Standing Firm on the Aggie Experience: Advancing Racial Equity when Inclusion is Replaced with Equality

• In Event: “For Such a Time as This”: Advancing Racial Equity–Focused Research in Varied Sociopolitical Contexts

Abstract

Since 2023, at least 65 anti-DEI bills have been introduced by state legislators to eliminate higher education DEI offices and staff positions and ban mandatory diversity training, the use of diversity statements in human resource hiring processes, and the use of race or ethnicity in admissions decisions (Flannery, 2024). Six states–North Carolina, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, and North Dakota–have signed these bills into law, requiring the immediate dismantling of offices, programming, and practices in state higher education institutions (Chronicle Staff, 2024). The University of North Carolina Board of Governors voted to end DEI programs in all 17 UNC System Schools, and on May 23, 2024, “Equality Within the University of North Carolina (Policy 300.8.5) was adopted into the UNC Policy Manual, repealing the 2019 Policy on Diversity and Inclusion Within the University of North Carolina. This new anti-DEI policy falls on the heels of the implementation of NC A&T’s new strategic plan, Preeminence 2030: NC A&T Blueprint, which is centered on the university’s role as the nation’s largest HBCU and an 1890 land-grant doctoral research university. The strategic plan frames the university around five goals in transformative engagement, leadership and innovation, performance excellence, collaborative and inclusive culture, and responsive impactful scholarship.

In this paper, we draw upon qualitative data collected from Black undergraduate STEM students enrolled in different institutional types [Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Predominantly White Institution (PWI), Private, Public] in North Carolina to understand their experiences, particularly within the current anti-DEI state context. We also utilize data from our research team meetings and team members’ reflections. As researchers who work and learn within an institutional culture of excellence called the “Aggie Experience,” defined as “the university’s commitment to creating a liberating and empowering experience for all and a university environment that speaks to our right to be the very best,” (NCAT, n.d.) we draw attention to the ways anti-DEI policies are designed to restrict Black liberation and student success.

We employ Critical Discourse Analysis (Van Dijk, 2015) to uncover the ways institutions comply or resist the power structures and ideologies embedded within anti-DEI discourses that replace “diversity” and “inclusion” with “neutrality” and “equality.” We conclude by discussing ways that a “ten toes down” focus on Black Liberatory Education–centered on love of learning, critical care, healing, sociopolitical consciousness, collective responsibility, and community connected praxis–can provide necessary protections for Black students while resisting white supremacist power structures.

Authors

• Paula Groves Price, North Carolina A&T State University

• Joanna N. Ali, North Carolina State University

• Loydmilla dosReis, North Carolina A&T State University

• Arielle King, North Carolina A&T State University

• Lauren Raven, North Carolina A&T State University

• Kenya Freeman, North Carolina A&T State University

• Jayden Seay, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Amaya Jeffers, North Carolina A&T State University