We are waiting to see the day the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion do two things.
- Proclaims Black History Month will not be recognized.
- Eliminate the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Black History Month began as “Negro History Week” in 1926 at the urging of one of our nation’s greatest Black historians, Carter G. Woodson, and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, with Woodson saying it was important to the cultural survival of Blacks within the broader White society. The week was observed in the February week when the birth of Abraham Lincoln was celebrated.
He commented, “If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated. The American Indian left no continuous record. He did not appreciate the value of tradition; and where is he today? The Hebrew keenly appreciated the value of tradition, as is attested by the Bible itself. In spite of worldwide persecution, therefore, he is a great factor in our civilization.”
The Black United Students group and Black educators at Kent State University proposed in 1969 that the week-long celebration become Black History Month. The first observance was in 1970.
President Ford endorsed it as part of the national Bicentennial celebrations in 1976.
But with the arrival of the second Trump term, Black History Month appeared to be on somewhat shaky ground. One of the first things Trump did when resuming office was to sign an executive order ending “all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government.”
Within a matter of days, agencies were circulating memos, many of them announcing in terms similar to the line used by a Justice Department memo, “These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.”
To the surprise of some, Trump did sign a proclamation recognizing Black History Month at the start of February calling on American citizens and public officials to “celebrate the contributions of so many black American patriots who have indelibly shaped our Nation’s history.”
EEOC:
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission exists but President Trump has rendered it useless, as he has the National Labor Relations Board.
Acting quickly after resuming office, he fired then-Chairman Charlotte Burrows, a Biden appointee who became the first chairman ever fired by a President. He also canned Commissioner Joycelyn Samuels, one of his own appointees from 2020, leaving only two members of the five-member commission. Trump appointee Andrea Lucas was named the acting chair. She is identified as a strong opponent of DEI programs, which she says promote reverse discrimination. The also is known as a critic of legal protections for transgender people. Her term expires July 1.
Failure to reappoint her or to name a successor will leave only Kalpana Kotagel on the commission. Kotagel is an African-American employment attorney appointee of President Biden. Her term expires in 2027, potentially leaving the commission with no members.
Kotagel is doomed. She’s the kind of person Trump loves to hate. As a private attorney, she specialized in DEI cases, particularly involving the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and has represented clients in other civil rights employment actions. Four years ago she worked with the Transgender Defense and Educational Fund when Aetna Insurance Company granted access to breast augmentation surgery for male policyholders who underwent surgery to become women. She also is a member of the Advisory Board Office of Equity and Inclusion at the University of Pennsylvania.
Trump criticized the EEOC in his first term as ineffective and took no steps to make it so. The commission’s staff has been cut by more than 40% by Congress.
About the same time he was ravaging the EEOC, Trump fired National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a Biden appointee, and Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the NLRB also with just two members and three vacancies, thus unable to do any business.
In place of these and other programs created to insure qualified people have equal chances to become employed, Trump trumpets the meritocracy, saying people should be hired on the basis of merit, not race or other factors. But he has dismantled the agencies that were established to make sure that everybody was considered on their merits.
And he has celebrated the month by firing a lot of Black American patriots—including, just last week, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—who are shaping our present. Someday our present will be someone else’s past. We hope those of the future are harsh in their judgments of our present and the President who is making it.