The new Trump administration is using the language of civil rights but flipping it on its head. If 'diversity' is now being coded as discrimination, what does that mean for the future of civil rights?Brittany is joined by Columbia Law professor Olatunde Johnson and Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Wesley Lowery to look at how the Trump administration is dismantling federal diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and how private businesses are following suit.Support public media and receive ad-free listening. Join NPR+ today.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What connects DEI programs, the DOJ, and civil rights?
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. OK, y'all, this week, we are all going to be connecting the dots between the DOJ, a McDouble and your civil rights. I know. I know. How are all of these things connected?
Chapter 2: Who are the notable civil rights figures discussed?
Well, we are going to find out with Columbia law professor Alatunde Johnson and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Wesley Lowery. Welcome to It's Been a Minute. Thank you. Thank you for having us. It's been a minute. You know what? Wesleyan has been a minute. But I'm happy to have you on this show. If you could start a podcast with any civil rights hero, who would it be and why?
Oh, there are so many. Pauli Murray, Bayard Rustin. I might pick Ted Shaw, who a lot of people don't know about, but who headed the NAACP Legal Defense Fund for a long time and is a professor at UNC. He is so wise. So I would want to hear from him.
I love that. I love that. Wesley, what about you?
That is an excellent question. I think my answer to this is the Reverend James Lawson, because he trained so many of the activists when they themselves were younger. And I feel like he would have some pretty good behind the scenes stories about everybody else, which would then make for a pretty juicy podcast.
That is a pretty good one. That's a pretty good one. Those are both excellent choices. But I gotta say, I'll say regardless of whoever you would have as your co-host, I'm sure y'all would have a lot to cover on your show after the past couple of weeks. So let's get into it. President, you have today blamed the diversity element.
That tape is of the president's press briefing this week after the tragic plane crash in D.C.
It's all under investigation. I understand that.
Which the president speculated was the fault of programs aimed at diversity, equity, and inclusion. DEI, for short. That's why I'm trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.
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Chapter 3: How has the Trump administration affected DEI initiatives?
Because I have common sense, okay? And unfortunately, a lot of people don't.
And on his very first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at, to quote him, ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing. Basically ending DEI programs within the federal government. In short, Trump wants DEI to D-I-E. But the dismantling of DEI goes beyond the federal government.
We're also seeing private companies voluntarily dismantle their own DEI programs. In recent months, we've seen rollbacks from Amazon, Walmart, Target, and even McDonald's, home of the McDouble. Part of why might have to do with President Trump's pick to lead the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon.
Trump specifically praised Dillon's previous work, quote, suing corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their workers. Now, DEI policies have generally been used to promote the consideration of underrepresented groups, like members of the disabled and LGBTQ plus communities, women and people of color in hiring.
But now some of these same policies are being labeled as discriminatory. If this becomes the focus of the DOJ's civil rights division, it begs the question, is the definition of civil rights changing? But first, Professor Johnson, Wesley, what was your reaction to seeing private companies roll back their DEI initiatives?
So when I saw private companies in the wake of the election rolling back their DEI initiatives, I thought, oh, they're beginning to see that Trump may win. And they're fearing either federal government action against them or state and local because there had also been state laws purporting to ban DEI. So they were looking at some of the political tea leaves. I will mention one more thing.
There was some shareholder activism even before the election to try to get rid of DEI. So they were facing pressure in some cases from shareholders.
Yeah, that's right. I just think that it was... unfortunately unsurprising that kind of we had seen this coming, this playbook being run and played even before Donald Trump was elected. That shareholder activism, the set of conservative activists who were pushing around these ideas and also doing everything they could to take something that had been seen as a positive and
And yet what we saw was a very effective campaign over the course of several years to divorce the concept of diversity, equity, inclusion from what it actually kind of was intended to mean at its core by its best practitioners and to associate it broadly with any initiative, any program, any policy, any scholarship, anything that may in some way work towards remedying some type of disparity or inequity.
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Chapter 4: What are the consequences of rolling back DEI programs?
But what we have to remember is that there are more expansive definitions or people who use those terminologies in different ways. And so what we see frequently with the partisan turnover at the White House is that you will see different administrations who begin to interpret the charge of, say, a division like the Civil Rights Division.
And so to go to times that were a little less charged – although having lived through them, it's funny to think about this era as less charged, although it objectively was –
When George W. Bush comes in and he is running the federal government and he's got a Republican attorney general, the people who he was appointing to run the civil rights division of DOJ operated very differently than the people who had been there during the Clinton administration before him and very differently than the people who ran it under Obama afterwards, right?
That there was a different understanding of what would be prioritized, what would be sought after, right? And what we see – is this question of how much of the work of creating an equal society is in front of us versus how much of it's behind us. And so therefore, how should we behave today?
So taking all this in, taking all of this in, how do you see this affecting workers? While the federal workers are almost certainly going to be laid off, how might this affect people already working at some of these private companies that are rolling back their DEI initiatives or even people who are seeking jobs at companies like this?
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Chapter 5: How does the 2023 Supreme Court decision impact civil rights?
Yeah, I think it's going to lead to a lot of confusion in the private sector. There is a fear in the language, both in the executive order and then some of the surrounding language, that private companies might be investigated as if they are violating civil rights laws just by having DEIA offices. And because that term is so broad, and as we talked about,
It may lead to confusion about what do we now, can we not celebrate these holidays? Can we not acknowledge this history? And what groups does it apply to? And how does that meet our statutory obligations to enforce civil rights law?
