Alarming propaganda and racist rhetoric filled a February 14 “Dear Colleague” Letter about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) authored by the nation’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights within the Department of Education.

The Department instructs K-12 schools and universities to drop what they claim are divisive and racist DEI programs that lie about our nation’s past and turn discrimination against white people.

Unfortunately, all this letter does is fan the flames of white Christian nationalist conspiracies about the Great Replacement Theory, perpetuate centuries of racism, and play the public as naïve.

Let’s unpack three of the most prominent examples:

Excerpt 1: Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon “systemic and structural racism” and advanced discriminatory policies and practices. 

• The timeline of attacks on education by this administration, and the architects of Project 2025 within it, directly correlate with the systemic and structural racism that kept Black children out of white schools up until 1954. There are millions of living Americans who watched Ruby Bridges walk through a white schoolhouse door only 70 years ago. Millions more are still fighting to prevent taxpayer-funded discrimination and segregation through voucher and opportunity scholarship programs that give private religious schools the choice to decide who they teach. 
• In 2021, Business Insider detailed how Russ Vought and Citizens for Renewing America equipped suburban white women with playbooks to attack their school boards. He focused on critical race theory as a radical theology that will "socially replace" and lead to discrimination against white people. "In other words, because people of color were discriminated against in the past, white people, including children in schools, need to be discriminated against now in order to make up for it and let African Americans catch up. Telling white Christian suburban mothers to “fight for the survival of America” with these school and CRT/DEI attacks is truly making them fear being socially replaced by Black Americans, if not turned into slaves themselves.
• The Department of Education chapter within Project 2025 begins, "For most of our history, the federal government played a minor role in education. Then, over a 14-month period beginning in 1964, Congress planted the seeds for what would become the U.S. Department of Education. In July of that year, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, after Congress reached a consensus that the mistreatment of Black Americans was no longer tolerable and merited a federal response."
• Since the Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional (Brown v. Board), groups have campaigned in a variety of ways to practice segregation legally.
• Using government funds for private religious schools was ruled illegal through The Blaine Amendment of 1970 because they regularly discriminate. In fact, cases chipping away at The Blaine Amendment are as recent as 2024, when the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and five families filed Hile v. Michigan. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal. These plaintiffs have direct ties to the Administration, anti-DEI/CRT campaigns, and school district-level attack groups.

Excerpt 2: "DEI programs stigmatize students who belong to a particular racial group based on crude racial stereotypes. Consequently, they deny students the ability to participate fully in the life of the school."

• This administration favors privatization and private religious education. Most of their social media posts celebrate school choice, quote Moms for Liberty, or nod to the self-proclaimed mastermind of the manufactured CRT and DEI crisis, Christopher Rufo. These institutions are notorious for discriminating against applicants or sending students back to public schools, which is why universal voucher programs are illegal. That's just about the easiest way to deny students the ability to participate fully in the life of the school. 
• These parties are focused on dismantling the Department of Education because of the civil rights and anti-discrimination protections they oversee across our K12 schools and universities. Participation and access are keywords and defining lines for civil rights, and they are strategically sprinkled into these playbooks and orders.
• It's easy to argue that fighting since 1954 to legalize taxpayer-funded segregation is what stigmatizes Black students, and the need to separate our schools created stereotypes. Stereotypes are precisely what private religious schools use to turn away diverse or LGBTQIA+ students and families, and why The Heritage Foundation is devoted to restoring a more traditional fabric of American society.
• It's no coincidence that the Trump/DeVos Title IX rules of 2020, which were restored in January, carefully narrowed the definition of harassment to apply only if the student was denied "equal access" to a school program or activity. That's a lot of bullying, harassment, or assault to endure, especially when you add in their requirement to cross-testify in front of the accused.
• In a 2002 speech to The Heritage Foundation, Dick DeVos outlined his stealth strategy to make the battle for our schools seem like it was the idea of moms over coffee—which became their well-funded and race-centric astroturf group, Moms for Liberty. What we are witnessing today is the realization of this sneaky and calculated plan to implement highly unpopular policies while making it appear that this is what the public wants. Almost every election outcome regarding education suggests otherwise. 

Excerpt 3: All students are entitled to a school environment free from discrimination. 

• Project 2025’s education chapter includes a chart showing downward performance trends. Notably, student performance declined under Trump’s first pro-privatization administration and the dark money attacks on public education.
• Disparities between Black students and other learners classified by The Nation’s Report Card became more pronounced in 2015. At grade 4, the percentages of selected student groups performing at or above Proficient ranged from 18 percent for Black students to 57 percent for Asian students. At grade 8, the percentages at or above Proficient ranged from 16 percent for Black students to 54 percent for Asian students. America's marginalized students have been fighting a constant uphill battle for equitable education opportunities. These are also the students who will be hurt most by the Department of Education's dismantling.
• Privatizers and white Christian nationalists object to the $1 billion spent on DEI programs. They ignore the $3.2 billion wasted in education funding that schools used to combat privatizers’ underhanded attacks last year alone. This is only further widening the achievement gaps for marginalized students.

A Disturbing Rewrite of American History Hangs Over Our Schools

After calling racism a false premise, the Trump Administration renamed the Gulf of Mexico with the strike of a pen and calls the change a "fact." What's to stop them from deleting any reference to Brown v. Board, segregation and slavery, celebrating their "alternative facts," and banning any news outlet that doesn't follow suit?

There are unfortunate examples of the racism this administration seeks to perpetuate throughout this Dear Colleague Letter, Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation's website, the playbooks that Russ Vought and Moms for Liberty used to attack schools in 2021, and the boastful responsibility Christopher Rufo claims daily for creating this CRT and DEI crisis.

As much as these parties want to blame the prior administration or our schools, nothing screams projection louder than their own words. Unfortunately, to their success, they've dumbed these issues down into meme-level disinformation, division, and conspiracies over the Great Replacement Theory, which achieves their plan to profit from our students while widening the disparities.

Promoting any of this outright is highly unpopular, which is why they've latched onto convincing white people they're being discriminated against and replaced. That will turn out voters. 

The Trump Administration and The Heritage Foundation, among others, are salivating over the opportunity to burn it all down using manipulated data and talking points that naturally point to private religious schools and money-making charters as the only solutions. The truth is that public education and all students have yet to be given a genuine chance in America.

These destructive scams and schemes are precisely why the Trump administration and its privatization activists have no business rewriting our nation's history books, let alone overseeing American education.