Welcome to another episode of Lurie Breaks It Down, a podcast where we dig deeply to connect the dots on the issues that shape our world.

I'm Lurie Daniel Favors, author, activist, attorney,

and host of the Lurie Daniel Favors show on SiriusXM's Urban View, Channel 126.

Now, the attacks on diversity, equity, inclusion,

and affirmative action type programs seem to be the primary kind of stories that are driving the morning, the midday, and the evening news cycles.

It feels like every other day we're getting another breaking news report about some new executive order that is designed in some way to further dismantle the social pillars that uphold

integration in American society. These stories are so pervasive that they almost give you the

impression that diversity, equity, and inclusion programs or affirmative action programs,

also known by a shorter name like integration or desegregation policies,

it almost gives you the impression that these programs or policies are some ancient mainstay

of American ideology that its long last are being vanquished from the American mind.

The reality is a lot less impressive, quite frankly.

In fact, give me just a second, and I can walk you through a really quick exercise that shows you just how young integration in this society is,

especially considering the fact that the first Africans were enslaved here in 1619.

Here we go. Do you happen to know anyone in your personal life who is, I don't know, let's say,

80 years or older? Or I'll do you one even better. How about somebody who's 75 years or older?

Do you know of anyone who's 73? Maybe 72 years or older? Well, friends, that 72-year-old

is frankly older than school desegregation mandates in the United States. The Supreme Court's

decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, that's the legal decision that declared that

schools that operated under a separate but

equal mandate were operating in violation of the Constitution. That's largely because while those

schools were indeed very, very separate, they were anything but equal. And while black families

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