Trump Didn’t Mention DEI During His Black History Month Celebration

Source: JIM WATSON / Getty

Well, it happened, y’all. After his anti-diversity warpath caused uncertainty among multiple federal agencies as to whether Black History Month should even be acknowledged, President Donald Trump hosted a reception in honor of the Black history Republicans are determined to whitewash at the White House on Thursday. The Washington Post described attendees at the event inside the East Room as “predominantly Black and overwhelmingly male,” which likely means Trump’s people scoured the Sunken Place delivering “Black jobs” to all the MAGA-fied Black friends who probably don’t know any Black women willing to be their plus one.

According to the Post, Trump entered the room alongside legendary golfer Tiger Woods. (You just know he had to ask like nine people, “He’s definitely black, right?” before booking Tiger.) Trump also brought in conservative broadcasters like Sage Steele — whose name he couldn’t remember when she hosted a campaign event for him last year — and Herschel Walker, one of the only unqualified Black people white conservatives ever fought to give a job usually held by white men when he failed to grab a seat to represent Georgia in the U.S. Senate in 2022. (To be fair, he was up against another Black guy, so the MAGAts were probably thinking, “What’s a little DEI hire-on-DEI hire crime?”) 

Outside of Trump’s Black conservative roundup, the White House invited Boosie Badazz, Kodak Black and an assortment of other rappers whose music Republicans historically tried to criminalize before they discovered they actually needed Black people to somewhat like them.

Predictably, Trump did his song-and-dance political posturing about the importance of celebrating Black “legends” and how America, under his thumb, will be an America where all races thrive — but he was careful not to utter a single word about his anti-DEI policies, which would have contradicted his entire performative shtick.

From the Post:

“Today we pay tribute to the generations of Black legends, champions, warriors and patriots who helped drive our country forward to greatness. And you really are great, great people,” Trump said at the event. “We’re going to look forward to honoring the contributions of countless Black Americans who fought to win and protect and expand American freedom from the very, very beginning.”

Like many conservatives, Trump has long argued that DEI programs, which were created to encourage more diverse workplaces and reduce discrimination, are themselves discriminatory. That remains the White House’s position: Less than two hours before the celebration in the East Room, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller celebrated Trump’s anti-DEI moves in a news conference, claiming that the programs had “crippled” the United States. Without providing evidence, he said that DEI initiatives had “strangled our economy” and “undermined public safety.”

Ah, yes. Let’s celebrate those “Black legends, champions, warriors and patriots who” risked their lives to ensure Black people had the right to vote just so, generations later, Trump could exclusively target voting districts with large Black and Latino populations with his 2020 election fraud lie, which led to Republican legislators riding the momentum to justify vote suppression laws and the redistricting of their states’ congressional maps with the expressed purpose of reducing Black voting power.

Let’s celebrate those heroes who “fought to win” the civil rights protections that Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders eroded.

Let’s keep straight faces as Black history is acknowledged by the commander-in-chief who declared he has “done more for the Black Community than any President since Abraham Lincoln,” and compared himself to Nelson Mandela multiple times before signing executive orders on behalf of white beneficiaries of South African apartheid.

Let’s all come together and pretend it’s perfectly appropriate that the president who spearheaded the white-and-eternally-fragile propaganda attack on critical race theory is the same president to stand behind a podium and claim he’s looking forward “to honoring the contributions of countless Black Americans” whose stories he doesn’t want to be taught in schools unless they have been edited to assuage delicate Caucasian sensibilities by morphing a story about American white supremacy to one about American nobility.

The orangey-white guy who led the racist birther attack on America’s first Black president — that’s who we should listen to about “honoring the contributions of countless Black Americans.”

(I’m honestly not sure if I’m laying the sarcasm on thick enough here.)

Trump hosting a BHM celebration after making allegedly underqualified Black people who take jobs from qualified white men the face of his anti-DEI propaganda campaign is only the tip of the white supremacist iceberg that is Trump’s hypocrisy. It would have been better if the White House actually did decline to acknowledge BHM at all.

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