Trump's War on DEI Is Another Dark Chapter in America’s Racist History
Racism fits squarely within the mainstream of US political history, from slavery through the Civil War, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow, from the civil rights revolution to the MAGA movement.
Donald Trump built his public career on racism. Somehow that doesn’t lessen the shock that he has placed it at the center of his second presidency.
The myriad depredations of Trump 2.0 have proven hard to track. His unilateral attacks on US trading relationships and foreign aid threaten American prosperity, diplomacy, and constitutional governance. His attempts to eviscerate the FBI and Justice Department endanger the rule of law.
Trump’s sweeping assault on the rising status of people of color, on the other hand, batters America’s social cohesion. He has brazenly stomped on the original fracture within American culture.
Over two centuries of struggle, US political leaders have taken fitful steps toward repairing that fracture. Even when progress stalls, modern society has stigmatized overt opposition to racial equality.
Without a shred of embarrassment, Trump does the opposite. He does not conceal his belief in the superiority of white men.
Ever since Trump descended that golden escalator in 2015 to denounce Mexican immigrant “rapists,” the crudeness with which he has expressed contempt for people of color fueled his takeover of the Republican Party. It has challenged the comforting assumptions of many Americans – I’m one of them – that the arc of the moral universe, as Martin Luther King Jr. put it, “bends toward justice.”
But the dispiriting reality is that racism fits squarely within the mainstream of American political history, from slavery through the Civil War, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow, from the civil rights revolution to the reactionary MAGA movement Trump leads.
“We don’t like to talk about the fact that racism is deeply embedded in American culture and always has been,” observes Eric Foner, a leading historian of slavery, the Civil War, and its aftermath. “Trump and his Cabinet are perfectly happy to appeal to these kind of racist ideas.”