DEI’s Retreat: Gutting Black Entrepreneurs and Our Economic Power

Let’s call it what it is - sabotage.

When Trump stepped back into office, he didn’t waste a second. One of his very first moves was gutting the federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) infrastructure that had finally started opening real doors for Black entrepreneurs. On January 20, 2025, he signed Executive Order 14151, wiping out federal DEI programs and stripping contract prioritization from businesses owned by marginalized groups. By August, another order handed over all federal grant power to political appointees folks handpicked to target anything DEI, LGBTQ+, or immigrant-focused.Translation? If you weren’t rich, white, and well-connected, you were getting cut out the picture.

Corporate Copycats: DEI Rollback Hits the Private Sector

You know how this goes monkey see, monkey do. Corporate America took notes from Washington. Within months, big names like Amazon, Meta, Ford, and Walmart started quietly scaling back their DEI programs. Supplier diversity pipelines? Dismantled. Equity pledges? Ghosted. All those shiny “we stand with Black businesses” statements from 2020? A PR phase. Now, with federal protections out the window, they feel bold enough to cut us out again.

And let’s be real supplier diversity was one of the only tools giving us a fighting chance. Contracts, mentorship, access to capital… gone. Just like that.

From Allyship to Abandonment: The Quiet Collapse of Corporate Promises

Post-George Floyd, they said all the right things. They posted black squares, made billion-dollar promises, and launched “equity initiatives.” Now? Crickets. Diversity teams are being dissolved. Grant programs gone. DEI metrics? Unreported. Why? Because they can. Without the government backing equity as a standard, companies have zero pressure to keep the promises they made and they know it but now they are feeling the heat because their pockets are being hit hard and now many of them are begging to fix this mess they have put themselves in.

Black Businesses Still Face Systemic Fire

None of this is new. Black businesses have always faced closed doors. Venture capital firms overlook us. Banks redline us. Corporate networks exclude us. And the data don’t lie:

• Black women are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the U.S.

• But we receive less than 1% of VC funding each year.

• Black men still fight for crumbs locked out of big contracts and ignored by lenders.

  
  

Supplier diversity and federal equity grants were finally starting to balance the scales and now they’re on the chopping block. These aren’t setbacks. They’re setups.

But We’re Not Going Quietly

Black entrepreneurs are doing what we always do innovating, organizing, and surviving. From Oakland to Atlanta to Detroit, we’re building our own ecosystems. Local chambers, co-ops, buy-Black marketplaces, mutual aid funds we’re creating infrastructure they can’t touch.

And we’re using our voices, too. Calling out the lies. Demanding policy change. Crowdfunding capital. Funding each other. We know that waiting for help won’t save us but collective power just might.

They Want Us Broke. We Say Nah.

The DEI rollback isn’t some line in a budget. It’s a targeted campaign to strip Black communities of our power. They see our growth. They fear our resilience. And they want us gone. But we’re still here. Still building. Still investing in each other. Still fighting.

This blog is Part 2 of this series. In Part 1, we broke down how 300,000 Black women were pushed out of the workforce in just three months. Now we’re showing how those same policies are squeezing Black business owners, too.

If you're mad, good. If you’re tired, we feel you. But now is not the time to fold.

This is the time to bet on Black again.