The nation’s demographic make-up is changing fundamentally, especially among the young, and President Trump and other Republicans are increasingly pushing against policies that promote greater diversity in school and employment.
It is evident that conservatives, who are opposed to diversity measures, have taken control of the policy discussion. In 2023, a landmark decision was reached by the six justices nominated by Republicans to the Supreme Court, effectively doing away with racial considerations in college admissions. Following his inauguration, Trump issued a series of executive orders slashing funding for federal “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives and harshly penalizing private companies that participate in them, with the threat of criminal prosecution hanging over their heads. Notable businesses have openly rejected initiatives to boost diversity in contracting and recruiting in response to this pressure in the past few months. Concerning the intensity of their opposition to the conservative effort to dismantle the so-called DEI initiatives, Democrats have been hesitant and fractured.
A growing number of young people of color now make up the majority of the country’s youth, and this diversity counteroffensive is making headway at the same time. There has been a steep and maybe unparalleled decline in the proportion of White youth in the United States, as well as in their numerical numbers, since the turn of the millennium. As a result of this seismic shift in American demographics, Trump’s drive to dismantle DEI programs across the country is likely to face its greatest challenge from demography rather than Democrats.
Non-White youth will make up a larger share of the nation’s pupils, employees, and taxpayers in the years to come, according to these demographic trends. Still, minority youth are severely underrepresented in the private sector’s highest-level, highest-paying positions and at the most prestigious institutions and colleges today.
There are two potential dangers that US society might face if diversity efforts are abandoned despite the fact that the nation is becoming increasingly diverse. One concern is that the country may not have enough highly skilled workers as it continues to transition into the information-age economy if minorities are not adequately prepared for the workforce of the future.
“The success and integration of today’s and tomorrow’s increasingly multiracial younger population will rely heavily on the future of the nation’s labor force productivity and economic well-being,” stated William Frey, a demographer at the center-left Brookings Metro think tank.
In addition, the disparity between minorities’ increasing population size and their underrepresentation in elite educational and occupational programs poses a serious threat to the United States’ ability to maintain its status as a truly globalized democracy. More social unrest and estrangement than the United States has already seen as a result of existing racial imbalances might result from that.
An influential civil rights leader, Janai Nelson, stated that the resistance to diversity programs “is an attempt to entrench racial discrimination and disparities at every level of society and to horde power and influence among what will soon be a minority population of White people and the wealthy.” That is, the argument goes.
That is the point: relegating oppressed communities to a lower social status will undermine the multiracial democratic experiment in the United States and bring back the old system of castes. According to Nelson, these initiatives, if left uncontrolled, would lead to levels of disillusionment and disenfranchisement that have never been witnessed in contemporary times.
Diversity program naysayers contend that it doesn’t matter if White people continue to monopolize elite jobs and schools even though their population is dwindling. “I believe we need to get away from being worried with the skin color of folks occupying those positions,” said Jonathan Butcher, a senior scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “What the people achieve once they get there should be our primary concern, I believe.”
Equal rights activists counter that minorities will make up a larger share of the nation’s workforce in the future, but Trump and his supporters are making things worse by stifling initiatives to increase minority access to opportunities. At this juncture of transition, Trump and his Republican supporters are trying to destroy diversity initiatives, which these opponents see as an attempt to defend privilege from the increasing flood of demographic change.
This country risks becoming even more racially segregated and future generations of Americans will be completely unable to face the difficulties of an increasingly globalized world if institutional gatekeepers do not guarantee equitable access to opportunity, said Nelson. “This is going to end badly.”
One reason Trump was able to win over minority voters, according to Manuel Pastor of USC’s Equity Research Institute, is that diversity initiatives in the workplace and classroom don’t “always reach working-class people of color in real, concrete material ways.” A large number of diversity programs, according to Pastor, “became often more symbolic and about discourse and how about how people feel than they were about acknowledging historic disparities and giving people a leg up into the workplace,” leading to an increase in the backlash against such initiatives.
Pastor maintains that these factors do not change the fundamental demographic fact that children of color, who already face severe educational and career opportunities gaps, will be the backbone of the US workforce in the years to come. Turning a blind eye to diversity programs at this point “means wasted talent,” he says. Einsteins who have gone missing are what this signifies. It entails slashing funding for long-term productivity.
Heritage Foundation senior fellow Butcher agrees with other diversity program detractors that “is a dangerous policy to engineer from the top” when it comes to attempting to direct more minority students into elite educational institutions. I don’t think any bureaucracy or centralized control system could successfully create those types of results without causing major unforeseen repercussions. Butcher made it clear that he does not think that “just because there would be different outcomes for individuals based on race that it necessarily represents racism”—even if the elimination of diversity initiatives would lead to a wider disparity between White and non-White youth.
Defenders of diversity initiatives will likely move their arguments away from fairness and toward economic grounds when they face a fierce backlash from conservatives using these same reasons.
What James Frey has dubbed the “cultural generation gap” and what I’ve referred to as the difference between “the brown and the gray” is the vast racial disparity that exists between the youngest and oldest generations in the United States. This disparity is one of the defining demographic facts of modern America. The United States effectively shut off immigration from 1924 to 1965, therefore even while minorities now make up the majority of the children and are on track to become the majority of the working-age population, almost three-quarters of the seniors are White.
Even though the number of seniors has been expanding more than nine times faster than the working-age population, this racial change has been going on, as Frey has observed. The payroll taxes that support Social Security and Medicare are paid by an increasingly diversified workforce, which in turn depends on a small but expanding White senior population.
As a result, people of different generations and races are able to bond over an issue that receives little attention in American politics. If racial gaps in schooling persist, the threat to the economy extends beyond the obvious impending scarcity of trained workers in the future labor. To cover the increasing expense of the large government programs for the elderly, the predominantly White senior population ultimately needs more children of color to get to well-paying employment so that they may be taxed. Supporters of diversity initiatives contend that if they are cut off immediately, the United States will be unable to meet its need for minority workers with the necessary skills.
The pastor warned that a “whiter, older retired population that is counting on this (diverse) younger population to contribute” to their retirement expenditures will be particularly hurt by the omission of some individuals from investment opportunities.
Frey predicted that the United States would come to terms with the fact that it has to expand educational and employment possibilities for youth who are not White at some point. This is due to the fact that there will not be sufficient White youth to meet the need for skilled workers in the economy. “Talking about eliminating DEI is simply ignoring demographics,” Frey states. “White people, even in those executive positions, will be in short supply sooner rather than later.”
Meanwhile, despite the fact that our nation is demographically and economically irrevocably diverse, diversity politics are currently trending in the other way.