The recent executive order eliminating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in federal contracting and public sector policies under President Donald J. Trump's administration claims “colorblind equality” restores merit-based systems. This, however, is premised upon an ideological fiction—that meritocracy has ever existed in an unmediated, neutral form. In social constructs, theoretical meritocracy has functioned as a self-justifying prima facie mechanism for entrenched privilege, rather than an impartial metric of ability and achievement. Hence, the executive overruling of DEI is, in nature, an illusory imbalance reinforcing the structural inequities that have dictated access to opportunities throughout American history.
Merit is inseparable from history. Since its inception, the United States has operated by political exclusion, monopolizing access to economic mobility, education, and constitutional representation. For instance, “redlining” systematically disenfranchised Black Americans from homeownership and thereby intergenerational wealth accumulation, underlining the so-called merit that has never existed independently of race, class, and policy-driven stratification. Without confrontational measures such as DEI, meritocracy only legitimizes inherited privilege.
The framing of DEI as a plight against individual excellence and diligence relies on a rhetorical maneuver that blurs the reality of systemic oppression. DEI does not replace merit but acknowledges that merit approaches its impartial ideology only when assessed in a contextually-informed manner. The White House’s claim that DEI constitutes “illegal discrimination”’ under Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard misinterprets the ruling. While addressing race-conscious admissions, the case is not, in nature, a categorical invalidation of diversity initiatives. The executive order strategically employs legal formalism to rationalize regressive policies that rely on the paradoxical notion that addressing historical inequities contributes to present-day discrimination against privileged classes. This maneuver disregards the structural conditions that necessitate interventions such as DEI.
The administrative framework further contradicts itself by revoking Executive Order 112246’s affirmative action mandates. Affirmative actions were implemented to rectify disparities in education and employment, preventing historical privilege from dictating competition. With the administrative framework’s claim of “inherent equity” in competition, the executive order is but a selective application of legal frameworks that preserves existing hierarchies; the elimination of DEI reduces justice to a procedural formalism that prioritizes distorted ideological rigidity over empirical realities. The dismantling of DEI is not a step toward fairness but a rebranding of privilege as merit.
Amid the national ramifications of this order, its direct impact manifests in communities like Concord Academy. As Alexis Dinkins, CA’s Director of Community and Equity, asserts, “You cannot remove DEI from CA; it has engrained itself so much in the community.” The challenge, then, is not whether DEI can be legislated out of existence but whether academic, professional, and cultural institutions will be complicit in erasing its principles.
Meritocracy is not under attack—its mirage is. The question is not whether DEI undermines merit but whether we are willing to accept that merit has ever been independent of privilege.