Art by MIKE LUCKOVICH
Intro
President Donald Trump has been inaugurated as Americas 47th president. He won the electoral vote by 86 and the popular vote by 2,294,336 (a 1.5% marginal victory) over his opponent Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump won because he received the majority of the two largest voting blocs, 60% of white men’s votes which were 34% of the voting bloc and 53% of white women’s votes which were 37% of the voting bloc.
Trumps Executive Orders
On his first few days of office the president passed a flurry of executive orders. Among these roughly 200 executive orders, there was one of particular significance when it comes to civil rights. In this January 21st order, it states,
“Section 1. Purpose. Longstanding Federal civil-rights laws protect individual Americans from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. These civil-rights protections serve as a bedrock supporting equality of opportunity for all Americans. As President, I have a solemn duty to ensure that these laws are enforced for the benefit of all Americans. Yet today, roughly 60 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, critical and influential institutions of American society, including the Federal Government, major corporations, financial institutions, the medical industry, large commercial airlines, law enforcement agencies, and institutions of higher education have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) or “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation.”
This is where this executive order gets interesting to me. He further states in this order,
“The Federal Government is charged with enforcing our civil-rights laws. The purpose of this order is to ensure that it does so by ending illegal preferences and discrimination.”
Terminating Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)
Why is this interesting? In Section 3 titled, Terminating Illegal Discrimination in the Federal Government, he lists a series of prior executive orders of which this executive order revokes. Here is the link of which you can read the entire executive order, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-illegal-discrimination-and-restoring-merit-based-opportunity/, but note that most of these orders are post year 2000 and for the most part, they are related to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Line i however states,
“Executive Order 11246 of September 24, 1965 (Equal Employment Opportunity) is hereby revoked. For 90 days from the date of this order, Federal contractors may continue to comply with the regulatory scheme in effect on January 20, 2025.”
Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) is fair treatment in employment, promotion, training, and other personnel actions without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, and physical or mental disability. The beginning of the order states,
“The Secretary of Labor shall be responsible for the administration and enforcement of Parts II and III of this Order. The Secretary shall adopt such rules and regulations and issue such orders as are deemed necessary and appropriate to achieve the purposes of Parts II and III of this Order.”
My point here is that Lyndon B. Johnson’s executive order 11246 is a law. It is a critical piece of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. So, Trump, in the midst of revoking the post year 2000 executive orders, which primarily were promoting DEI, he reaches back to the civil rights act of 1964 and terminates a law. Why is this significant? Remember the basis of Trumps executive order is to uphold the civil rights laws, and he further states that these laws have been violated since their passage 60 years ago, all the while covertly terminating the very laws he is pretending to uphold. Trump further states in his order,
“Yet today, roughly 60 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, critical and influential institutions of American society, including the Federal Government, major corporations, financial institutions, the medical industry, large commercial airlines, law enforcement agencies, and institutions of higher education have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) or “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation.”
An example of a few of these DEI based executive orders that were revoked are:
- Executive Order 13583 of August 18, 2011 (Establishing a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce)
- The Presidential Memorandum of October 5, 2016 (Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in the National Security Workforce).
- Also listed in Trump’s order, “The head of each agency shall include in every contract or grant award”:
- A term requiring such counterparty or recipient to certify that it does not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.
- Exercise references to DEI and DEIA principles, under whatever name they may appear, from Federal acquisition, contracting, grants, and financial assistance procedures to streamline those procedures, improve speed and efficiency, lower costs, and comply with civil-rights laws; and
- Terminate all “diversity,” “equity,” “equitable decision-making,” “equitable deployment of financial and technical assistance,” “advancing equity,” and like mandates, requirements, programs, or activities, as appropriate.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
To understand the hypocrisy of this order, you need to understand the purpose of DEI. DEI is a framework. Civil Rights laws like Equal Opportunity Employment mandated that organizations be fair in their practices, but it did not outline how they were supposed to be implemented. The DEI framework provided many organizations like corporations and educational institutions with the guidelines to implement the laws. Notice that the orders related to DEI always included the word promote. They were to provide encouragement and guidance not a mandate. Terminating the DEI executive orders was never Trump’s true target, just the smoke screen. A Jan. 24th CBS news article titled; Trump doesn’t only want to end DEI. He’s also voiding a Civil Rights-era anti-discrimination rule, states,
“Revoking the 60-year-old rule eliminates a bedrock civil rights protection for American workers, signaling an effort to target workplace issues that go beyond DEI, labor experts say. While DEI is shorthand for programs that encourage equality in the workplace for women, minorities and other groups, the Equal Employment Opportunity rule prohibited federal contractors from engaging in acts of discrimination, such as refusing to hire someone due to their race or paying an employee less because of their gender.”
