In 51 weeks, our country will mark 250 years since its founding — a moment that should inspire reflection, reckoning, and renewal.
But instead of preparing to honor the full scope of our shared American story, a dangerous movement is rising — one that seeks to erase the truth, silence entire communities, and rewrite history for political gain.
The same forces who continue to divide us by race, gender, and identity are targeting the tools we’ve built to create a more inclusive nation since America’s inception.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are not political buzzwords nor new concepts. They are the building blocks of a better America, as old as our nation’s founding.
From the enslaved people who built the foundations of our economy, to the immigrants who fueled its innovation, to Indigenous communities who have survived centuries of displacement — our nation has always been shaped by diversity, equity, and inclusion.
After the Civil War, during Reconstruction, Black Americans made extraordinary strides in civic and economic life. They held elected office, built businesses, and founded schools.
In an outraged response, a vicious backlash took hold — one that used violence, legislation, and propaganda to halt their progress. Politicians and institutions systemically dismantled what had been built, ushering in a century of Jim Crow laws and state-sanctioned discrimination.
Today, we are witnessing echoes of that very past. Every time marginalized communities make gains, those threatened by change and progress work to push us backwards. DEI is the continuation of every justice movement that came before it, from the Freedmen’s Bureau to the Civil Rights Act to Title IX. The honorable mission owes nothing to quotas or retribution.
The conservative doctrine on DEI, now championed by the Trump administration, is as clear as it is alarming: silence the truth, consolidate power, and exclude the many in favor of the few.
Over the last year, this hateful doctrine has been used to remove women from senior leadership in the military and terminate disabled veterans. Books that tell the story of Black, Latino, and Jewish communities are being banned. Executives are threatened for championing equity in the workplace.
When you silence language, you silence identity. As much as we forfeit our history, our progress as a nation is stunted.
These attacks are not rooted in fact. They are rooted in fear — fear of competition, fear of change, and fear of what happens when power is shared. But as a country, we must be braver than that and face this fear head-on like we have in the past.
The Trump administration, its allies, and complicit corporations are not defending our founding values — they are undermining them.
To corporations: Do not let political pressure scare you into silence. Equity is not partisan — it’s patriotic. Your consumers, your workers, and your children are watching.
To educators and parents: Defend honest education. Demand that our children learn the truth — not a sanitized version of it. Because history, no matter how uncomfortable, teaches us how to be better.
And to all Americans: Our democracy depends not just on voting, but on remembering. On refusing to forget whose shoulders we stand on. On protecting the truth — especially when it is under attack.
We can be a nation that finally tells the full story of who we are and who we’ve been — or one that lets fear write the next chapter.
The future of this country belongs to those brave enough to remember — and bold enough to keep building toward a more perfect union.
Stacey Abrams served 11 years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven as minority leader, and was the first Black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the U.S.