An Incomplete List of Things Donald Trump Considers to be 'DEI'
According to the MAGA resegregationists in the Trump administration, anything Black is now considered "DEI."
On October 13, 1862, William W. McLeod took a break from trying to overthrow the United States government to file an expense report.
A wealthy slaveowner, Confederate traitor and volunteer in the Charleston Light Dragoons, McLeod filed paperwork asking the state of South Carolina for $25,000 as compensation for damages incurred during his fight for white supremacy — an amount equivalent to roughly $786,314.36 in 2025. He didn’t have documentation for the estimated $10,000 in crop damages or the $5,000 in oak and pine that were cut down from his property to build a military road for his company of “well-to-do” white supremacists. But in his unsuccessful bid to create a nation founded “upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man,” McLeod managed to salvage one receipt for the “full market value” of his property.
“On or about the 25th May 1862 ranaway the following negroes,” reads McLeod’s sworn affidavit to a South Carolina magistrate. “Syphax 55, Beck 55, Tony 40, Ben 35, Rose 24, child 14 months, William 28, York 34, Molly 25, On or about 15th June 1862 ranaway Abram 25 years old… William W. McLeod who being sworn says that the facts set down in the above return are true, that the negroes have runaway as therein stated & he believes are now in possession of the enemy.”
William W. McLeod was asking for reparations.
We don’t know what happened to nine of McLeod’s Gullah Geechee human property who unenslaved themselves. But we know what happened to William, the tenth. We know William was about 5’ 7” tall, that he could swim and that he hated his master’s name. On the same day McLeod’s human chattel jumped into the ocean and stole his freedom, a man named William Dawson transformed himself from human property to a member of the U. S. Navy. And if you’re wondering how we know William Dawson is the same man who escaped to freedom, here’s how:
Nearly every aspect of William McLeod Dawson’s beautiful life is detailed in his U.S. Navy pension file. The digitized 182-page file is available because a Black congresswoman — Former Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Calif.) introduced the Freedmen’s Bureau Preservation Act in 2000. Two years later, Congress authorized a $3 million allocation to fund a partnership between FamilySearch, Howard University, the Smithsonian and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Now, this treasure trove of American history may be in danger because, according to the Trump administration, every agency involved is committing a crime:
Apparently, all of Black history, including the story of William McLeod Dawson, is now considered DEI.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has “wreaked havoc” on NARA — the agency responsible for preserving and documenting America’s history. The president has fired the head archivist, replaced board members with right-wing zealots and offered buyouts to the senior staff. Part of NARA’s funding included $20 million for “Equitable Access to History.” The initiative was created to “consult and partner with Native American tribes, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), and other institutions representing underrepresented communities to…focus on identifying, digitizing and making publicly available U.S. Government records that fill in gaps in the popular narratives of American history.”
The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture owns the Freedmen’s Bureau Collection, where you can find the voter registration and the Freedman’s Bank records where Dawson’s father, Hardtimes (no, that’s his legal real name), kept his money after receiving his 40 acres. But, because of Trump, the Smithsonian Institution closed its Office of Diversity and frozen hiring, the agency may be forced to pause its efforts to digitize thousands of Freedmen’s Bureau documents. Plus, one of the project’s partners is named after the Freedmen’s Bureau’s original commissioner and was essentially founded on the principles of DEI. And because 22 percent of the institution’s funding comes from the GOP-controlled Congress, the entire institution may be in danger.
Howard University.
These are just a few examples of the Black institutions, policies and projects standing in the crosshairs of what The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer called “The Great Resegregation.” To be fair, the whitest White House of all time (Jefferson and Madison kept a few enslaved people in the kitchen) is not targeting diversity, equity or inclusion. By affixing the “DEI” label to anything that affects people who use shea butter, they are targeting Black people.
Here are some of the things that the MAGA resegregation initiative has called DEI.
Black students: Because of Trump’s Department of Education letter, schools are disbanding threatening schools non-white affinity groups like Black Student Unions
The Tuskegee Airmen: The U.S. Air Force and other agencies are eliminating anything that focuses on Black history.
Months: Government agencies have banned celebrations for Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Pride and even Juneteenth.
Talking about race: Colleges and nonprofits have canceled events discussing racial issues.
