Trump's attack on the federal workforce is an attack on the Black middle class [View all]

[LiberalArkie]

Jan. 26, 2025, 5:00 AM CST

The Trump administration has already launched sweeping attacks on the federal government itself, from hiring freezes at various agencies to shutting down the Justice Department’s civil rights division. These moves are not simply about abstract opposition to government; fully explaining them requires acknowledging U.S. history. From the military to the United States Postal Service to sundry federal agencies, the federal government’s personnel policies — though nowhere near perfect — have helped expand and sustain a Black middle class.

The most well-known example of this shows up at your home every day: the U.S. Postal Service. The Post Office Department, as it used to be called, was once the single largest employer of Black people in the United States. In 2022, according to the Government Accountability Office, “about 53 percent of [the Postal Service’s] total workforce consisted of individuals from historically disadvantaged racial or ethnic groups, and women made up about 46 percent of the workforce.”

And it’s not just the post office. As the Center for American Progress pointed out in a 2020 report, “the federal government has hired Black Americans at higher rates than the private sector going back a century or more.”

Not coincidentally, generations of conservatives — from George Wallace to Donald Trump — have plotted to rein in the federal government. Let’s be clear, then, why the federal government has bothered conservatives so much and for so long. And let’s be clear about the impacts reducing the federal workforce — either via the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” or by unleashing anti-DEI “patter rollers” — would have.

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https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-dei-federal-workers-civil-rights-rcna188966