A Wish List For White Supremacy: 10 Ways Trump's Budget Will Hurt Black America

The president's budget proposal includes cuts to programs that support Black-owned businesses, equal education and anything he considers "woke" or "DEI."

(Envato Elements/ContrabandCamp)

Black startups receive less than 1% of all venture capital funding. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Black-owned businesses are denied credit at twice the rate of white-owned businesses and pay higher interest rates when they are approved. In fact, white business owners are three times more likely to be fully approved for a loan than a Black applicant with a “greater business income, more years in operation, more money in the bank and higher credit score.”

To address the Black-owned business wealth gap, the Biden-Harris administration’s budget included permanent funding for the Minority Business Development Agency (MDBA). Although Congress had appropriated year-to-year funds to the program since 1970, the Jobs and Infrastructure Act of 2021 made it a permanent government agency within the Department of Commerce. Tasked with strengthening Black owned businesses, the agency didn’t actually give out money. Instead, the MDBA collaborated with the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), Black communities, banks, historically Black colleges and Black civic organizations to eliminate funding inequities for Black entrepreneurs. By 2023, the number of SBA loans that went to Black-owned businesses more than doubled, eventually reaching an all-time high.

Donald Trump wants to make these disparities great again.

Not only does the president’s discretionary spending budget (seen here) include a 33.2% reduction to the Small Business Administration, it asks legislators to totally eliminate the MBDA and its “lengthy history of inserting ‘equity’ and other DEI practices into its programs.” A president doesn't have the authority to eliminate a federal agency. Instead, Trump has formally requested that Congress defund every single grant, program and agency dedicated to supporting Black-owned businesses.

“The Administration is committed to supporting small businesses throughout the United States through tax cuts, deregulation, and responsible, targeted support,” he explains. “However, reforms at SBA are clearly warranted, as the previous administration unconstitutionally used the SBA to advance its divisive agenda, awarding billions in funding to certain businesses based solely on race and gender.”

Support for Black-owned businesses is just one of many cuts hidden in Trump’s budget proposal. When ContrabandCamp pored through the administration’s recommendations for the next fiscal year, what emerged was a pro-white financial plan that makes Project 2025 look like the Emancipation Proclamation. It basically reduces anything that addresses documented racial disparities to “woke” or “DEI,” but increases funds for the cabal of billionaire oligarchs who support him.

Here are 10 ways Trump’s budget would target Black Americans:

1. It targets Black schoolchildren and college students.

While Black children make up 13% of the school-age population, 63% attend schools where the majority of students are poor, compared to 25% of white students. While majority-Black school districts receive about $2,000 less per student than their majority-white counterparts, if the Department of Education’s Title I program didn’t supplement high-poverty schools, the disparity would be worse.

Trump’s budget reduces Title I funding by $4.5 billion, nearly a quarter of the program’s budget. The cuts would result in the loss of tens of thousands of teachers and increase education disparities. It cuts funding for college-prep programs like Upward Bound and eliminates continuing education programs for educators who teach Black students. According to the budget, these classes include “inappropriate and unnecessary topics such as: Critical Race Theory; DEI; social justice activism; “anti-racism”; and instruction on white privilege and white supremacy.”

But the carnage doesn’t end with K-12 schools. Black students are more likely to work their way through college. Trump would reduce the Federal Work-Study program by $980 billion, wipe out $112 million for community colleges that serve low-income students and defund grants and fellowships for underserved students seeking advanced degrees. He would also withhold $49 million from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

However, it would set aside funding for private and charter schools, as long as they didn’t engage in DEI or wokeness. You know …

The white ones.