Stephen A. Smith sat down with President Donald Trump at the White House in mid-October and raised a problem that cuts against the usual partisan script on DEI.
The ESPN commentator, an HBCU graduate, told Trump that the aggressive rollback of DEI programs has produced an unintended side effect: private corporations are growing hesitant to support historically Black colleges and universities. Donors now fear that an ordinary act of philanthropy will be read as a DEI initiative, inviting government scrutiny or accusations of engaging in racial preferences. Smith said Trump acknowledged he had not fully considered that chilling effect and said he would look into it.
The exchange matters because it separates two things that have been getting blurred together: opposition to race-based mandates, and hostility toward Black institutions and people.
Merit, Not Quotas
Opposing DEI programs that impose racial quotas, check-the-box hiring, or the elevation of identity over competence is not anti-Black. It is pro-equality and pro-merit. Sorting Americans by race, ethnicity or sex violates the principle of equal treatment and, in some cases, runs afoul of federal anti-discrimination law. Many companies and universities adopted these systems after 2020 under social and reputational pressure, not because evidence showed they improved outcomes. Shareholder proposals demanding disclosure of the real return on DEI spending have been a necessary correction to that ideology.
When the Correction Overshoots
The trouble starts when federal agencies, corporations and advocacy groups treat almost any race-conscious activity as legally suspect. Rational actors respond by avoiding the perceived risk entirely. Federal agencies have already terminated or paused some research awards and outreach efforts involving HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions after determining they conflicted with anti-DEI directives. Private foundations and corporate philanthropy have followed the same retreat. The practical result is a de facto hands-off policy toward Black institutions, even when the stated motive is colorblindness rather than exclusion.
That outcome serves no one who actually believes in free markets and equal opportunity. HBCUs have long produced a disproportionate share of Black engineers, doctors, educators and entrepreneurs. Voluntary corporate support for skills training, small-business capital or genuine recruiting at these schools is not the same thing as mandatory racial quotas in a boardroom or admissions office. One expands the pool of qualified competitors. The other distorts competition once that pool exists.
Opponents of DEI need to make that distinction loudly, not quietly. Silence invites the charge that the real goal was exclusion all along, not fairness — a charge critics will make regardless, so there’s no reason to hand them ammunition.
Expand Access, Then Judge on Merit
The case against race preferences is strongest when paired with a real commitment to expanding access: better K-12 preparation, vocational pathways, capital formation, and removing licensing and regulatory barriers that limit entry for everyone. Merit is not the enemy of Black advancement — it’s the only durable basis for it.
Smith’s comment to Trump is a reminder that policy has second-order effects. Rejecting the check-the-box games of DEI does not require walking away from Black institutions or the individuals competing fairly within them. It requires the opposite: confidence that free enterprise, equal rules, and voluntary association produce more durable opportunity than either racial set-asides or fear-driven withdrawal.
The goal isn’t a system that rewards mediocrity in the name of equity, nor one that treats Black Americans as too politically risky to engage with. It’s a system that opens the field of competition to everyone and then judges the results without regard to ancestry.
