Will The White House Observe Black History Month? Vague Guidelines For Anti-DEI Order Spark Questions

Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty

Black History Month will begin in a couple of days, but since the current presidential administration has already indicated that it will spend the next four years serving as a white nationalist regime — with President Donald Trump rolling back federal DEI initiatives because he has convinced himself and his supporters that they’re the anti-white equivalent of Jim Crow — there’s now a huge question mark in the air regarding whether or not the federal government will formally acknowledge BHM as it has done in the past.

It’s been 10 days since Trump was sworn in and this is already where we are.

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According to an email, obtained by the Wall Street Journal, officials at the U.S. Department of State have been directed by the White House to observe Black History Month by, well, not exactly observing Black History Month. The vague guidelines for how officials should observe BHM include the highlighting of “valuable contributions of individual Americans throughout U.S. history, while ensuring our public communications maintain the spirit of the directive eliminating DEAI programs.”

A State Department official told the Journal that staff members were taking the directive to mean they are to refrain from holding public events or putting out messages that directly observe BHM, which the federal government has done since the 1970s.

“That’s how we’re reading it,” one official said, adding that the “diplomats I spoke to today, with decades of experience, couldn’t remember a time we failed” to observe BHM officially.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about whether or not Trump’s administration will recognize BHM as it did during his first term. (Actually, Trump called it “National African-American Month,” proving he can absolutely suck all of the flavor out of anything. It was either that or he’d likely make it sound racist, calling it “Short Month for The Blacks” or something like that.) Leavitt told reporters that the White House “certainly still intends to celebrate” BHM, but then she immediately made the celebration about “all Americans.”

“We will continue to celebrate American history and the contributions that all Americans, regardless of race, religious creed, have made to our great country,” Leavitt said. “America is back!”

In other words: All history matters.

Considering it was Trump who first popularized the propaganda-infused attack on Critical Race Theory, which then led to Republican legislators banning non-whitewashed Black history into white-and-fragile oblivion, it wouldn’t be surprising if he were using his anti-DEI orders to silently end the public observation of BHM. “DEI” has essentially become an excuse for MAGA Republicans to start rolling back civil rights protections, just as Trump’s election fraud lie served as a catalyst for GOP goons to start implementing voter suppression laws and redistricting their congressional maps for the expressed purpose of diluting Black voting power.

Whether or not the federal government will recognize BHM this year is ultimately unimportant, but the fact that the State Department would receive such a directive in the first place is an indication that white nationalism is the point.

“America is back” alright — and all the righteous racism that comes with it. 

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