To totally understand the impact of terminating this law, look at the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission site. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/executive-order-11246/as-amended This is the organization created to enforce this federal law. If a complaint against a business (or some other private employer) involves race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, disability or genetic information, the business is covered by the laws that this commission enforces if it has 15 or more employees who worked for the employer for at least twenty calendar weeks. So, note this law does not just cover federal organizations but the private sector also. In addition to the general coverages listed above, it also protects against age discrimination and protects equal pay. In his order, Trump further explains the passing of his order. It states,
“These illegal DEI and DEIA policies also threaten the safety of American men, women, and children across the Nation by diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination when selecting people for jobs and services in key sectors of American society, including all levels of government, and the medical, aviation, and law-enforcement communities. Yet in case after tragic case, the American people have witnessed first-hand the disastrous consequences of illegal, pernicious discrimination that has prioritized how people were born instead of what they were capable of doing.”
A person can find just about any information on the internet these days and with the advent of artificial intelligence enhancing the search engines, finding information is much more efficient, but with all my searching I cannot find one significant case where DEI policies have caused a safety issue. So, what is the real reason for this executive order? Why the need for misdirection?
MAGA
Donald Trump is the creator and leader of the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement. MAGA was founded on the belief that the United States was once a “great” country but has lost this status owing to foreign influence, both within its borders (via immigration and multiculturalism) and without (via globalization, or the increased integration of multiple national economies). MAGA members think that this fall from grace can be reversed through “America first” policies that would provide a greater degree of economic protectionism, greatly reduced immigration, particularly from developing countries, and encourage or enforce what MAGA members consider to be traditional American values.
Misdirection
Misdirection is a common practice within the MAGA strategy. When it targeted Black History in schools, it didn’t say it wanted to terminate Black History. That would be too direct of an approach in our race-sensitive society. So, they targeted Critical Race Theory (CRT). A higher education term related to the effects of institutional racism and nothing to do with Black History. It was a term foreign enough to the public that they could demonize it and then falsely claim that schools wanted to implement it instead of the real intent of including Black History in American history as it should be. This is the same strategy that is being implemented by MAGA when it comes to The Civil Rights Acts. Instead of going directly after Civil Rights, they target a term that the public doesn’t understand, Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI), demonize it and use the public animosity against it to go after the real target, civil rights.
Why is the misdirection even necessary? Like I stated before, today’s society is sensitive to racial matters. Caused by the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s and then heightened again by the string of police brutality cases culminating with the George Floyd murder, this sensitivity is not just in America but also globally. But it wasn’t always that way. Until the late 1950s, America had gotten away with overt discrimination for centuries. And not just against Black Americans but also against other people of color, immigrants, women, and the LGBTQIA community.
When was America Great?
This brings me to the slogan Make America Great Again. It naturally begs the question of when Trump thinks America was great. In a March 2016 interview with the New York Times, Trump was asked, “when do you think the United States last had the right balance, either in terms of defense footprint or in terms of trade?” The answer, Trump explained, was during periods of military and industrial expansion at the onset of the 20th century and again in the years after World War II. Trump also pointed to the “late ’40s and ‘50s,” a time when, he said, “we were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody, we had just won a war, we were pretty much doing what we had to do.” I don’t doubt that these reasons were valid in his thinking, but neither do I think that it is a coincidence that these time periods were also pre-civil rights laws. Remember that MAGA’s strategy is misdirection.
The first civil rights laws were in the 1860s but they were pretty much nullified by the Jim Crow era. The next civil rights laws were passed in 1957 by President Eisenhower. This act established the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department and empowered federal prosecutors to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote. It also established a federal Civil Rights Commission with authority to investigate discriminatory conditions and recommend corrective measures. This momentum carried into the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Global Influence
The global visibility of racism in the United States during the 1950s contributed to the passage of this bill by increasing the pressure on Congress to pass legislation. While discrimination was practiced with impunity within the borders of America, its global brand was that of a place with endless opportunity for its citizens. It perpetuated the notion that if you worked hard, you could make a good living for you and your family with the possibility of developing wealth. This global brand stayed intact because America was an isolated country. It was insulated from the effects of global backlash because for the most part it stayed out of global matters. America ended its isolation when it entered the global picture in the early 20th century when it fought in World War I and World War II. These wars transformed the United States from an isolated country to a world leader but the racial conflict in America began to attract attention around the globe.
Many countries, particularly newly independent nations, followed the U.S. civil rights movement with interest and questioned the extent to which U.S. rhetoric of equality and self-determination matched the status of civil rights in the United States. This particularly came to light in the 1955 Bandung Conference (Asian African Conference). In April 1955, representatives from twenty-nine governments of Asian and African nations gathered in Bandung, Indonesia to discuss peace and the role of the Third World in the Cold War, economic development, and decolonization. U.S. leaders worried that the anti-colonialism of Bandung and the discussion of global racial politics taking place there could turn anti-American or anti-Western. It is this kind of global attention that prompted Eisenhower to sign the 1957 Civil Rights Act and global attention along with domestic awareness is what led to the more substantive 1964 Act. So, what it is the real reason Trump wants to turn the clock back to pre-1950s? He said it was because that was the time of military and industrial expansion. Well, there is no war now so there is no need for military expansion and the industrial revolution has been replaced by the technology age. Here is the real reason in my opinion.