Overall, what are the consequences of a conservative approach to civil rights on all of us?
I think on all of us. It can make workplaces and other arenas less inclusive, tolerant, equal. I think it has a severe impact on all of us. I mean, one of the questions I always ask myself is, what's the vision of society at the end? And this was... referred to also by Wesley in his comments, this kind of vision of scarcity.
And I think about Heather McGee's wonderful book, The Sum of Us, which is to say, what if we envision the creation of public institutions, social goods, economic goods, not on a model of scarcity, but one of true full participation and thriving so that we're not at each other? What's the end game here? And this kind of
we all have to fight for this limited pie could really lead to a society where you're getting back to forms of hierarchy or entrenching forms of hierarchy around race and sex. It can also really, I think, lead to the demonization of particular groups.
I mean, I think some of the most vulnerable populations, least protected by majoritarian politics, as we'd say in the law, are on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. And you worry about violence, demonization, and real sort of casting out of people based on their background or identity. And that would be unfortunate.
And I think we should all feel like that's a harm to our moral core as well as affects our economic bottom line.
No, of course. Well, and to build up off of that, when a government plants a flag in the ground and says, we are going to actively oppose something. And in fact, we're going to raise the specter that we might investigate people who do X, Y, and Z. What you end up having is a bunch of companies, corporations, nonprofits, universities, other institutions. None of them want to be the test case.
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Chapter 6: What is the cultural perception of DEI today?
Helping veterans? We are seeing just a very different posture than the one that has been held towards these types of programs by, frankly, both Democratic and Republican administrations for much of the most recent history, the current president excluded.
I wonder, what do you think has led the Trump administration and other conservatives to believe that DEI is, you know, quote, preferencing certain people as opposed to addressing like historic discrimination? Yeah.
Well, I think that there are a few things. I think there are people who genuinely believe that. I also think there are people who see this as an extremely convenient political tool.
And what we know is historically in the American context, fear of immigrants, fear of other people, plays to nativism, plays to a purity of quote unquote white identity have been some of the most powerful forces in the history of our domestic politics. And there is a consistency in messaging that that argues that to put something in my pot is to take something out of yours.
It plays to a very fundamental fear of scarcity that we all have as humans and all biological creatures have, right?
Yeah. And if you don't get enough, then that's the end of you, your life, your family.
Your race, your bloodline, your whomever. And so we're so focused on giving it to Black women or to trans men or to who, that, what about me? What about us? And so it's that feeling of neglect or that feeling that you have lost something, even if objectively you have not.
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Chapter 7: How might changes in civil rights affect workplaces?
You know, one of the things I keep thinking about with this is how race plays into these decisions and into what people even just culturally believe about these programs and initiatives. You know, as we discussed, the point of DEI programs has traditionally been to, you know, bolster representation for underrepresented groups within the workplace.
But, you know, we discussed on this show before how DEI has become, for some people, you know, a shorthand for racism. unqualified employees of color. But conversely, if we think of the affirmative action Supreme Court decision from 2023 as kind of like a precursor to all this, it's useful to remember that the group affirmative action disproportionately benefited was white women.
But Professor Johnson, Wesley, I have learned so much here. Thank you both so much.
Thank you for having us.
Thank you. Thank you for having us. We'll be right back with a little game I like to call, but did you know? Stick around. All right, all right. We are going to play a little game I like to call, But Did You Know? Here's how it works. I'm going to share a story that's been making the headlines this week. And as I give you some background on this story, I'll also ask you trivia related to it.
But don't worry. It's all multiple choice. The first one to blurt out the right answer gets a point. The person with the most points wins. And their prize is bragging rights. Yeah. Are you all ready? Let's do it. Okay. To start, the 67th Annual Grammy Awards take place this Sunday in Los Angeles.
Dozens of our favorite artists will be dressed up to the nines, perhaps in a tube top or in a navy blue tuxedo. I don't know. Each hoping to go home with one of those little medal trophies that signify a win. Which of these medals is not used in the process of creating a Grammy trophy? Look, y'all both snapped to attention when I asked this question.
Which of these metals is not used in the process of creating a Grammy trophy? A, brass. B, zinc. Or C, copper. B, zinc. What say you, Wesley?
That's what I was going to guess, too. I was going to guess B, zinc.
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Chapter 8: What is the vision for an inclusive society?
We're both wrong.
We agreed before this, we were just not going to get any of the questions right.
Is this a protest? Might be. Okay. All right. Well, the answer is C, Leontine Price, the world-renowned opera singer who is still with us, by the way, won a whopping 13 Grammys throughout her career. Fun fact, Leontine and Whitney are first cousins once removed. So you could say the voice runs through the family. That whole family. You know, Dionne Warwick's in that family, too.
Hello, sissy Whitney. I get chills when I think about it.
Exactly, sissy. Yeah.
All right. Well, to recap the score, Wesley, you are at zero points. And Professor Johnson, you are also tied for zero points. All right. So without further ado, the final, technically tie-breaking question. The Grammys don't just award the best singers. They also award spoken word performances. In 1971, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was posthumously awarded a Grammy for which of these speeches?
A, I have a dream. B, why I oppose the war in Vietnam. Or C, I've been to the mountaintop.
So this is, yeah, this is hard.
I'm not sure which one, actually. Yeah, I'm just going to go with I have a dream because I mean, I love the mountaintop speech, but well, I'm not. It trails a little at points. So I'm going with an A. All right.
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