What Trump’s Policies Mean for Our Students and Our HBCUs
Let me be direct with you. Right now, today, the educational future of Black children is under the most coordinated federal assault we have seen since the era of Jim Crow. This is not hyperbole. This is not partisan politics. This is documented policy, signed by executive order, backed by budget cuts, and implemented through the deliberate dismantling of every federal mechanism Black families once relied on to hold schools and universities accountable. If you have a Black child heading toward college, or a grandchild in middle school, or a niece or nephew just beginning to dream about their future, you need to read every word of this article. Because what is happening right now will shape what is possible for them, and most Black families still do not see the full picture.
They Came for DEI First
Let us be clear about what DEI actually was, because the administration has spent enormous energy distorting it. DEI programs were not handouts. They were not preferential treatment. They were practical, evidence-based tools that closed historical gaps in access to education, combat systemic racism in hiring and admissions, funded scholarships for first-generation students, and created pipelines connecting Black talent to top employers and graduate programs. They were, in short, the corrective response to centuries of deliberate exclusion.
In February 2025, the Trump administration gave America’s schools and universities two weeks to eliminate diversity initiatives or risk losing federal money, ordering schools to stop using racial preferences as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring, or any other area. Fourteen days. Schools that had spent years building mentorship programs, cultural centers, and scholarship pipelines were told to tear them down in two weeks or lose the federal funding their most vulnerable students depend on to attend school at all. The confusion that followed was not an accident. Institutions were deliberately kept in the dark about exactly what was now illegal, forcing many to dismantle programs preemptively out of fear. The elimination of DEI initiatives dismantles pipeline programs that help recruit and retain diverse faculty, meaning Black students are now losing not just programs but the professors and mentors who look like them and invest in their success.
And then the administration turned civil rights law itself into a weapon against Black students. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into Portland Public Schools over its Center for Black Student Excellence, following a complaint from a conservative group, despite the district’s statement that the center would be available to all students. Think about that. A center designed to help Black students succeed is now a federal civil rights investigation. The signal sent to every school district in America is unmistakable: if you build something specifically for Black children, we will come after you.
The HBCU Shell Game
Now let us talk about the institutions that were built precisely because Black students were locked out of every other option: our HBCUs. While representing only 4 percent of all colleges nationwide, HBCUs produce 40 percent of Black engineers, 80 percent of Black judges, and 40 percent of all Black members of Congress. They are not a niche or a fallback. They are the backbone of Black professional and civic leadership in this country, and they have been systematically underfunded for generations.
Trump wants credit for supporting HBCUs, and the numbers look good on the surface. In September 2025, the administration announced it would send almost $500 million to HBCUs and Tribal colleges, funded mainly by cuts to programs and grants that specifically aid minority students, which Secretary of Education Linda McMahon called “ineffective and discriminatory.” That is the key sentence. The money did not come from new investment in Black education. It came from stripping $350 million in grants from 800 other minority-serving colleges, eliminating fiscal 2025 discretionary funding for institutions serving Asian, Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic students, as well as a program for students of color pursuing careers in science and engineering. The administration robbed one community to give a photo opportunity to another, and the NAACP called it exactly what it was: an empty gesture while the federal funding HBCUs depend on for growth, innovation, and sustainability is being systematically eliminated.
The personal stories behind these numbers should make your blood boil. A Howard University professor of history received a $60,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant in January 2025 to research and write a book on civil rights icon Mary McLeod Bethune. Three months later, she received a termination letter citing phrases like “ending radical DEI programs” and “reducing federal bureaucracy.” Her scholarship, her students, and a piece of our history were all canceled with a form letter. At Florida A&M University, a $16.3 million NIH grant to the pharmacy school was abruptly canceled. The Trump administration stripped $65 million from Howard University Hospital’s federal funds. These are not budget line items. These are the futures of Black doctors, Black researchers, and Black communities that depend on those institutions for healthcare and economic vitality.
