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Why do some white men in the US seem so afraid of the prospect of racial equality?
Are they worried the faces of leadership in the US might one day be as diverse as those across the country at large, and they won’t feel safe in a world where not everyone in authority looks like their parents, the authority figures of their boyhood?
Or is it simply because some of them are nervous about their own mediocrity and fear that, if the scales of society were a bit more even, they couldn’t compete? That, on some level, they sense they need systematic discrimination against non-whites to prosper?
But whatever the reason, a lot of politicians in the US love to whip up these fears among white Americans and use such amplified anxieties to boost their own popularity and power. None more so, perhaps, than US President Donald Trump.
His white-supremacist-style campaign rhetoric was bad enough, but his new administration’s attacks on long-standing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies threaten serious damage to long-standing pillars of modern American society.
Institutions in the US began creating DEI and affirmative action programs after the fall of racial apartheid in the US. The 1954 US Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing school segregation, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, are bedrock principles.
They created protections people in the US have relied upon for more than 60 years.
Human Rights Watch expert Trey Walk details three new executive orders by Trump targeting DEI.
One order directs federal agencies to end all DEI activities. It also directs agencies to withdraw plans written under the Biden-Harris administration to end systemic racism and other inequities.
A second order eliminates DEI programs in the military, even though the Department of Defense has acknowledged that some active duty and former military members were affiliated with white supremacist groups.
A third order calls DEI programs discriminatory and claims they should be ended in the private sector, too. This order rescinds executive orders dating back to 1965 that sought to address racism and promote equal opportunities for jobs.
Trump plans to “deter” such programs by launching investigations into corporations, nonprofits, and professional associations. Companies have already begun announcing plans to end their DEI programs.
Students will also be harmed. Public schools and colleges risk losing federal funding for promoting equal opportunities for racial and ethnic minorities, women and girls, and LGBT youth.
In short, these orders and other moves are aiming to undo hard-won anti-discrimination efforts the US has lived by for generations (or at least, aimed to live up to). It’s a vicious political move based on unwarranted fears among some white Americans that Trump himself raised to fever pitch using hateful rhetoric and lies.
Now, as Trey says: “The dams built to hold off discrimination are under attack. We must not let them fall.”