The Atlantic / Adam Serwer: The Great Resegregation

[Dennis Donovan]

The Atlantic - The Great Resegregation (Gift link)

The Trump administration’s attacks on DEI are aimed at reversing the civil-rights movement.

By Adam Serwer
February 22, 2025



The nostalgia behind the slogan “Make America great again” has always provoked the obvious questions of just when America was great, and for whom. Early in the second Trump administration, we are getting the answer.

In August, speaking with someone he believed to be a sympathetic donor, one of the Project 2025 architects, Russell Vought, said that a goal of the next Trump administration would be to “get us off of multiculturalism” in America. Now Vought is running Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, and the plan to end multiculturalism is proceeding apace. Much of the chaos, lawlessness, and destruction of the past few weeks can be understood as part of the administration’s central ideological project: restoring America’s traditional hierarchies of race and gender. Call it the “Great Resegregation.”

Since taking office, Trump has rescinded decades-old orders ensuring equal opportunity in government contracts and vowed to purge DEI from the federal government, intending to lay off any federal worker whose job they associate with DEI. Yesterday evening, Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q Brown, and replaced him with a lower ranking white official, a retired three-star Air Force officer named Dan Caine. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had previously attacked Brown as an unqualified diversity hire based on the fact that he is Black. Trump’s Department of Justice has implied that it will prosecute or sue companies that engage in diversity outreach. Elon Musk’s DOGE is attempting to purge federal workers “that protect employees’ civil rights and others that investigate complaints of employment discrimination in the federal workplace,” the Washington Post reported. Colleges and universities are being threatened with defunding for any programming related to DEI, which the free-speech organization PEN America has noted could include “everything from a panel on the Civil Rights Movement to a Lunar New Year celebration.”

Trump has also signed executive orders that threaten government funding for scientific research on inequality or on health issues that disproportionately affect nonwhite ethnic groups, and has imposed censorious gag orders that could block discussion of race or sex discrimination in American classrooms. During her confirmation hearing, Trump’s education-secretary nominee, Linda McMahon, said she did not know if schools could lose funding for teaching Black-history classes under the order. The legality of the order over K–12 curricula is unclear, but the chilling effects are real nonetheless.

/snip

[Irish_Dem]

1. The US is firmly under white male minority rule.

They only make up 31% of the population but will be in total control of everyone.

Women's rights are under attack as well.

[Walleye]

2. Yet they are squealing like little piggies for fear, something might change. And they might hear Spanish spoken.

[Layzeebeaver]

3. Or Russian?

Just sayin’

[Walleye]

4. I'm sure they would all be signing up for Russian language classes

Many Russian males are also white supremacist. They would probably align with them.

[Irish_Dem]

11. Yes our white male overlords act brutal and ruthless, but they are little snowflakes.

Terrified of women, POC, and people using a bathroom.

[yardwork]

9. I'm sorry you weren't able to manage it.

I'm a woman who manages my credit just fine, and I don't appreciate anybody suggesting that women aren't capable of doing so.

This is not meant as a personal attack, but your comment really annoys and frustrates me.

[Irish_Dem]

12. How do you mean?

[leftyladyfrommo]

17. I'm compulsive and have a great fear of

never having enough of anything. It's not the perfect personality disorder for easily available credit lines.

In a very high stress political environment. I keep thinking everything is going to go up in price.

[Irish_Dem]

18. Some of us are going the other way right now.

Not spending much, saving as much as we can.

[yardwork]

10. Headed toward the biblical patriarchal mythology they worship.

Where white men take their God-ordained place at the head of all institutions, their wives take care of their homes and children, everybody else is a servant, and oddballs of any type (gay, trans, women's libbers, intellectuals, artists, writers, scientists...) are hung in public.

In other words, The Handmaid's Tale.

[Irish_Dem]

13. Exactly. This is the picture in their heads.

[yardwork]

15. I think they really are pictures, too.

When I was a kid, our family dentist had a lot of fundamentalist Christian children's books in his waiting room. There was a Children's bible and a book of morality stories, all about good children being rewarded and bad children being punished, but then "lovingly forgiven" by God and their parents.

The books had bright color illustrations of strong men and modestly attired women. Little boys were strong and active, and little girls were pretty and sweet. All the people were white, of course. They lived in 1950s idealized homes with big dinner tables and pretty gardens. Everything was safe and warm and affluent.

Inside the homes in this community was the usual domestic violence, poverty, and struggles. Nobody's lives looked like the Christian picture books. Besides, it was the 1960s and 70s and things were...confusing to anybody who believed these books.

This is the fantasy people want when they wear a hat that says Make America Great Again.

[Irish_Dem]

16. Narcissists have a movie playing in their heads.

They are the star and the rest of us are just props.

[sop]

5. "Hegseth had previously attacked Brown as an unqualified diversity hire based on the fact that he is Black."

That's what DEI is all about: white supremacy.

[Solly Mack]

6. K&R

[yardwork]

8. This is what Vance meant at the SOTU

Lip readers saw Vance tell Johnson before Trump's speech that "This is a great reckoning, long overdue."

Vance is deeply racist.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Literally - see

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220116760

[Lonestarblue]

19. Trump and his sycophant Republicans have come up with a new way to fund private school vouchers.

It is a thinly disguised plan to use tax dollars to fund private education for mostly white kids, a way to re-segregate schools.

WaPo has an article about the plan. The following paragraphs describe some of the resistance because it is clearly a way to weaken public schools and promote religious schools that indoctrinate students to believe in racial superiority and MAGA religious extremism. Technically, minority donors could also make donations, but it’s not clear who gets to decide on how the funds are used. Red state politicians would be sure to fund white schools. The whole article is worth reading because it also describes how donations of stock to voucher funds would be used not only to avoid capital gains but also to then take a 100% tax credit for the stock value.

“We’re making sure the public understands this is the greatest threat to public education we’ve ever had at the federal level,” said Sasha Pudelski, director of advocacy for AASA, the School Superintendents Association, who helps lead a coalition of more than 60 groups opposed to the voucher plan.

Pudelski noted that unlike public schools, private schools can reject students based on their religion, test scores, disability or ability to pay tuition. The vast majority of vouchers in existing state programs go to religious schools.”

https://wapo.st/4icgl0j