Trump wants to undo all kinds of race and gender progress. Here’s what stands in his way
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The Trump administration is hell-bent on “restoring” this country to an entirely fictional time when white people succeeded based purely on merit, people of color got ahead solely because of affirmative action and women understood that they were the inferior sex.
Trump’s hostility to social progress and civil rights is seeping into every corner of life — the armed forces, college and university campuses, public schools and corporations.
Shortly after he took office, Trump fired CQ Brown Jr., a four-star Air Force general and former fighter pilot and the second Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also fired the highest-ranking woman in American military history, Adm. Linda Fagan, who was commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard. His Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, canned Adm. Lisa Franchetti, who was chief of naval operations and the first woman on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
All had stellar military careers. But they ran afoul of Trump by embracing the fundamentally American ideal that our diversity is our strength. E pluribus unum, anyone?
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Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s plea to Trump the day after his inauguration exemplified the principled criticism the president deserves regardless of his victory.
“Any general that was involved — general, admiral, or whatever — that was involved in any of that DEI woke s— has got to go,” Hegseth told the right-wing podcaster Shawn Ryan in November. Hegseth has stated flatly that women don’t belong in combat, and in his 2024 book, “The War on Warriors,” he questioned Brown‘s promotion to the top military job.
“Was it because of his skin color?” the future secretary asked. “Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt — which on its face seems unfair to CQ.” (Who is this racist “we” of whom he speaks?)
That is quite a statement from a Fox News personality who was appointed to one of the nation’s most important jobs based on such tissue-thin qualifications as his telegenic qualities and MAGA politics. His shortcomings — including a propensity to drink himself into oblivion, according to numerous witnesses, and a $50,000 payment to a woman who accused him of sexual assault — are forgivable in Trump World. You see, he is a white man who looks good on TV.
Studies show kicking out thousands of transgender service members, a tiny fraction of the armed forces, would do nothing to help the military’s mission.
As for college campuses, the hysteria around efforts to foster diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, is the current iteration of the panic that previously enveloped critical race theory, the nearly half-century-old precept that racism has shaped public policy and other facets of American life. And those controversies, of course, followed decades of paranoia around affirmative action, the practice of increasing employment, educational and other opportunities for individuals who belong to disadvantaged groups such as racial minorities.
The ultraconservative Supreme Court majority put the final nail in affirmative action’s coffin in 2023, ruling that colleges and universities — public and private — may not consider race as one of many factors in deciding which qualified applicants to admit. Never mind centuries of white legacy admissions and Kushner-esque purchases of admission to Harvard. Giving applicants a leg up is apparently unfair only if it advantages people of color.
Trump’s petulant and blatantly racist policies are symptoms of the ongoing American backlash against the social advances of the late 20th century. As white Americans become a minority, as women continue to make strides toward gender equality and have the audacity to stand up to sexual harassment and assault, the white male power structure has shown — over and over — that it will resist with everything it’s got. You think you control your own body, ladies? Think again!
Many of us naively thought the 2008 election of the first Black president signaled a sea change in white Americans’ attitudes about race, but that was far too cheery a view.
It was only in 2020 that George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, unleashing a tidal wave of protests against police brutality and corrosive racism. That led more corporations and other institutions to embrace policies designed to advance the careers of qualified people who might have otherwise been overlooked.
And yet it took less than five years — and the second election of our Racist in Chief — for the forces of white supremacy to engineer a course correction and reverse the goodwill efforts borne of the most dramatic public lynching in modern American history.
Don’t believe me? The conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro has called for Chauvin to be pardoned. (“Something to think about,” posted the execrable Elon Musk.)
In the same racist vein, a Republican congressman from Georgia introduced a bill to withhold federal funding from the administration of Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser unless she agrees to remove the famous “Black Lives Matter” mural on a street near the White House. Last week, Bowser said she would remove it because “we can’t afford to be distracted by meaningless congressional interference. The devastating impacts of the federal job cuts must be our No. 1 concern.”
Making America great again for white people is such an integral part of the Trump agenda that only hours after he was sworn in, he signed an executive order banning DEI programs in the federal government. His order also directs federal agencies to develop plans to thwart DEI initiatives in the private sector and universities.
“It’s a marked attempt to chill DEI initiatives … placing them in the crosshairs of the federal government such that even if conducted lawfully, private employers may be forced to respond to federal probes,” the Associated Press reported.
The spineless executives of Pepsi, Google, Goldman Sachs, Target, Facebook, Amazon, McDonald’s and Walmart, among others, could not comply fast enough. All have signaled that they will backtrack on or end their DEI programs.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has bulked up and infamously called for “more masculine energy” in his company.
Consumers are hardly powerless, though. On Wednesday, in honor of Lent, a Black Georgia pastor, the Rev. Jamal Bryant of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, called for a 40-day “Target fast.” The length of time may be symbolic, but the call to action is not; a Lenten boycott of the retailer, says Bryant’s website, is “a spiritual act of resistance.”
The week before, a group called the People’s Union USA asked Americans to boycott Amazon and its companies, including Zappos, Ring, Whole Foods and Prime Video, for one day. On Friday, it expanded the call for an “economic blackout” to one week.
Thank God for Costco, whose shareholders rejected a proposal to end the company’s DEI policies in January. That prompted the Republican attorneys general of 19 states to threaten Costco with reprisals for its “unlawful discrimination.”
Let them try. It’s quite possible that Americans love a bargain even more than they hate racism.
Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Threads: @rabcarian
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- The article argues that the Trump administration is systematically dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, framing these efforts as part of a broader backlash against racial and gender progress. It highlights the firing of high-ranking military leaders of color and women, such as Gen. CQ Brown Jr. and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, as examples of hostility toward diversity in leadership[6].
- Critics contend that Trump’s executive orders banning DEI programs in federal agencies and pressuring private companies to abandon similar policies represent an attempt to revive a “fictional” era of white male dominance, undermining decades of civil rights advancements[6].
- The piece emphasizes grassroots resistance to these policies, including boycotts of corporations like Target and Amazon, led by figures such as Rev. Jamal Bryant, who view DEI rollbacks as spiritually and socially destructive[6].
- It also critiques the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative action ruling and Trump’s alignment with it, arguing that these actions disproportionately harm people of color while ignoring legacy admissions and wealth-based advantages for white applicants[6].
Different views on the topic
- Proponents of Project 2025 and Trump’s executive orders argue that DEI programs perpetuate discrimination by prioritizing race and gender over merit, violating civil rights laws. They claim ending these policies restores fairness and individual opportunity, as outlined in Trump’s January 2025 order[4][5].
- Supporters assert that initiatives like Schedule F reforms and dismantling federal DEI offices are necessary to eliminate bureaucratic overreach and ensure government employees align with the president’s agenda, framing this as a return to constitutional governance[1][2].
- Advocates defend restrictions on gender-affirming care and abortion access as protections for children and religious freedoms, with Project 2025 calling such measures critical to reversing “radical gender ideology”[1][3].
- Conservatives argue that efforts to strip civil rights enforcement tools, such as disparate impact analysis, prevent “reverse discrimination” against white individuals, emphasizing colorblind policies as the true path to equality[1][4].
