The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. – Alice Walker

By design, the American ideal of multiculturalism was never neutral. From colonial foundations to corporate boardrooms, the project of “diversity” has long operated under the assumption that inclusion must orbit around a European American center. What many hail as progress is often little more than a rearrangement of faces in rooms where institutional power remains unchanged.

That reality becomes painfully clear when we consider a common example: a room of ten people. Eight are European American, one African American, one Asian American. That room is deemed “diverse” in most institutional DEI audits. But reverse the configuration—eight African Americans, one European American, one Asian American—and it becomes “imbalanced,” even to many African Americans. The prevailing discomfort lies not in the room’s composition but in whose presence signifies legitimacy.

The implications are profound, particularly for African Americans. For all the language about equity and justice, diversity in America still reflects a colonial aesthetic—measured by its ability to include others without challenging the dominance of white institutions.

Majority-Defined Diversity and the False Meritocracy

In today’s institutional discourse, diversity is too often a numbers game. The logic of meritocracy—championed by both liberal and conservative camps—suggests that people end up where they deserve to be. And so the presence of “a few” African Americans is framed as both symbol and substance of inclusion.

Yet meritocracy itself is a mirage. Institutions built on centuries of exclusive access to capital, education, and political networks now ask the historically excluded to compete without redress. This is why even the most “diverse” spaces remain dominated by Euro-American perspectives, values, and decision-making.

When inclusion occurs, it is additive—not foundational. Black professionals, scholars, and creatives are welcomed for the “flavor” they add, not the paradigm they bring. Diversity becomes curation, not co-governance.

African Americans and the Mirror of White Validation

This imbalance is further complicated by the internalization of these norms within African American communities themselves. We often look to validation from majority institutions—seeking degrees from PWIs, employment at Fortune 500 firms, and recognition from legacy media—as proof of our progress.

But this pursuit, while understandable, places us in a position of perpetual comparison. It suggests that our institutions—HBCUs, Black think tanks, and community foundations—are steppingstones, not destinations. It inadvertently reinforces the idea that whiteness is still the highest form of legitimacy.

This psychology also shows up in how even African Americans define diversity. A room full of us may feel powerful, but too often we second-guess whether it’s “representative.” The irony is glaring: we question our authority in our own spaces.

This is not merely a cultural concern. It’s a structural one. If we do not build a worldview where our leadership is default rather than exceptional, we will always be guests in someone else’s vision of justice.

DEI and the Illusion of Equity

In response to centuries of exclusion, institutions created DEI—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Initially rooted in civil rights ideals, DEI has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar industry, complete with executives, strategic plans, and dashboards.

But the growth of DEI has not translated into institutional transformation. The reason? DEI is often housed within the very systems that profit from inequity. It seeks to make those systems kinder, not different.

A university may hire a DEI officer, but still invest its endowment in corporations with exploitative labor practices. A media outlet may launch a Black vertical while retaining a newsroom that’s 85% white. A corporation may feature Black models in its ads but fail to award contracts to Black-owned suppliers.

The DEI structure too often centers proximity to power over redistribution of power. It asks African Americans to lend their labor and legitimacy to institutions still reluctant to share control.

How MAGA Exposed DEI’s Fragility

Then came MAGA. The “Make America Great Again” movement, with its thinly veiled call to return to a pre-civil rights order, not only politicized race but weaponized it against equity initiatives. What DEI claimed to have institutionalized was revealed to be deeply vulnerable to the whims of political cycles.

During Donald Trump’s second administration, Executive Order 14151 targeted and dismantled DEI across federal agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) oversaw a strategic purge—eliminating DEI roles, canceling contracts, and terminating employees affiliated with diversity work. It was systemic and unapologetic.

This rollback didn’t stop at government. Corporate America, once eager to brand itself as “woke,” began to retreat. Companies like Walmart, Disney, and even tech firms quietly downsized their DEI departments, responding to consumer boycotts and investor backlash. Lawsuits, state-level bans on diversity training, and social media firestorms turned equity work into a liability.

Even educational institutions—once champions of critical discourse—began to self-censor. Military academies like West Point curtailed DEI programming. Faculty were silenced, students confused. What was previously promoted as moral imperative was now seen as political overreach.

But perhaps the most damaging blow was the ideological shift: the reframing of DEI as anti-white discrimination. Suddenly, initiatives aimed at remedying 400 years of inequity were cast as oppressive. And because DEI lacked legal or constitutional protections, it folded under pressure.

This should concern us deeply. It shows that DEI—when not tethered to institutional ownership, endowments, and enforcement mechanisms—can be undone overnight. It reveals that African American progress built within white institutions is conditional, not contractual.

Pan-Africanism: Redefining the Center

The antidote is not reform, but reimagination. Pan-Africanism, grounded in self-determination, offers a fundamentally different approach. It challenges the entire premise of seeking justice through someone else’s framework. It asks: why integrate into systems never meant to include us, when we can build our own?

Pan-Africanism insists that African-descended people worldwide are not minorities, but a dispersed majority—rich in culture, labor, and intellect. It seeks not presence in white institutions, but power in our own. It demands that we stop framing our liberation as diversity and start defining it as sovereignty.

A Pan-African DEI wouldn’t merely measure representation. It would track Black institutional control: How many HBCUs have billion-dollar endowments? How many African American firms have IPO’d? How much federal R&D funding goes to Black-led think tanks?

Until these questions are centered, DEI remains reactive and precarious.

Toward Afrocentric Metrics of Equity

To break this cycle, African American institutions must begin defining their own metrics of success. We must:

• Build DEI models rooted in Black governance and oversight.
• Fund HBCU-led policy research on equity, race, and institutional design.
• Invest in Black-owned firms, banks, and data platforms that track our own progress.
• Mandate that corporations seeking to work in Black communities provide equity shares, not just jobs.
• Reclaim cultural production through ownership of media, IP, and educational narratives.

The goal is not to make Blackness palatable to whiteness. It is to make Blackness whole.

What Comes Next

DEI taught us how fragile progress can be. MAGA reminded us that no victory is secure unless it is ours. If we want to safeguard gains, we must build institutions that are not dependent on seasonal allies. The road to sovereignty is not paved with performative partnerships—it is built with bricks of ownership, accountability, and self-definition.

Multiculturalism cannot mean the tolerance of Black presence in white spaces. It must mean the respect of Black power in Black ones.

If we are to move forward, African Americans must resist being pawns in someone else’s inclusion plan. We must become the architects of our own.

And that begins by asking: when we say “diversity,” whose definition are we using—and does it serve us? Only then will the “houses” we build truly reflect the world we deserve—not as guests, but as hosts.