America the Country Club
Pre-1950, America was a country club for white men. It was their playground, particularly for rich white men. They had exclusivity to the resources. They made the rules and everyone else had to bend to their will. This all began to change with the passing of the Civil Rights Acts. Each Act of the 1860s, 1950s, and ultimately the 1960s provided more opportunity for Black Americans, non-white Americans, women, and the LGBTQIA community. White men that follow Trump, long for the time when they didn’t have to apologize for their privilege. When all they had to worry about was each other when it came to access to the best of things. I have no concrete evidence of this. Even as brash as Trump is he will never say this. At least not until he has what he wants and doesn’t have to worry about domestic and global backlash. Remember it is all about misdirection. Get the people looking at the hand with DEI in it while in the other hand the civil rights laws are getting crushed.
Killing the Civil Rights Laws
I have no proof; this is all conjecture on my part, but as an engineer I was taught that the output is a good indication of what the input was. If you look at the policies that Trump is pushing, they all center around pulling back civil rights laws – under the guise of bringing back a merit-based system, limiting immigration, under the guise of keeping America safe from criminals and protecting American jobs, and limiting foreign relations, under the guise of putting America first. Trump’s goal is to bring back the country club. To do this, he must bring back the exclusivity of the resources to white people, white men specifically. The Civil Rights Acts, and immigration bills are what created the competition so if he can pull them back one by one, it will be a start to restore the country club. But it was the domestic and global scrutiny that fueled the changes that led to the civil rights laws. This is the purpose of destroying Americas confidence in the media. It was the media that broadcasted the discrimination domestically and abroad. He will negate the global influence on America’s actions by pulling it out of the global alliances. Pull back trade with non-European countries by raising tariffs so that America is less vulnerable to global scrutiny.
The saving of white America
The World openly wonders why America would elect a candidate who was convicted on 34 felony counts. I point back to my first paragraph. Trump was elected by white America. They all may not like him, but people vote for their own self-interest. A traditional politician would not do all that it takes to have a chance at turning back the clock. They are too worried about image. Trump could care less. He is a master manipulator at heart. He will do whatever is necessary to get what he wants. White America thinks that their wants and Trump’s are aligned. I say be careful what you wish for. And know that they all are not fighting for privilege. There are many that believe that they are fighting for the survival of the white population as well. The census shows that over the last few decades the growth of the white population has been slowing. The 2020 census shows that for the first time in American history the population of white Americans declined (by 9%) while the population of other ethnic groups are staying steady or increasing. In their minds, for the purposes of survival alone, white Americans need to regain the control it once had, but it won’t be easy.
Can’t turn back time
Black American millennials and Gen Z are an aggressive generation, and don’t have the careful mindset of the Baby Boomer and Gen X. I am 62, a baby boomer, and I had to maneuver carefully to succeed in my career as an engineer in corporate America in a way that my children won’t have to. For MAGA to be successful in their agenda to restore the exclusivity that White American men had prior to the 1960s, they need to restore the mechanisms to control them. In their strategy this starts with taking away civil rights.
Despite Trump and MAGA’s efforts, I do not think that America will ever exclusively belong to the white population again. Prior to the civil rights movement, Black Americans, other people of color, and women did not have resources or held any positions of power at any substantial scale. The group did not have college degrees or, more importantly, professional experience in any significant numbers. That has all changed and MAGA can’t take it back. They may be able to slow some things down, but the horse is out of the barn. Trump’s policies will hurt America before it helps white people. If organizations return to the discriminatory hiring practices because of the termination of the Equal Employment Opportunity law, they will soon discover that they are missing out on talent. Prior to the 1970s, organizations were not penalized because of their discriminatory practices because white men had most of the training and experience. Organizations could only hire white men and be ok because at that time, that is where most of the talent was. This is no longer the case. The best talent is not exclusively in the pool of white men any longer. This is where DEI was a benefit. It widened the talent pool for organizations that might not have considered venturing outside the traditional pool. At the end of the day, America is still a capitalist economy and the most important color is green.
Change will always come
One of these days, we will grow to understand the power of the Constitution. It allowed for amendments because its writers, in a moment of clarity, understood that things change. George Bernard Shaw said, “progress is impossible without change”. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “The only constant in life is change”. MAGA wants to turn back the clock, but time doesn’t work that way. Time moves forward and if America wants to progress, it will move forward with it.
Edward Odom
https://mytwocents.pEd Odom
