Read on TwitterLet’s talk about the Trump executive order that eliminates racial equity training from all federal agencies and federally funded programs that came up during the debate last night and why it’s terrifying racism should alarm all of us. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-combating-race-sex-stereotyping/">https://www.whitehouse.gov/president...
This order bans all federally funded programs from doing racial equity work by not allowing them to say factual things about America (like it has racist systems) without risking federal funding. There are questions about the enforceability here but that’s not the point.
The ability to name and challenge racist systems and practices is critical to driving change. In fact it’s so fundamental that a thousands of Black people have died for the right to do so. But the Trump admin would rather we live in 1950.
And I’m serious when I say that. It’s a kind of censorship one would expect in the McCarthy era when federal employees were screened for being “subversive” but now it’s anti-racism.
Which brings me to a key point. Last night Trump said “the teachings in these trainings are un-American” and the core position there is that it is un-American to challenge racism. That to name racism and push for change is against the fabric of this country. We should see that.
America is a racist nation. That cannot be debated. But, as Vincent Harding pointed out, there is a question in America about whether or not the nation we dream of being is possible. A nation where our diversity is our strength, where justice is a reality and not a concept.
The path to that reality is through naming and challenging racism and this president is clear that what he actually wants are racist systems, buttressed by violence, and entrenched in the silence of a non-profit class too scared to lose their funding to say anything.
I’ve worked for a decade now to push for transformation in the housing and homelessness sector(s) to center racial justice. A group of us have prepared a statement for publication that I hope you’ll consider signing onto no matter who you are https://forms.gle/Cx8XXjSFFn84oH8t9">https://forms.gle/Cx8XXjSFF...
And let’s be clear: this EO was put forward during a *pandemic* that has disproportionate impact on marginalized communities/people of color. The EO is a threat: comply with racist revisionist history or we’ll pull your funding and destroy your lives.
Listen. I remain hopeful that the country this nation wanted to be is possible. I remain clear that today it is not.
We must never lose our ability to say these fundamental truths.
We must never lose our ability to say these fundamental truths.
