A quick Black History Month lesson: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark law that was developed to protect the rights of Black citizens who, for most of American history, were denied basic citizenship rights, including the right to attend well-resourced schools. The law was intended to eradicate the systemic discrimination and the denial of basic civil rights that racial minorities in this country have experienced for centuries. Federal civil rights offices were created to ensure that, in practice, underserved student populations had access to the same quality of schools, instructional materials, rigorous courses, and extracurricular activities as their white and more affluent peers.

Given this context, it is unfathomable that the Civil Rights Act is being invoked in a Dear Colleague Letter by the Acting Assistant Secretary for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to denounce “reverse racism.” In other words, the same law that was designed to protect students of color and other under-represented populations and ensure their basic rights is instead being weaponized against the very programs and investments designed to support those students to overcome a legacy of discrimination and aid their academic and economic progress.

Students of Color Already Lack Resources and have Fewer Opportunities

Academic institutions in this country are vital to the strength of our economy, our ability to solve problems that impact our society, and our future sustainability. For students in the P-12 system, schools are beacons of opportunity that allow them to reach their full potential. Schools that prepare students the most effectively share the following traits:

• Great teachers and educational leaders who represent their students and hold them to high expectations while providing the right instructional support for each student to thrive
• Enough resources to ensure that all students’ basic needs are met and enough staff to support each individual student’s needs
• High-quality instructional materials and classes that prepare students for college and successful careers
• Safe environments that allow students to explore who they are and make mistakes without fear of exclusion or shame

Unfortunately, many of our nation’s students live in communities and attend schools where these basic provisions are not available to them; this result is no accident. Schools serving the largest populations of Black and Latino students and those from low-income backgrounds, lack resources because of what a conservative-majority Supreme Court in 2023 recognized as “specific, identified instances of past discrimination that violated the Constitution.” Consider this:

• Black students attend schools that are staffed by white, inexperienced teachers, due largely to the mass removal of Black teachers from the profession aided by policies that were instituted after the Brown v Board of Education decision to ensure that Black teachers did not teach in newly integrated schools. This means Black and Latino students often attend schools that lack teachers certified to provide advanced courses like AP and career and technical education (CTE) courses; and when they do attend schools with those classes, they’re burdened by their teachers’ low expectations and are not recommended for those classes.
• Black and Latino students attend schools that are under-resourced, even as many states are expanding voucher programs to send students to private schools with public funding. But vouchers originated from the hostile responses of white families who did not want to attend integrated public schools based on the assumption following the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that integrated schools with Black students were too inferior.
• Centuries of the same racism that justified the enslavement of Black people lingers as implicit bias that means Black students face more harsh discipline. They are disproportionately excluded through suspensions or expulsions for non-violent offenses as early as pre-school.
• That same implicit bias impacts the books and curriculum available to Black and Latino students, who lack the proper instructional materials that are representative of the cultural and linguistic diversity of our country and that provide representational benefits to different students, while their white, affluent peers are represented in a variety of ways and contexts.

Jim Crow 2.0

In a country that prides itself on equality and opportunity, this administration is instead leaning into the most primal and prejudice-based fears of a racist faction of Americans and enacting the same policies that were developed to subjugate Black Americans — essentially Jim Crow 2.0. States have moved to increase censorship efforts to silence educators from teaching honest history and ban books that are more inclusive. Programs designed to create safe spaces for educators and students who have been subjected to overt and covert racism have been removed under false pretense and misapplication of laws and their intent. And now, the same United States government charged with protecting the civil rights of Black and Latino students is instead using executive orders, Dear Colleague Letters, and funding cuts to curtail the rights of those very same students.

In a country that prides itself on equality and opportunity, this administration is instead leaning into the most primal and prejudice-based fears of a racist faction of Americans and enacting the same policies that were developed to subjugate Black Americans — essentially Jim Crow 2.0

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law to prevent generations of Black citizens from experiencing the vestiges of racism and discrimination, including those that burdened Black children and families in our education system. The law should be used to provide protections to those vulnerable students while school, district, and state leaders aggressively reform our education system to remedy continued inequities. Instead, the Office of Civil Rights is being weaponized to try and shut down and demonize those efforts. The threat to take away Black students’ access to safe and inclusive schools, representational instructional materials, more inclusive learning environments and rigorous coursework, and high-quality extracurricular activities is serious and one that we must face with the same resolve and conviction as the authors of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

That means that state, district, and school leaders must be steadfast in their commitment to programs and strategies that support Black students and must not be deterred by inflammatory language and threats to funding in the litany of executive orders and Dear Colleague Letters from the new administration. The future of not just Black and Latino students but ALL students depend on this continued commitment and courage to support their specific needs and the promises of our Civil Rights laws.