The graduates of Resilient Coders have found life-changing jobs at tech companies across the country. One former retail employee went to work for Wayfair, which paid for him to get a master’s degree in computer science. An Uber driver who was barely scraping by became a coder at the same ride-sharing company — and now earns a six-figure salary.
But the program, which provides free software engineering training to people of color in Boston and Philadelphia, now finds itself in the crosshairs of a mounting anti-DEI fervor that equity advocates fear could threaten a wide range of efforts to level the playing field for people from diverse backgrounds — and undermine efforts to address the country’s widening racial wealth gap.
The Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion has added fuel to a backlash that was already building following the 2023 Supreme Court decision to effectively end race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions. Dozens of major companies have pulled back their DEI programs recently, and the list grows almost daily. Even if this retreat slows, the fear President Trump’s directive has generated could hurt efforts to improve the economic mobility of people of color, advocates say, potentially jeopardizing scholarships, job training, small business loans, and supply chain diversity programs alongside workplace initiatives.
“To put a low-income student into a high-wage job changes the entire life trajectory of their family for generations,’’ said Sarah Cherry Rice, who runs the Boston nonprofit Digital Ready, which helps students of color earn college credit and gain work experience in science and technology fields. “It changes what they have access to, the resources they can bring, their social connections, the capital, the network. They’re bringing that all back to their family.’’
The median wealth of Black families increased significantly in recent years as housing values grew, according to Federal Reserve data analyzed by the Brookings Institution, but the racial wealth gap continued to widen. In 2022, the median wealth of white households was $285,000, but only $44,980 for Black families and $62,000 for non-white Latino households — a divide Brookings attributes to “centuries of discrimination in public policy, financial practices, and societal norms’’ that the country has yet to overcome.
Designating funds to support communities of color is crucial to bridging the gap, said Orlando Watkins, chief program officer at the Boston Foundation. The nonprofit, which is focused on equity, remains committed to funding communities of color, he said, but the Trump administration’s anti-DEI proclamations have had “a real chilling effect’’ on organizations the foundation partners with. Some corporate donors are pulling back or reprioritizing funds, he said, and some nonprofits are softening language emphasizing diversity and inclusion to align with donors’ attempts to “stay out of harm’s way.’’
The Boston Foundation recently announced $2 million in grants to be awarded this spring to social service organizations that serve LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, and other vulnerable populations.
“At a time when the basic rights and well-being of hundreds of thousands of our neighbors are under assault, and each day brings renewed questions about the ability of our institutions to meet their commitments, we cannot afford to sit idly by,’’ president Lee Pelton said in a statement.
The real tragedy, Watkins said, is that the country finally seemed to be recognizing the importance of lifting up disadvantaged populations during the racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
“It is our shared responsibility to try to create equity,’’ he said, “not only for the individual who would benefit from that scholarship or that grant or loan, but for our entire society.’’
Research by Opportunity Insights at Harvard University shows that increased earnings in one generation can profoundly improve the economic mobility of the next, meaning that something as simple as a loan that allows a struggling couple to open a business could propel their children into the middle class. But if these opportunities shrink for people of color, who have historically been denied the kind of resources and connections the programs provide, advocates say, building wealth will become more difficult.
Ayanna Lott-Pollard, executive director of Resilient Coders, worries that companies that have sought out her program’s graduates may scale back recruiting efforts to “stay out of the limelight.’’
“Particularly in industries like tech, the DEI initiatives have played a crucial role — not just a minor role, a crucial role — in increasing access to these high-paying careers for those underrepresented, and, I like to say, underestimated communities,” she said.
But the DEI movement, which has roots in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, had only just started making a difference, advocates say. Efforts intensified over the past few years, but much of it was “radical talk’’ with relatively little investment, said Su Joun, a diversity consultant in Burlington.
“The noise was pretty loud about the reckoning, but the systemic changes were small,’’ she said. “If it took four years to build that little bit of equity and wealth, I would say it’s probably going to be wiped out in six months.’’
The momentum that built in the aftermath of Floyd’s death was more about “joining the popular movement of the time’’ than in addressing inequalities, said Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, known as “America’s Black Think Tank.’’ And now the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction.
“People are going with the tide,’’ he said.
And no one is sure how far out that tide will go.
Buying a house is a major factor in building wealth, and it’s not clear what will happen if efforts to support disadvantaged populations’ homeownership rates come under fire. FHLBank Boston, for instance, which is regulated by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has a program that awards up to $50,000 to people of color under a certain income level trying to buy their first home.
FHLBank Boston said in a statement that it “remains committed to offering a variety of programs that promote affordable homeownership opportunities.’’
Several people who have benefited from programs geared toward assisting marginalized communities declined to talk to the Globe because of concerns about being targeted in the current political climate.
The anti-DEI blowback has been so intense in part because diversity programs have been lumped in with unrelated efforts that are unpopular, Joun said, including cancel culture, transgender rights, even environmentally conscious paper straws. DEI was also singled out for blame in several recent disasters, including the fires in Los Angeles — where the first woman and openly LGBTQ firefighter to lead the fire department was accused of being a “DEI hire’’ — and the collision of an American Airlines plane and a Blackhawk helicopter, which Trump connected without proof to diversity policies at the Federal Aviation Administration.
If the ripple effects of the backlash against diversity and inclusion efforts continue to grow, they could have an impact on ambitious students like Joselyne Cordero. Cordero, 21, came to the United States from the Dominican Republic as a child, and her mother, who works as a janitor at Fenway Park, struggled to raise her and her younger sisters on her own.
During high school, Cordero got involved with Digital Ready and was able to earn 18 college credits for free and get a partial scholarship to Wentworth Institute of Technology. Now Cordero, the first member of her family to graduate from high school, is a second-year architecture student, and her 17-year-old sister is also thinking about college.
Without the help she got from Digital Ready, including a part-time job as a teaching assistant that helps pay her family’s bills, she said, “I wouldn’t be following this path.’’
Digital Ready is funded by local foundations and state and city grants, and so far, its partners have remained supportive, said Rice, the director. But she worries about the hiring pipeline as major tech companies pull back DEI initiatives and chief diversity officer positions disappear.
Additional funding opportunities could also be at risk. Rice had been looking into applying for a $5 million National Science Foundation grant intended to “advance scholarship of racial equity and address systemic racism.’’ The deadline is in October, but when she checked the website last month, “This document has been archived,’’ was written across the top in red.
The grant, it seems, is no longer available.
Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her @ktkjohnston.