The Hidden Weapon: Economic Strangulation
The DEI rollbacks get the headlines, but researchers at the Brookings Institution have identified what may be the most dangerous long-term threat to Black higher education, because it is the hardest to see coming. Trump’s domestic economic agenda, specifically the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is quietly making college financially impossible for the very students HBCUs were built to serve. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill will decrease resources for the poorest residents by about $1,600 per year through cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, while the wealthiest Americans will realize a gain of $12,000.
Why does this matter for college access? Because approximately 30 percent of Black Americans rely on Medicaid and one in five rely on SNAP. When a family loses food security and healthcare, college is no longer a conversation. Survival is the only conversation. Many Black students may be forced to delay college attainment or take on additional jobs to pay for education, while some will decide not to enroll at all. Add to this the Congressional Budget Office’s projection of a $2.7 billion shortfall in the Pell Grant program, and given that over 75 percent of HBCU students rely on Pell Grants to finance their education, reduced eligibility or smaller grant awards could determine whether a student attends college at all.
This is the strategy. It does not always announce itself as an attack on Black education. Sometimes it arrives as a cut to your family’s food stamps. Sometimes it is a Medicaid termination letter. Sometimes it is a Pell Grant that comes up $1,500 short. The cumulative effect is the same: Black students are pushed out of higher education not by a policy that says their names, but by an economic reality manufactured by people who know exactly what they are doing.
This Is Resegregation. Call It What It Is
Some will insist these are simply policy disagreements about the proper role of government. We must reject that framing entirely. EdTrust has identified these executive orders as mirroring the blueprint laid out in Project 2025, an extreme policy plan designed to eliminate the federal role in education, resegregate public schools, and relegate higher education to a privilege only afforded to wealthy families. The gutting of the Office for Civil Rights, the elimination of disparate impact enforcement, the defunding of Black student programs, the cancellation of HBCU research grants, and the economic strangulation of low-income Black families through safety net cuts are not a series of unrelated policy choices. They are a coordinated strategy with a clear historical precedent.
When the Supreme Court outlawed school segregation in 1954, Virginia’s segregationist governor immediately moved to shut down public schools and give parents vouchers for private institutions. That exact playbook, using school choice, voucher programs, and selective destruction of civil rights enforcement to recreate racial separation through market mechanisms rather than law, is what is being run today. The tactics are quieter. The suits are nicer. But the goal is the same: a two-tiered education system where the quality of a child’s schooling is determined by the color of their skin and the wealth of their family.
This Is Our Moment to Fight
Here is what the National Black Parents Association is asking you to do, and we are asking with urgency because time is not on our side.
First, get informed and get loud. Know what is happening in your child’s school and on your local campus. Ask administrators directly whether DEI programs, cultural centers, or equity initiatives have been modified or eliminated under federal pressure. Document what you hear. Put your questions in writing.
Second, support our HBCUs with everything you have. Donate if you can. Encourage every Black young person in your life to seriously consider an HBCU. These institutions exist because our ancestors built them against every conceivable barrier, and they need our active investment right now, not just our admiration.
Third, organize at the state and local level. Since the federal Office for Civil Rights has been effectively gutted, your state legislature is now your most viable arena for civil rights enforcement in education. Demand that your state establish its own education civil rights office. Elect school board members and state legislators who are committed to equity. Show up to public meetings. Make noise.
Fourth, build coalition. The administration is dividing minority communities against each other, cutting grants from Hispanic-serving institutions while announcing HBCU funding, hoping we will compete for scraps rather than unite around shared interests. We must resist that division and organize across communities.
The Trump administration’s assault on DEI is a structural, financial, and existential threat to Black students and HBCUs. It has already cost students opportunities. If it continues, it will cost generations of progress. HBCUs were built as spaces of liberation when America refused to educate us. They survived because Black communities refused to accept exclusion as a permanent condition. That same refusal is what this moment demands of us.
Your child’s future is not a political talking point. It is sacred ground, and it is worth every fight.
