President Donald Trump appears during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 21, 2025, in Washington, D.C. | Source: Andrew Harnik / Getty
It’s probably too early to tell how history will remember the story of President Donald Trump, but Black History — the story of America that the MAGA world would sooner propagandize into white-and-fragile oblivion than see it normalized in educational curricula — will be clear who Trump is and that his administration was one of white nationalism.
Black History will remember that Trump’s final act of his first term in office was to spread baseless and factless propaganda about the 2020 presidential race being stolen from him and that he exclusively attacked voting districts with large Black and Latino populations. Black History will remember that, on the first day of his second term, Trump pardoned around 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants and commuted the sentences of the other 14 four years after he inspired them to attack the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of those votes from Black and Latino voting districts. And history will remember that, on the same day, Trump rolled back a bedrock Civil Rights era measure while making good on his promise to eradicate DEI practices from the federal government.
According to Axios, when Trump “issued a sweeping executive order revoking decades of diversity and affirmative action practices in federal government,” he revoked a measure signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on Sept. 24, 1965, just two years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — whose name Trump predictably invoked during his inauguration speech — delivered his iconic “I Have A Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial.
From Axios:
LBJ’s order gave the Secretary of Labor the authority to ensure equal opportunity for people of color and women in federal contractors’ recruitment, hiring, training and other employment practices
It required federal contractors to refrain from employment discrimination and take affirmative action to ensure equal opportunity “based on race, color, religion, and national origin.”
The order came more than a year after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and just months after he signed the Voting Rights Act following violent attacks on voting rights advocates in Selma, Ala.
The reversal comes after five GOP presidents—including Trump during his first term—kept the Johnson executive order in place, while others expanded it through amendments.
Segregationists during Johnson’s time opposed the executive order.
Black History will undoubtedly remember diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as what they were: efforts to remove systematically placed roadblocks that ensured white men were the only Americans who could fully access the American dream. Trump and the MAGA-fied GOP have mischaracterized DEI as anti-white discrimination just as they have mischaracterized America’s historic hiring and higher education practices as a meritocracy. It has never been about merit, and that’s exactly why white men, regardless of their qualifications or lack thereof, dominate virtually every major industry and entity in America, including its federal government.
Everything else is just a big white lie.
SEE ALSO:
Could Trump Pardon Cops Convicted Of Killing Black People? Yes And No
President Trump, Who Condemned Black Lives Matter As Violent, Pardons All But 14 Jan. 6 Defendants
