More than 40 African American vendors can breathe easier this week. Attempts at renaming the airport have not succeeded. It won’t be called Donald Trump airport, or anything else like that, and that’s a good thing for anyone who’s concerned about equal justice and economic opportunity. Despite the protestations of his defenders, it’s hard not to view various actions and policies of the Trump administration as insensitive at best, and racist at worst. Let’s start with the scrubbing from the Arlington National Cemetery website information and educational materials about the history of Black and female service members last month. Some of the content removed was on veterans who had received the nation’s highest military recognition, the Medal of Honor, according to military news site Task & Purpose.
This is part of the Trump administration’s ongoing war against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices in the military and throughout the federal government. At one point that action included the removal of Jackie Robinson’s military history, but a public furor ensued when ESPN publicized that move on nationwide television, and it was soon restored. But lots of other Black, Brown and Asian veterans have NOT had their information restored on the website, and they have also deleted some prominent women, though not all of them.
Trump has pressured corporations and organizations that won’t adhere to his mistaken interpretation of DEI. The FCC is now investigating ABC and the Disney Corporation because they won’t comply with his mandate. The same is being done to such companies as Costco that also is standing by its principles. These Trump actions are also being taken against educational institutions, with such colleges as Michigan, Harvard, Vanderbilt and others taking steps to either totally scuttle departments that were designed to help recruit Black students, scholarships designed to attract minorities, or programs in place to help those students on campus.
The Trump administration has turned the Office of Civil Rights upside down, making it a protector of majority rights that weren’t being threatened, while becoming an enemy of the groups it was empowered to protect. Two months ago, they sent a letter to preschools, elementary, secondary, and postsecondary educational institutions, as well as state agencies, claiming that they are prohibited from using race-based considerations in any aspect of programming or operations. The letter claims higher education institutions’ “embrace of pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination have emanated throughout every facet of academia… [and that] schools have routinely used race as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring, training, and other institutional programming” illegally.
Despite offering no proof of these allegations, the department continued that this letter prohibits educational institutions from considering race in any way. “If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law,” the letter states. It continues, “Federal law thus prohibits…using race in decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing graduation ceremonies and other aspects of student, academic and campus life.” The Dear Colleague letter also prohibits relying on proxies for race. It also attacks diversity, inclusion, and accessibility programs, claiming they preference one racial group over another and “teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not. Such programs stigmatize students who belong to particular racial groups based on crude racial stereotypes. Consequently, they deny students the ability to participate fully in the life of a school,” it claims.
So in their mind, the creation of Black Student and Latino heritage organizations on campuses somehow discriminate against whites. The idiocy of that notion aside, the fact it is being used as a guiding light for presidential actions is absurd and unfair. Then, there’s the latest action last week, where his target became the Smithsonian Institution. His newest executive order targets funding for programs that advance “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology,” the latest step in a broadside against culture he deems too liberal.
According to Trump, there has been a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite American history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” adding that it casts the “founding principles” of the United States in a “negative light.” The order he signed behind closed doors puts Vice President JD Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents, in charge of overseeing efforts to “remove improper ideology” from all areas of the institution, including its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.
It’s not very hard to imagine his targets here. There’s the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of the American Indian, neither of which tells the story of America from a sanitized, right-wing perspective. These are only a handful of the actions taken place by the Trump administration since it began in January that most reasonable people would view as racist. His defenders of course don’t see it that way, nor do his legislative defenders in this state and nationwide. But the bottom line for those African American vendors, whose livelihoods may well have been jeopardized if the name change had taken place, is they are safe for the moment.
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