It seems like the ink wasn’t even dry on the official second term of President Donald Trump before the commander-in-white-privilege-and-playing-around-in-Black-people’s-faces started pardoning Jan. 6 rioters, rolling back decades-old civil rights protections and making good on his promise to rid the federal government of any and all DEI programs.
Source: The Washington Post / Getty
In fact, on Wednesday morning, Trump signed an order that requires all federal employees in diversity, equity, and inclusion roles to be placed on paid leave by 5 p.m. ET Wednesday evening, according to NBC News. Imagine that. You’re an employee sitting at your desk, fulfilling your duty to ensure that white men are not exclusively the only demographic that can get a job with the federal government, and suddenly, some Trump surrogate taps you on the soldier and tells you it’s time to take your PTO because white supremacy is being made great again.
Actually, those employees aren’t just being gifted a forced vacation, Trump’s order also requires federal agencies to submit a written plan by Jan. 31 for their outright dismissal.
Getting fired for creating diversity, equity, and inclusion is nasty work.
It’s frustrating enough that Trump and the rest of white conservative America have successfully propagandized DEI so that it’s mischaracterized as anti-white discrimination, as opposed to what it actually is: an effort to remove systematically placed roadblocks that prevented women and people of color from receiving equal opportunity in education and in the workplace. But to add insult to all of that injury, Trump demonstrates the orangey-white nationalist caucasity by invoking Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s name while introducing a policy that goes against everything the civil rights icon fought for and pretending to honor him at the same time.
Source: The Washington Post / Getty
From NBC:
“This order is meant to return to the promise and the hope that was captured by civil rights champions, that one day all Americans can be treated on the basis of their character, not by the color of their skin.”
The statement echoed a well-known quote from Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, in which King declared, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Hours later, in his inaugural address, Trump noted that it was “Martin Luther King Day, and his honor, this will be a great honor, but in his honor we will strive together to make his dream a reality. We will make his dream come true.”
Listen: We all knew Trump’s second administration was going to be served to us with an extra helping of white supremacy, but to disregard Black people and manipulate our message and historic fight against racism this way is disgraceful and a slap in our collective faces.
It’s going to be a long, frustrating, and exhaustingly white next four years.
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