What the descendants of Native Americans, English settlers and African slaves know about DEI

Try and imagine what it’s like to be a descendant of America’s indigenous peoples, its English settlers or its African slaves, watching as the nation fights over the definition of DEI. 

None of this is new to us. 

We weren’t surprised by America’s explosive reaction to the death of George Floyd in 2020, or the pushback that followed.  We’ve had centuries to learn how the U.S. deals with racial conflict—its patterns and rhythms. We know better than most that the way America responds to social challenges is predictable, like the sweep of a pendulum. 

For some Americans today, DEI is an offensive concept, but if history is any indication, in time, their attitudes will change.  Sometime soon, Americans will return to the reality that the U.S. is an irrevocably multicultural society and, instead of viewing diversity as a subject to avoid, we will again praise it as an American superpower. 

Watching this pattern playout over and over for centuries has been exhausting.  Especially since the solution is so obvious. In a country such as ours, with its relative short history, and multicultural composition, it’s obvious that, without intervention, Americans will always struggle to unite. 

That’s why we find the growing trend among some institutions to abandon unconscious bias education so troubling. 

According to Diversity MBA, an organization founding in 2005 to promote diversity and inclusion in the business world, 90% of the 460 companies they tracked in 2016 offered unconscious bias trainings.  Following the death of George Floyd, 85% of those companies implemented anti-racism trainings. Since then, the number of both have declined significantly.

The reason is obvious. 

All humans have biases, but not every human is racist.  Many white participants in anti-racism trainings are offended by the emphasis on white supremacy, and white privilege—which they say suggests that all white people are racists.  They say anti-racism education makes them feel harassed and harms their relationships with colleagues. 

By contrast, anti-bias education focuses on the personal biases we all have, without emphasizing any one group in particular.  It's an important tool for helping Americans to better understand each other.

Sadly, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, the number of anti-bias trainings fell as the number of anti-racism trainings rose.  In 2021, more than 70% of companies tracked by Diversity MBA offered anti-bias trainings.  By 2024, the number had dropped to 54%.  

The unpopularity of anti-racism education appears to have inspired a decline in vital anti-bias training.

As long as America is a multicultural society, national unity will always be a challenge.  But, unity is possible.  Especially if we work at it.  Consider how much better Americans have gotten to know each other since the late 1960s, when efforts to promote diversity and inclusion became a national priority.

That’s why the trend toward abandoning unconscious bias education in the workplace, schools and government is a mistake.  It sets America on a path to repeating an old and painful pattern. 

Being African American in the U.S. has meant experiencing the joys of emancipation and Reconstruction, only to be subjected to the horrors of Jim Crow in the blink of an eye.  To be a woman has meant struggling for centuries for suffrage, fair wages, and bodily autonomy, then having to watch defenselessly from the sidelines as each of these rights is stripped away piecemeal by American institutions.

When the Upper Mattaponi Tribe’s people demanded access to the American education system for their children in the early 1900s, the government granted their request, but subjected the students to the trauma of Indian Boarding schools.  When Tribal leaders decided to build their own schools, Virginia county officials took them over, and replaced the teachers with “government approved” ones.  It wasn’t until 1965, when Virginia schools were integrated, that Tribal members could begin to access the educational opportunities other Americans took for granted.  In the wake of recent court decisions, the number of Native Americans in the country’s leading educational institutions is declining. 

It's all part of a pattern—a swinging pendulum, back and forth: DEI, Jim Crow, Indian Boarding Schools, anti-racism, etc.  The longer you’ve been here, the more you see it.  And, the more frustrating it is when others don’t, or don’t care.   

K. Ward Cummings is an opinion writer and the author of "Partner to Power: The Secret World of Presidents and their Most Trusted Advisers."

W. Frank Adams is the chief of the Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe.  As part of the Powhatan chiefdom, the Upper Mattaponi people made first contact with English settlers in the Americas in 1608. 

Beth Kubitskey is a former educator who can trace her ancestry directly to the original settlers of Maine, Rhode Island and New York.