Trump’s New Civil Rights Era Begins Without Diversity, Equity, Or Inclusion

Three African American Civil Rights protesters at Woolworth’s Sit-In, Durham, NC, 10 February 1960, a protest that led to the end of legal segregation. Photos taken by The News & Observer, Raleigh, NC.

Within 24 hours of becoming president, Donald Trump released his first White House Fact Sheet, “Ending the Radical and Illegal DEI.” He signed an Executive Order claiming that eliminating programs promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is “the most important federal civil rights measure in decades.”

Trump, and by extension the MAGA Republican Party, link eliminating diversity and equality to promoting civil rights. This is not a new concept. However, one must understand our history to understand how these two practices are linked to civil rights.

The civil rights movement exploded after the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857 rejected African American citizenship claims. This decision was not based on economic claims of owning slaves as property but on racial claims that citizens who were seen as Black had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

The Fourteenth Amendment was passed after the Civil War to protect not only the legal equality of formerly enslaved persons but all people treated as Black, and in due course, it was extended to all minorities. Nearly a hundred years later, with the majority of Supreme Court justices being Republican-appointed, the Brown v. Board of Educationdecision was released. It found that denying racial…