Step shows: On most predominately white campuses, Divine Nine organizations are governed by rules that are different from white fraternities and sororities.
Black history: Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon told Congress she’s not quite sure if a Black history course is illegal under Trump’s executive order.
Black roommates: Trump’s DOE letter explicitly bans affinity housing for minority students.
Your hair: Target and other retailers reversed course on efforts to stock Black-owned brands and beauty products
Health: The FDA scrubbed its website of guidance about inclusive clinical trials.
Safety: The administration is targeting diversity efforts in the FAA and airline companies
Movies and television: The entertainment industry’s most prominent companies are running scared, including Warner Bros., Paramount and Comcast
Educated Black people: Private scholarships for minority students, public scholarships for HBCU students and institutions that recruit Black male educators are being targeted
Talented Black people: Artist endowments for underserved communities and museum exhibits on LGBTQ artists and Black artists and Black historical figures
Black entrepreneurs: Trump rescinded a 60-year-old executive order that stopped the federal government from discriminating against Black-owned businesses.
Police accountability: Trump’s DOJ has halted consent decrees, dismissed lawsuits, and stopped pattern and practice investigations into police misconduct.
Civil rights: One of the reasons we know about racial disparities is that every federal agency has a civil rights division that compiles this data… Until now.
The administration’s resegregation initiative does not apply to white people.
Their definition of “diversity” does not prevent Ron DeSantis from forcing an elite public college to admit white baseball players, despite “grades and test scores that lag badly behind other students on campus.” Giving public funds to right-wing Christian schools and private segregation academies apparently doesn’t violate their “inclusion” ban. Replacing a Black four-star general with a lesser-qualified white man and purging the entire military of female four-star generals is not considered “equity.”
The people who believe in the myth of “meritocracy” would never admit that they are the recipients of Diversity, Equity and inclusion. And thanks to the Trump Administration, DEI has become a catchall phrase that means “not white.”
Once upon a time, DEI was part of white history.
In 1865, Congress passed two statutes that became the first DEI law. The bill directed the federal government to give preferential treatment to disabled or sick white Civil War veterans seeking civil service jobs. The rule was amended in 1876 to exempt all white veterans from mass layoffs and literacy requirements because, according to Southern traitors, firing illiterate whites from government jobs made the US Civil Service Commission “inequitable in its operation.” But, despite William’s Navy pension file showing he was “disabled,” literate and honorably discharged, William could not apply for a civil service job because he was Black.
Even when Black organizers forced Franklin Roosevelt to let a Black HBCU professor (Rayford Logan) ghostwrite the executive order desegregating the defense industry (I’ve written about it here), white people wouldn’t stop being racist. So in 1961, John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, instructing every federal agency and contractor to take “affirmative action” to ensure applicants and employees would be treated “ without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”
Affirmative action exists because white people wouldn’t stop being racist.
Under the civil service’s DEI rules that were created for white people, William Dawson would’ve skipped to the front of the line for a job at the post office. If he was treated like a white Naval veteran, he could’ve probably worked at the Charleston Harbor and had enough money to invest in his father’s business. As one of the foremost Sea Island cotton experts in America, William’s father, Hardtimes Dawson (no, that was his legal name), had $526 in South Carolina’s Freedmen’s Bank in 1871, about $13,000 in today’s money…
Until his land was returned to the family of the man who enslaved him, William McLeod.
When he ran into the ocean that night, William Dawson didn’t actually escape. If you’re Black in this country, you can never escape America, you can only survive it. The laws, the social system and the entire government that he fought to preserve were all formed against him. Even with God on his side, America’s weaponized racism prospered.
William Dawson died sick, penniless and disabled in the same slave quarters where he was enslaved.
They are not trying to stop DEI.
They just want their slaves back.
I hope you plan to publish these essays as a collection. I learn from each one. People keep saying, 'history will show' or 'history will say' not realizing that history is written by the winners. And unless we make an effort to collect the history of this time, it will disappear into unaccessible archives just as the stories of these men did.
We must see to it that the story is told properly.
“Resegregation” should be the definitive description for this period in history. Based on history, Black people should be at war. The problem is that too many of our people have discounted history because they have succumbed to “post-racialism.”