Living out my latter days under the new Jim Crow

Trump's executive orders on DEI are based on his personal, biased, racist opinions - and his, and his administration's sole, often arbitrary determinations without any evidentiary record of which programs and funding constitute DEI is nothing but state-sanctioned discrimination; a new Jim Crow.

The Supreme Court has ruled this week that medical research and medical procedures which affect actual patients' health are actually gender 'ideology,' as if there's something abstract or imagined about someone's need for gender assignment surgery, or hormone treatments, for example.

This idiocratic practice of letting this one deranged man with a like-minded legislative majority characterize whatever program or government service he wants as 'ideology' in an arbitrarily order invented out of the WH; and these EOs on DEI extending well beyond government; has rendered the federal government hostile to people who he chooses to direct his animosity toward.

What really burns me is how this practice of Trump's of systematically excluding blacks, women, disabled Americans and others in this country from the federal government, and denying the benefit of the protections, assistance, and defense of the federal government to these historically excluded and shortchanged categories of individuals is being reported on and opposed without mentioning the people at the point of the attacks who are going to lose ground in the nation by the deliberate actions of this government.

And not just lose ground, but actually experience losses of rights, access, opportunities which the nation grudgingly relinquished after a long period of unrest and agitation.

Never mind the admonitions against the type of direct actions that helped move the nation to provide remedies for the deliberate neglect and assaults on black Americans, for instance. Blacks in the civil rights era were accustomed to resisting in the face of most of the nation and the federal government combined arrayed against them.

I have every reason to believe that there will be another awakening of the deliberately dispossessed and repressed in this nation which will roil the politicians who thought they could just deal in the abstract about actual people under siege and attack by their government.

Did they think we didn't notice that almost all of their orders and emergency actions are predicated on some form of complaint based on this president's mischaracterization of diversity efforts and the people who benefit from those.

It's absolutely a new Jim Crow; an anti-minority, anti-women, anti-disabled set of discriminatory initiatives from the very top of the U.S. government which are being advantaged to lord this president's authority over ALL of us. Instead of endeavoring to serve the American people, we're all being organized and mandated into serving this autocratic, racist government.

It's not a coincidence that this president began with repressing and disenfranchising blacks, women, and other groups who've needed the federal government to ensure rights and opportunities to overcome past discrimination from the same U.S. establishment that condoned and encouraged all of those deliberately disabling efforts in the not so distant past.

In a speech at Edwardsville, Illinois on September 11, 1858, Abraham Lincoln said:

"Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises."

So, someone tell me why there is such a dearth of folks directly defending these groups of individuals who are under direct attack by this federal government; whose simultaneous subjugation and abandonment is being openly waged against them by this president; against full and supposedly free citizens?

This racist president has reached into almost every aspect of the federal government to find and remove any and all remedies or attempts to provide a hand up for these particular people he's chosen to make the centerpiece of his attempt to unilaterally overturn or end actual democratic actions which he disagrees with personally.

He has ME on the ground with his foot on my neck and I can barely breathe for the anguish and anger I feel about MY existence in this country, my rights, my birthright citizenship being degraded once more by a racist, repressive government.

I'm losing political objectivity, faith in the system, and I'm ready to respond to this repression in ways that might not be understood by people who never felt apart from any of the promise and opportunity of this nation. I've never been allowed by this country or government to feel like a full citizen; even with all of the protections afforded us, which were actually weak soup compromises that were never fully implemented.

Hell, DEI is nothing but outreach and retention efforts by employers and others not satisfied and not fully advantaged by a narrow, limited pool of white male applicants which was put in place after a white male dominated Supreme Court said they couldn't set goals or timetables for including historically excluded Americans in their reindeer games.

Trump is George Wallace elected president in the 50's. Can you imagine what the nation would look like if Jim Crow persisted? Give it a couple years.


Trump DEI Executive Orders

1. Termination of Federal DEI Programs Generally

The first EO (14151), titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” requires the termination of all “discriminatory programs, including illegal [DEI] and [DEIA] mandates, policies, programs, preferences and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.” It requires that federal agencies, departments or commission heads terminate all (i) DEI offices and positions, (ii) “equity” plans, actions, initiatives or programs and “equity-related” grants or contracts, and (iii) DEI or DEIA “performance requirements for employees, contractors or grantees.”
2. Termination of Gender Identity Policies

The second order (14168), “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism,” defines “sex” as an individual’s “immutable biological classification as either male or female,” removing any concept of “gender identity.”

This order directs agencies to remove all statements, policies, regulations or other documents or forms of communications that “inculcate gender ideology” and prohibits use of federal funds to promote gender ideology. The order also instructs the attorney general to issue guidance to (i) clarify that Title VII does not require gender identity-based access to single-sex spaces and (ii) ensure the “freedom to express the binary nature of sex” and right to single-sex spaces. Agencies with enforcement responsibilities are instructed to prioritize investigations and litigation to enforce the EO.
3. Deterrence of Private Sector DEI Policies and Programs

The third EO (14173), “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” requires executive departments and agencies to terminate “all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs, activities, guidance, regulations, enforcement actions, consent orders and requirements.”

In a major change, the order rescinds Executive Order 11246, issued in 1965 by President Johnson, which required federal contractors to develop and implement affirmative action plans to identify and address underrepresentation based on sex or race. Under President Trump’s EO 14173, any receipt of federal funding will now require the recipient to agree that its compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws is material to the government’s payment decisions under the False Claims Act (i.e., opening up the recipient to criminal prosecution under that law if it violates federal anti-discrimination laws) and to certify that the recipient does not operate any illegal DEI programs.

The order also requires the heads of agencies to take action to encourage the private sector to end any illegal DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs or activities. Specifically, the order directs the attorney general to submit a proposed strategic enforcement plan, which, among other things, shall identify:

“[T] he most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners in each sector of concern.”
Strategies for ending “illegal DEI discrimination and preferences.”
A plan with “specific steps and measures to deter DEI programs or principles.”

Under that third mandate, the attorney general is instructed to require each government agency to:

“identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more, State and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars.”
4. Department of Justice Enforcement Policy

Following up on EO 14173, on February 5, 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memorandum to all Department of Justice (DOJ) employees providing that the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division “will investigate, eliminate and penalize illegal DEI and DEIA preferences, mandates, policies, programs and activities in the private sector and in education institutions that receive federal funds.”

The memorandum instructs the Civil Rights Division and the Office of Legal Policy to submit a report including proposals for criminal investigations and up to nine civil compliance investigations, and potential litigation activities in support of the new policies.

A footnote, however, provides an important qualification that creates some room for some private DEI programs: It states that the memorandum “encompasses programs, initiatives, or policies that discriminate, exclude, or divide individuals based on race and sex,” but that the law “does not prohibit educational, cultural, or historical observances ... that celebrate diversity, recognize historical contributions, and promote awareness without engaging in exclusion or discrimination.”

https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2025/02/the-informed-board/dei-under-siege


..I took the time to write this out tonight because, I wanted to make clear how much this affects me. A mistake on the internet, I know, but fwiw, this is what I'm looking to set straight, more than anything right now. Folks here should know that a good many of the things I advocate for or against here don't necessarily affect me directly. But, this does, completely.

I get that it's really not on many folks' radar, and that many won't regard this emphasis on diversity as a direct attack on black people, women, or any others who fall within the definitions of these abusive orders.

That realization might be the worst thing about all of this, for me.