Trump Administration Actions Against Black Americans Have Deep Historical Roots

It is no coincidence that since taking office on Martin Luther King Day, the Trump administration’s most aggressive actions have targeted historically marginalized groups. In fact, the many blatantly illegal, unconstitutional, and bizarre actions we saw during the first month of Trump 2.0 — during which we also observed National Black History Month — are specifically harmful to Black Americans. Attempts by Trump to freeze federal funding, close federal agencies, curb the rights of workers, and dismiss federal workers, through illegal means and by Republicans using budget reconciliation to cut federal funding for Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food assistance, and public education, continue a shameful tradition in American history of systematically dehumanizing, disenfranchising, and stealing from Black Americans.

Why are Trump and his allies doing this? To further consolidate their wealth and might by dividing our collective power. This carefully planned spectacle is designed to shock, overwhelm, and divert our attention away from the extreme greed of the wealthy and powerful few, who are attempting to loot the banking and payment systems that fund public spending with our tax dollars.

In states across the country, the far-right is suppressing the real history of structural racism and Black progress at the same time that the new Trump regime is preparing to copy from that history directly — particularly its most violent chapters: Slavery, post-Reconstruction and racial segregation of the Jim Crow era, the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, voter suppression, redlining, and police killings of Black Americans. In these periods, white Americans launched a hostile backlash against Black American progress. But the current administration’s aggression also harkens back to other violent and anti-democratic actions that the U.S. government and military have perpetrated on Indigenous people in North America and colonized people in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. 

A key feature of how this narrative operates is through cognitive dissonance and psychological terror. The ruling class, and the holders of the most wealth and property, have always been overwhelmingly disproportionately white, cisgender, Christian males — as are most CEOs, shareholders, and boards of directors — and it is this same small cohort who are attempting to further consolidate wealth and power. But while the full powers of structural violence and an authoritarian state are being unleashed against minorities and Black Americans, officials in the highest levels of the government are posting about Nazis and promoting the racist narrative that white, Christian males are the victims of a “woke” agenda and have been disenfranchised by diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.

Trump built his political career with racist lies like these, beginning with allegations that President Obama was not born in the United States before spending several campaigns (and his presidency) disparaging Black Americans and their communities. Decades before that, in 1973, the federal government filed suit and won a case against Trump and his father, Fred Trump, for housing discrimination against Black tenants. Later in 1989, Trump also took out a full-page ad in multiple newspapers calling for the execution of Black and Latino teenagers who were under investigation for a crime for which they were wrongfully accused and exonerated. Now, Trump is attacking the modest gains made through affirmative action and purging workers from the federal workforce, who are disproportionately people of color.

Trump’s movement was fueled by very real discontent, but he scapegoated historically excluded groups instead of fixing any actual problems. While his wealthy supporters are getting exactly what they knowingly voted for, others were misled into misplacing their anger, fear, and resentment at groups facing similar systemic barriers rather than directing it to the wealthy classes who are directly responsible for it. These are tactics used by authoritarian and oppressive leaders and governments throughout modern history, from European fascism, to the Jim Crow South, to the authoritarian and autocratic regimes we see today in places like Russia, Hungary, and Belarus.

This is why Trump spent years disputing the outcome of the 2020 election and ginning up panic about election safety: to pave the way for policies that will further suppress and disenfranchise his political opponents, particularly Black voters and voters of color, who make up an increasingly large percentage of the electorate. Suppressing the collective political power of the Black community poses an immediate, dire risk for Black Americans, and the consequences will be felt by everyone in the working and middle classes.

The history of the environmental justice movement illustrates precisely how anti-Black racism is central to undermining American democracy. Decades ago, Black leaders and civil rights activists fought to stop truckloads of pollution from being dumped in their community of Warren County, North Carolina, kicking off what we now know as the environmental justice movement. The protections born from this movement benefit countless American communities — but especially Black Americans and communities of color — and have gone on to inform the climate justice movement that is attempting to save our planet. 

But the Trump administration is reversing course on these gains and turbocharging resource extraction, fast-tracking dangerous pipelines and risky projects that predominantly go through rural, low-wealth, and/or communities of color. Many go through Black communities in the Gulf South, which are already overburdened with air pollution, cancer, and other diseases caused by the fossil fuel industry. A series of executive orders and initiatives denies Black communities from accessing public funding to participate in and benefit from the clean energy transition.

These orders — and others like them — cannot change laws or congressional spending, but they signal terrifying intentions to cut air and water protections, gut critical social services, lay off millions, and push more expenses onto already cost-burdened Black Americans, who already pay a larger share of their income on essentials like housing and utilities and are more likely than white Americans to be low-income renters. This is especially concerning in an era of increased climate-induced disasters, which disproportionately affect low-income and Black communities. Threats from the Trump administration to cut back federal resources for relief and recovery could likely mean that more Black households and communities will be displaced and lose generational wealth.

The throughline is a deliberate strategy to concentrate power and wealth by dismantling protections that took decades of hard-fought civil rights battles to achieve. From expanding fossil fuel projects in Black communities to rolling back protections for environmental justice communities, these efforts aim to protect and expand corporate interests at the expense of public health and safety. The administration’s deceitful fearmongering pits marginalized communities against one another in the hopes that we ignore an economic system that extracts resources from below and concentrates wealth at the top. For this system to work, its proponents must divide, distract, and disempower. 

Standing up for justice and equity means calling out these injustices and continuing the fight for an inclusive, fair, and sustainable future for all Americans.