Just days after President Donald Trump bragged on national television about ending DEI, Dr. Lanysha Adams started her speech at Santa Fe Community College's Black History Month celebration by acknowledging the current political climate.

"Policy decisions are being framed through fear, and in some circles, evening mentioning race can feel like you're lighting a match," Adams said. "But we are here today because we refuse to stop having these conversations."

"Amity doesn't mean pretending everything is okay because it's really not," Adams said. "It means choosing to face what isn't with curiosity instead of contempt, with dialog instead of defensiveness, and with the conviction that friendship is a practice."

Adams went on to explore the roots of racial categories in America, noting that the first U.S. census in 1790 only included three categories—free whites, all other free persons, and slaves. Through the years, other racial identifiers came and went from the census. Those included terms that today we think of as nationalities rather than races, like "Chinese" and "Mexican."

"This idea of race as we know it didn't come from biology," Adams said. "It came from bureaucracy.''

While racial and ethnic categories have changed over time, responding to politics and power dynamics, Adams pointed out that defining race is both harmful and helpful.

"It's both a cage and a compass, and it's harmful because it's been used to justify really nasty things like slavery, segregation, internment, exclusion and even genocide," Adams said. "And really race is about the language of hierarchy."

But, Adams pointed out, without racial categorizations, there would not have been a Civil Rights Act, affirmative action or the means to measure inequity. But Adams cautioned those in attendance not to let government categories define their world view.

"Liberation doesn't start with legislation," Adams said. "It starts with reflection, and it grows through conversation. So let's talk, question and learn out loud. And let's turn that learning into action."