A recent New York Times story concluded that the number of Black women who have jobs has decreased by more than 300,000 nationally since Donald Trump took office. Black women are the only demographic group showing a dip. That article provided empirical evidence of what I and many others already perceived—this administration is harming and in some ways targeting Black people in particular. There have been countless anti-Black moves, including trying to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board, stripping Kamala Harris of her Secret Service protection, deploying the National Guard to cities with Black mayors and large African American populations, essentially outlawing diversity and equity initiatives.
Many liberals, including my colleague Michael Tomasky, say that the Trump administration is much more racist than its predecessors. I agree, but not in the common understanding of that word. Someone being racist is generally understood as them disliking or treating people unfairly based on their skin color or appearance. It’s possible that Trump and his aides have this kind of explicit animus toward African Americans. But in my view, what drives this administration is authoritarianism and ideological conservatism more than racial bigotry. Authoritarianism and ideological conservatism hit Black people in America really hard, and racism is a useful tool to further authoritarianism and ideological conservatism.
Let me start with ideological conservatism. Trump’s administration is arguably the most conservative in modern history, aggressively implementing goals that Republicans have long supported but didn’t follow through on, wary of political backlash. For example, Trump has drastically cut the federal workforce, particularly employees of agencies such as the Department of Education that are perceived to be more left-leaning. Under Trump, long-standing Republican wariness about affirmative action and other efforts to reverse the effects of sexism, racism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination has turned into a comprehensive defunding of virtually any diversity and inclusion program, both inside and outside the federal government.
Ideological conservatism isn’t inherently against people with dark skin. But because of how African Americans have been discriminated against throughout American history, policies that are liberal and redistributive tend to disproportionately benefit them. In our more recent history, the federal government has made great efforts to ensure its hiring processes are transparent, fair, and inclusive of people of all backgrounds. As a result, Black people have been able to find and keep jobs in the bureaucracy more than other sectors of the economy. African Americans often embrace DEI initiatives and work in such programs because they seek to address inequities that Black people recognize.
This administration’s rigid conservatism has made the last eight months a disaster for Black people. African Americans are heavily employed in exactly the kinds of jobs that Trump wants to eliminate. They benefit from policies that this administration strongly opposes.
All indications are that Trump and his team are eager to lay off white federal workers and DEI staffers too. Trump’s policies may or may not be intentionally anti-Black, but they are certainly and intentionally anti-equity and anti-redistribution. So the results are similar to what would happen if Team Trump were being explicitly anti-Black.
In terms of authoritarianism, Trump wants to be a dictator and dominate everyone. Many big cities (Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles) have Black mayors, so sending the National Guard into them seems like an incursion motivated by anti-Black sentiments. But Trump is also asserting his authority over Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, and numerous other local and state Democratic politicians who are white.
And at the Federal Reserve, his real target is not Cook but Chair Jerome Powell. Harris joins a long list of people, including Anthony Fauci, who have had their government security protection removed because the president doesn’t like them.
But even if Trump’s goals are not necessarily driven by bigotry, racism is still at play. Trump and his allies have accused Cook and New York Attorney General Letitia James of mortgage fraud. He has cast Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., as crime-ridden and in need of National Guard troops. His administration constantly states that DEI programs diminish hard work and merit.
That’s not an accident. It’s a strategy. There is ample evidence from research that many rank-and-file Americans believe (or can be primed to believe) that Black people are lazy, unqualified for their jobs, unethical, and dangerous. So even if Trump or his aides don’t have a single ounce of actual bigotry toward Black people, they understand that it’s politically smart for them to first go after Black mayors, cities, and political appointees, setting precedents for later attacks on non-Black people and areas. White conservative voters in particular, but even some moderates and people of color, are more likely to agree with Trump’s arguments if they invoke ideas of Black inferiority and criminality. Trump and his team know that Americans have these biases (sometimes unconsciously) against African Americans, and are exploiting them for political gain.
If Trump’s racism is a tactic to advance authoritarianism and conservatism more than a goal on its own, liberals and Democrats should reconsider some of their approaches in contesting the president. The tendency over the last decade has been for liberals to declare that Trump has said or done something racist without really attacking his core actions or defending his targets. When Trump said during his first term that Representatives Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the other members of “The Squad” should “go back” to the countries they came from, Democratic officials were quite willing to say that was racist. But many center-left Democrats, particularly Nancy Pelosi, not only didn’t really reject but at times reinforced Trump’s broader point: Progressive Democrats like Ocasio-Cortez are too radical to be in Congress.
Similarly, when Trump says Senator Chuck Schumer is “a Palestinian,” Democrats rush to call that racist. What the party has not universally done is embrace the equal rights and humanity of Palestinians, which is what Trump is actually attacking.
Right now, what we need from Democratic leaders is not an analysis of the racism of Trump’s actions but a forceful rejection of them. The Democratic Party is not aggressively contesting Cook’s potential removal or the National Guard deployments in heavily Black cities. Some prominent center-left voices, such as MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, are even saying Democratic mayors and governors should call the White House and work with him on these deployments. The party is not pledging to rehire all the federal workers that Trump has fired, Black and non-Black, or to put back in place policies designed to ensure equity and inclusion for groups who have been traditionally discriminated against. The best way to defend Black interests is not using the word racism often but fighting authoritarian and ideological conservatism, which flourished in the Jim Crow South to the detriment of African Americans and is rising again now across the country because of Trump.
If Trump just hated Black people, that would be terrible for people like me. But he actually hates liberalism, democracy, equality, and freedom, making him terrible for all Americans. Liberals and Democrats should defend Black people because it’s the right thing to do, but also because defending democracy in the Trump era requires defending Black people.
The post Trump’s War on Black America Isn’t an Accident—It’s a Strategy appeared first on New Republic.
