Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
I'm going to be a pain and add some specificity.DEI became a thing in the first place largely because it was demonstrated that equal opportunity wasn't actually happening AND that companies could potentially get in legal trouble on that front. I don't see any reason to believe that "reinstate colorblind equal opportunity" is in any way accurate, either for the history or actual goals in play.
The Trump Administration likely will go after DEI, though, yes. It's also likely that the "colorblind equal opportunity" that you look forward to will be a perversion of the concept.
It's not that equal opportunity wasn't happening, it's that equal opportunity wasn't producing equal outcomes. Opening up to all applicants and not discriminating on the basis of race or anything else doesn't guarantee that you'll get a representative selection of applicants, let alone of qualified applicants.
For example... my profession is absolutely not representative. Actuarial science is dramatically lacking in black and hispanic professionals. And it's definitely NOT a case of discrimination - all of the exams are completely blinded, we take the exams as numbers, the graders are not present when the exams are taken and are assigned a random collection of tests with no names on them. Each exam is graded by more than one grader, and if they disagree on the points (some tests have a degree of interpretation when it comes to written answers), the graders confer and come to an agreement. It's not possible for discrimination to play a role in it. But despite all of that... there are extremely few black or hispanic people who even try to enter the field. And although females make up about 55% of the starting cohort for the lower level exams, they fall out prior to reaching fellowship level so that at the end of the day, fellows end up being IIRC about 65% male. Asians are overrepresented by a fair bit.
DEI ended up being adopted to try to FORCE things to have equal outcomes. Which is silly, really.