Young African American student writing in classroomPhoto: Vladimir Vladimirov (Getty Images)
Florida isn’t the only battleground in the war on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. In Kentucky, lawmakers just moved one giant step closer to destroying DEI efforts on college campuses throughout the Bluegrass State.
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On Friday, the GOP-controlled Kentucky House passed a bill making it illegal to spend money on DEI offices, DEI training or DEI employees. The bill also bans scholarships specifically awarded to minority students and prohibits the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education from approving degrees with “discriminatory concepts” — opening the door for crackdowns of teaching about race, gender, and sexuality.
“This bill will claw back all the progress we’ve made here in the Commonwealth,” Felicia Newman of the Louisville Urban League told Spectrum News. “It will render students less competitive in a global economy, and they’ll be less educated than their peers.”
The House bill is a much more comprehensive version of a bill passed in the Kentucky Senate — which already raised earnest concerns from civil rights groups like the NAACP.
“We’re not interested in being progressive. We’re not interested in equal rights. We’re looking at going and try to become more insular than we currently already are,” Raymond Burse, Louisville Branch NAACP Vice-President told Spectrum News about the previous iterations of the legislation.
The NAACP has consistently waded into these efforts to roll back racial progress on college campuses. Earlier this month, the NAACP issued a statement urging Black student athletes to reconsider attending predominantly white institutions in Florida after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a similar law in the Sunshine State.
The bill will now head to the Kentucky Senate, which is also controlled by Republican lawmakers. It’s anyone’s guess if those lawmakers will stick to the hardline bill passed by the House, pass on it or do something even more dramatic.
