Donald Trump has issued a new memorandum to carry out his Inauguration Day executive order eliminating federal DEIA programs, by placing DEI employees on federal leave.
DEIA stands for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, and Trump’s action rescinds President Biden’s executive order from 2021, which sought to make the federal government “a model” for effective DEIA.
Trump’s order inaccurately describes DEIA as “radical,” “illegal,” and “immoral discrimination.” So let’s look at what the federal government’s DEI programs actually do.
Federal DEI programs set goals in 8 different areas:
• Data collection, to give us a better understanding of who is and isn’t in the federal workforce
• Paid Internships, which provide valuable opportunities and experience for people from underserved communities
• Recruitment, so that the government doesn’t just hire the usual suspects but posts job announcements in places where other people can see them
• Professional development, so that once people are hired they can continue to expand their skills and become better workers
• Fair treatment of people with disabilities, so that they can get a job and find appropriate accommodations
• LGBT fairness, so that spouses and families of LGBT employees get the same benefits as other families
• Pay equity, to review government policies, hiring and salaries to make sure that women and people of color aren’t being paid less to do the same jobs, and
• Opportunities for formerly incarcerated individuals to review barriers so that qualified job applicants who have served their time get a fair shot to get a job.
These are not radical, illegal, or immoral ideas. These are calls to the highest principles of America, with the stated goal that “all employees are treated with dignity and respect.”
America’s Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, announced to the world that “all men are created equal,” but for the next 200 years, millions of Americans remained second-class citizens.
Black people were legally segregated and denied jobs, housing, and the right to vote until the late 1960s. Women couldn’t get a credit card in their own name until 1974. People with disabilities were locked out of the workplace until 1990. And gay and lesbian couples couldn’t marry the people they loved until just 10 years ago. Most of those changes happened in my lifetime.
What DEI policies do is acknowledge our history to create a fairer and more inclusive workplace that benefits everyone. I’m not sure Trump knows any of that history, but I do know that his actions are designed to be an attack on Black America. That’s why he also revoked Executive Order 11246 on affirmative action, which has been in place since 1965 in the civil rights era.
There’s a reason for this.
Black people were the least supportive racial or ethnic group for Donald Trump. We make up about 13.7% percent of the U.S. population but account for nearly 19% of federal workers. Nearly 400,000 Black people now work for the federal government. Trump’s DEI attack fits with his larger plans to move federal jobs out of Washington, D.C., and slash the federal workforce, which would leave thousands of Black people unemployed. All of this would constitute the most significant attack on Black public workers since President Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal workforce in 1913.
Black people are overrepresented in the federal government because, historically, that was the one place where we did not face employment discrimination. I would not be here without federal DEI programs. My grandmother worked for HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) for 30 years in St. Louis, Missouri. My mom worked for the Department of Defense at the Sharpe Army Depot in Stockton, California, and Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. This is personal to me.
But the impact of Trump’s attack will be felt far beyond the federal workforce. The federal government influences the private workforce by dictating rules for federal contractors and serving as a model for best practices for private employers. And some corporations are already rolling back their DEI initiatives.
Because of Trump’s actions, not only will Black federal employees lose their jobs, but Black people in private companies will be laid off. After spending his 2024 campaign scaring Black people with racist lies that immigrants are taking “Black jobs,” Trump will end up being the one to take their jobs.
By closing DEI offices, ordering the government to delete all websites about diversity, pardoning the January 6 insurrectionists and paying restitution to (presumably) white people he calls victims of DEI, Trump is launching a radical campaign to promote white victimhood and erase America’s true racial history.
I have no hope that “moderate Republicans” or misinformed celebrities performing for Trump will use their influence to help Black Americans, people of color, or other groups that are targeted by these mean-spirited policies. These clout chasers seem only to aspire to personal adjacency to power.
So we must educate our own people, fight in the courts, the boardrooms and the media when we can, and in the streets when we must, and resist his efforts to erase us as powerfully and constructively as we can.
Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.
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