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Given a significant backlash over the past few years against what conservatives have called excesses of “wokeness” promoted by progressives fighting against various forms of discrimination, it was no great surprise that the second Trump administration painted a bull’s-eye on recently established diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives within the federal government. But the anti-woke offensive is going beyond the programs and policies of the past few years. Far beyond all that, as CNN reported:
President Donald Trump this week rescinded a nearly 60-year-old executive order that prohibited government contractors from discriminating in their hiring, firing, promotion or pay practices.
Replacing it is a new requirement that those employers certify that they do not have what he termed “illegal” diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. He also ordered each federal agency to identify up to nine targets for federal investigations into their DEI practices to see if they should be judged “illegal.” That includes publicly-traded private corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations and major foundations.
The order that Trump rescinded, originally signed by President Lyndon Johnson, applied to virtually every major business and many small companies that together employ about a quarter of workers in the United States. It had remained in force through both Democratic and Republican administrations, including Trump’s own first term.
The goal is very clearly the extermination of private-sector DEI policies as well, considered incompatible with the “meritocracy” now regarded as the ultimate MAGA goal (never mind an administration by cronyism and nepotism). Defenders of Trump’s move will point out that there are still civil-rights laws in place prohibiting employment discrimination, but the absence of policies to enforce them is a big deal. To the extent there was any controversy about LBJ’s executive order, it was because it enjoined affirmative action in preventing discrimination by race, color, religion, or national origin (or, via a 1967 amendment, by sex). But as CNN points out, “affirmative action” in the meaning of the order was a very mild prescription:
The executive order that he rescinded, known as EO 11246, did “not permit quotas, preferences, or set asides. They are strictly forbidden,” according to the Department of Labor’s stated rules.
Yes, EO 11246 was amended in 2014 by President Barack Obama to add sexual orientation and gender identity to prohibited grounds for discrimination. But Trump didn’t bother to amend the amendment to return to the earlier language; he struck down the order entirely and replaced it with the abovementioned injunction to destroy DEI policies.
What this suggests is that Team Trump objects not just to recent alleged “excesses” in the pursuit of nondiscrimination but to the basic idea that the federal government has the obligation to fight it. That’s not entirely surprising when you look at all the polling of MAGA folk showing that they perceive discrimination against white people as a bigger problem than discrimination against non-white minority groups. And, indeed, an emerging talking point among Trump advisers that may explain the action on EO 11246 is the Orwellian claim that any effort to reduce discrimination against particular people itself violates “color-blind” civil-rights laws. In this view, legal neutrality toward old-school racial discrimination in employment is the only guarantee we have that “merit” is rewarded.
If that’s the case, you wonder how long it will be before MAGA folk decide that civil-rights laws should be turned upside down to ban anti-discrimination policies altogether as inherently discriminatory. It’s bad enough that Trump and his advisers believe the official discrimination against Black people that characterized U.S. laws and politics from the founding of the Republic until the 1960s is not a problem worth addressing anymore. It’s even worse to claim that the only way to prevent discrimination is to get rid of any effort to address it. That way lies a return to white supremacy in the guise of color-blind “meritocracy.” And it’s also a terrible trend for the women and LGBTQ+ folk who have benefited from the same laws and policies as they were extended into the 21st century.
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