Federal Government, Justice, Politics

Trump Continues To Make The Government A 'Safe Space' For Racism

Trump is dismantling civil rights, but not on Twitter, so maybe you didn't notice?

By  
on
Massa Sessions wants you to keep talking about Russia

Massa Sessions wants you to keep talking about Russia

Of the things that Donald Trump does that gets him headlines, many of them involve Russia. Most of them involve his gross displays of ignorance and his lack of class. Some of them involve draconian policies against the very duped rural mouthbreathers who support him. But very few of them involve his racism.

Part of that is because the white media has decided that Trump isn’t personally racist, he just plays up to a racism in his supporters — as if that somehow makes it better. Part of that is because Trump has outsourced much of his administration’s racism to Jeff Sessions — who is so “in it to win it” for the whites that pointing out his racism is hardly a headline.

But the biggest reason for the lack of coverage is that racism seems to be the one thing that Trump enacts with subtlety. Trump is big and brash when he stomps around the world, embarrassing America, or when he signs bigoted executive orders against foreigners. But his systemic dismantling of civil rights protections is done with a deft hand.

The Washington Post has done some great work just by listing all of the cuts Trump has proposed in the budgets for executive agencies that would roll back civil rights to antebellum times. Even I didn’t know about all of these proposed cuts, and I care.

The Trump administration is planning to disband the Labor Department division [the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs] that has policed discrimination among federal contractors for four decades, according to the White House’s newly proposed budget, part of wider efforts to rein in government programs that promote civil rights…

The new leadership at the Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, has proposed eliminating its environmental justice program, which addresses pollution that poses health threats specifically concentrated in minority communities…

Under President Trump’s proposed budget, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights — which has investigated thousands of complaints of discrimination in school districts across the country and set new standards for how colleges should respond to allegations of sexual assault and harassment — would also see significant staffing cuts.

That’s in addition to the racially motivated actions that Jeff Sessions has taken: against Sanctuary Cities, against consent decrees, and in favor of mandatory sentencing.

Sponsored

The Trump administration ALREADY has a worse record on civil rights than anybody since Woodrow Wilson. But because the president doesn’t tweet about it, and because his most famous bigoted policy — the Muslim ban — has so far been stymied by the courts, people act like Trump’s been net-neutral on race.

Well, some white people act like that, at least. I’ve actually been asked the question “what has Trump done that’s so bad on race” (by white people, of course). Not dumb, Trump-voting, “I have a problem with Japanese people wining a race on Memorial Day” white people. But by educated whites who seem to just not notice (or care?) that the chief law enforcement officer in the country is trying to use his office to fight a race war against urban communities.

If there is a federal policy that protects minorities from people like Trump’s dad, Trump is going to try to dismantle it. I think that’s worthy of attention, regardless of whether Trump is colluding with Russia to stamp out civil rights in this country.

Trump administration plans to minimize civil rights efforts in agencies [Washington Post]

Sponsored

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

Topics

, , , , , ,