up with a limited mindset of crime fueling poverty and death; girls won’t be raised in a haze of inferiority that grows in their womanhood—enriching foreign businesses at the expense of their God-given beauty. 

This is the opportunity presented by the end of the DEI era. The question is not whether Black people should fight to continue to receive special opportunities from mainstream American institutions. The question must be whether we will have the confidence and cultural discipline to use our limited yet powerful resources to build new institutions from the ground up—institutions that eliminate our dependence on DEI programs altogether. If we are wise, we will realize that the time for begging and pleading is over. The time for building is now.