By Chrissy M. Thornton
The fight for equity in America has never been simple, and today it is facing one of its biggest challenges yet. Across industries – healthcare, higher education, corporate and philanthropy – there is a coordinated rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Executive orders, court rulings and state-level policies are dismantling race-conscious programs, forcing institutions to rethink how they approach diversity without violating new restrictions. The backlash is clear, and so are its consequences, but what these legal and political barriers cannot do is erase the reality of systemic disparities. They do not eliminate the need for interventions that promote equity. What they do require, however, is a shift in strategy. If race-conscious policies are under attack, we must pivot, not by abandoning the fight, but by addressing the root causes of economic and social inequity in ways that are legally viable and politically untouchable.
One example of this strategy in action is how Harvard University responded when the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions. Instead of explicitly using race in admissions decisions, Harvard has now expanded its financial aid program to offer free tuition to students from families earning under $200,000 a year. On paper, this policy has nothing to do with race. Yet its impact is unmistakably racial – Black and Latino students are disproportionately low-income, so increasing access for economically disadvantaged students naturally expands opportunities for students of color. This class-based approach to tackling inequity is a model that can be adopted across industries. Whether in education, workforce development, corporate hiring, or healthcare, organizations can build policies around economic opportunity, access to resources and systemic barriers rather than explicitly focusing on race. The result? The same progress toward equity without the legal and political backlash.
For decades, diversity, equity and inclusion frameworks have been used to address racial disparities in hiring, career advancement, education and health outcomes. With new legal challenges limiting race-conscious policies, we must rethink our approach and frame equity efforts in terms of economic opportunity, structural barriers, and access to resources, all of which have a direct racial impact without triggering legal scrutiny. Many Black and Latino workers experience higher unemployment and underemployment rates due to historical barriers to education, generational wealth, and systemic hiring biases. A direct approach might have previously called for race-conscious hiring, but under new restrictions, companies can still take meaningful action.
Expanding workforce development programs for low-income individuals ensures that training and apprenticeships are available to economically disadvantaged workers, which will naturally help close racial employment gaps. Increasing wage transparency and fair pay policies ensures that companies audit salary structures so that all workers, regardless of background, are paid equitably based on skill and experience. Offering tuition-free certification programs and paid apprenticeships opens doors for low-income workers who often cannot afford unpaid internships or expensive licensing programs, keeping them locked out of high-paying careers. These policies don’t need to be labeled as diversity efforts, but they achieve the same goal. By focusing on barriers to employment rather than racial disparities in hiring, companies can still create pathways for Black and Latino workers without directly mentioning race. This strategy focuses on disparity over identity and confronts the truth around economic disempowerment being responsible for many of the root causes and social determinants that keep communities away from opportunity.
The same strategy applies to increasing diversity in corporate leadership. Many executives credit their success to mentors who guided them into leadership roles. By creating structured mentorship programs for employees from under-resourced backgrounds, companies open leadership pathways that organically increase diversity. Professional development programs that prioritize economically disadvantaged workers create leadership pipelines that will disproportionately benefit professionals of color while avoiding race-based criteria. Inclusive hiring practices that target first-generation college graduates ensure that Black and Latino professionals, who are more likely to be first-generation graduates, have greater opportunities for career advancement without requiring race-conscious policies. This approach ensures that diverse talent is nurtured, developed, and promoted, even in industries forced to scale back explicit diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Healthcare is another field where economic inequity drives racial disparities. Black and Latino communities face higher rates of chronic disease and lower access to quality care, but new diversity, equity and inclusion restrictions threaten to eliminate programs that specifically address these disparities. However, healthcare institutions can still promote equity by targeting economic and geographic barriers to care. Instead of race-based medical school scholarships, hospitals and medical schools can expand full-tuition scholarships for students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Since Black and Latino students are disproportionately low-income, these scholarships would naturally increase physician diversity. Partnering with high schools and community colleges in low-income neighborhoods builds recruitment pipelines that ensure more students of color enter the healthcare field without violating legal restrictions on race-conscious admissions. Investing in community-based healthcare solutions, expanding mobile clinics, telemedicine, and preventive care initiatives in low-income areas, improves healthcare access for communities of color without race-based targeting. By framing healthcare equity initiatives around income, geography, and access to resources, hospitals and health institutions can continue closing racial health disparities while staying legally compliant.
One of the biggest lessons we must take from these diversity, equity and inclusion challenges is that language matters. Institutions must rethink how they frame their efforts – not by abandoning their goals, but by using strategic, legally sound messaging. Instead of stating a need for increased Black and Latino representation in leadership, the focus should be on ensuring that more employees from those backgrounds have access to leadership pathways. Rather than stating a priority to hire diverse candidates, the messaging should be about prioritizing candidates from economically disadvantaged communities to create economic mobility. By shifting the focus from identity to systemic barriers, institutions can continue advancing equity while avoiding political and legal pushback.
The rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion policies is not the end of the fight for equity. In fact, most of us know that diversity, equity and inclusion did not benefit Black communities significantly at all. Now it is our call to be more strategic, more intentional, and more focused on sustainable solutions. This actually was always our call. Unfortunately, “diversity, equity and inclusion” co-opted our work for progress by seemingly supporting Black people while actually supporting almost every other marginalized community disproportionately. Addressing systemic economic barriers will continue to uplift communities of color, even when diversity, equity and inclusion language is removed from the conversation.
At Associated Black Charities, we have always understood that economic equity is racial equity. As diversity, equity and inclusion faces new legal and political challenges, our approach must evolve but our commitment to fairness, opportunity, and justice remains the same. We hope yours does, too. The institutions that embrace this shift and focus on systemic economic gaps will be the ones that continue driving progress, building inclusive workplaces, and creating pathways to success.
The bottom line? We don’t need permission to create equity. We need strategy.