Photo by Bruno Figueiredo

Within 24 hours of becoming president, Donald Trump released his first White House Fact Sheet, “Ending the Radical and Illegal DEI.” He signed an Executive Order claiming that eliminating programs promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is “the most important federal civil rights measure in decades.”

Trump, and by extension the MAGA Republican Party, link eliminating diversity and equality to promoting civil rights. This is not a new concept. However, one must understand our history to understand how these two practices are linked to civil rights.

The civil rights movement exploded after the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857 rejected African American citizenship claims. This decision was not based on economic claims of owning slaves as property but on racial claims that citizens who were seen as Black had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

The Fourteenth Amendment was passed after the Civil War to protect not only the legal equality of formerly enslaved persons but all people treated as Black, and in due course, it was extended to all minorities. Nearly a hundred years later, with the majority of Supreme Court justices being Republican-appointed, the Brown v. Board of Educationdecision was released. It found that denying racial diversity in public schools through segregation was unconstitutional.

In other words, according to the Supreme Court, the Constitution guarantees equality and diversity among citizens in our legal and educational institutions.

The bizarre importance of attacking transgender people.

Trump links civil rights to restoring “biological truth to the federal government.” This was a direct attack on citizens who identify with a gender different from what was determined at birth. We are talking about a minuscule percentage of Americans. Published findings show that 1.6% of U.S. adults are trans or nonbinary.

Is this a national emergency? Or is this a hot cultural issue among Republicans? According to a Pew Research Center survey, 66% of them say society has gone too far in accepting people who are transgender. Still, roughly eight in ten Americans say transgender people face at least some discrimination, with 35% of Republicans saying there is a great deal or a........

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