Trump’s Anti-DEI Order Ironically Ends Clause That Explicitly Prohibits Racially ‘Segregated Facilities’

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For (at least) the second time, President Donald Trump‘s executive order aimed at lynching all things diversity, equity and inclusion has effectively removed a clause in existing U.S. constitutional law that explicitly made racial discrimination illegal — which, of course, is the exact opposite of what he claims his anti-DEI warpath is supposed to achieve. (Not that anyone who doesn’t think the Confederacy gets a bad rap ever believed that load of gaslighting white nationalist nonsense.)

Last month, the General Services Administration issued a public memo last that affected all civil federal agencies. According to NPR, “The memo explains that it is making changes prompted by President Trump’s executive order on diversity, equity and inclusion, which repealed an executive order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 regarding federal contractors and nondiscrimination.” Well, it turns out Trump’s order to eliminate imaginary Jim Crow for white people also eliminates the segregation clause, which explicitly prohibited contractors from having segregated restaurants, waiting rooms and drinking fountains.

From NPR:

The clause in question is in the Federal Acquisition Regulation, known as the FAR — a huge document used by agencies to write contracts for anyone providing goods or services to the federal government.

Clause 52.222-21 of the FAR is titled “Prohibition of Segregated Facilities” and reads: “The Contractor agrees that it does not and will not maintain or provide for its employees any segregated facilities at any of its establishments, and that it does not and will not permit its employees to perform their services at any location under its control where segregated facilities are maintained.”

It defines segregated facilities as work areas, restaurants, drinking fountains, transportation, housing and more — and it says you can’t segregate based on “race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.”

Last week, we reported that the Department of Justice had launched investigations against 45 colleges accused of “race-based” DEI practices, citing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which “obliges schools that receive federal funds to provide students with an environment free of discrimination based on race, color, or national origin.” It’s almost as if Trump is all about ridding America of the racial discrimination he falsely believes (or pretends to believe) is happening to white people while consistently eroding civil protections for Black people and other marginalized groups that actually need them.

Now, to be clear, there are still federal and state laws that prohibit segregation, so companies still can’t just freely re-implement Jim Crow-era racial discrimination, but legal experts still believe this change is significant and dangerous.

“It’s symbolic, but it’s incredibly meaningful in its symbolism,” says Melissa Murray, a constitutional law professor at New York University. “These provisions that required federal contractors to adhere to and comply with federal civil rights laws and to maintain integrated rather than segregated workplaces were all part of the federal government’s efforts to facilitate the settlement that led to integration in the 1950s and 1960s.

“The fact that they are now excluding those provisions from the requirements for federal contractors, I think, speaks volumes,” Murray added.

After all, have any of you noticed that Trump’s anti-DEI measures have only had an effect on non-white people, particularly Black people?

Besides the investigations of colleges that may have practiced race and gender-based DEI, Trump’s orders have led to the cancelation of landmark eligibility for historically Black communities, the removal of Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington D.C., EOs that effectively undermine police reform legislation, and the suspension of a major HBCU scholarship program, which is wild coming from the president who, during his first term, boasted that HBCUs “never had better champions in the White House.”

Even Trump’s anti-immigration agenda seems to exclude European immigrants, and certainly white Afrikaners in South Africa. (Because he also believes they’re being racially discriminated against while ignoring the fact that they’re beneficiaries of apartheid — which is wild coming from the president who has repeatedly compared himself to Nelson Mandela.)

Of course, this is also coming from the president who spearheaded the propaganda-reliant attack on critical race theory, specifically targetted voting districts with large Black and Latino voters with his 2020 election fraud lies, and is a promoter of the white nationalist Great Replacement Theory, which, at its core, insists that white people have an inherent right to be the dominant race in America.

But, sure — nothing racially discriminatory about all of that, right?

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