Since his inauguration, President Trump has made it no secret that he intends to go after programs supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion ("DEI"). In the span of only a few weeks, Trump has repealed a handful of executive orders promoting DEI in the workplace. Notable among these is Executive Order 11246, signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, which required federal contractors to "take affirmative action" to ensure that their employees were treated without regard to "race, creed, color, or national origin."
To further his anti-DEI mission, President Trump has issued a slew of his own Executive Orders, including one on January 21, 2025, entitled Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity. In this Order, President Trump proclaims that DEI undermines the "traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement" and exchanges these values for "an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system."
Perhaps no group in the United States is more familiar with these "traditional American values of hard work" than the American working class, which largely overlaps with rural populations. However, rather than President Trump's anti-DEI stance protecting the interests of the working class, his war on DEI is more likely to disproportionately harm poor, rural communities.
In particular, gutting DEI initiatives will inhibit educational access for rural people. For example, Lane Wendell Fischer, a self-described "cisgender white man from Kansas" writing for The Daily Yonder, described how he has personally benefited from DEI programs. As a rural college applicant from a working class background, Fischer had accepted his fate of eternally paying off student loan debt in order to earn a college degree. However, he was encouraged to apply to an Ivy League school, and was accepted into Yale University with a near-full ride scholarship in part due to a DEI initiative designed to recruit rural students.
Fischer emphasizes the importance of rural representation in higher education and beyond. Without rural students in higher education, how will rural interests be represented in companies providing healthcare or insurance to their communities? Who will bring the rural perspective to authoritative bodies, such as Congress?
Similarly, who will provide legal representation to rural communities? Given that many rural areas have become legal deserts, a lack of DEI initiatives prioritizing rural representation in schools will exacerbate the already existing lawyer shortage.
Further, President Trump's mission to root out DEI will not only impact educational access in rural communities, but will restrict environmental justice initiatives as well. For example, the President has revoked Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority and Low-Income Populations, which directed federal agencies to center environmental justice and address "disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects" on minority and low-income populations.
So far, President Trump has already begun eliminating funding and positions related to environmental projects, including those designed to aid small communities. While projects which have already received funding are in the clear, those for which funds were pending will suffer.
Examples of the communities that may be impacted include places like Danville, Arkansas, where a 122 mile EF-4 tornado rampaged the county in 2008. Because Danville is a poor, rural community, $2.5 million in federal funds was allocated to build a school tornado shelter.
In an interview with CNN, Professor Robert Bullard, a sociologist dubbed "the father of environmental justice," poignantly stated, "it's not DEI (to have) the right to breathe clean air (or) drink clean water." Unfortunately, the politicization of DEI will only serve to exaggerate rural vulnerabilities and disproportionately restrict the rights and resources rural people require to survive and thrive.
5 comments:
I have also been disappointed (but not surprised) by the recent anti-DEI initiatives. However, I had failed to consider how the rural community would be impacted. It is interesting how this resistance to DEI ties into other right-wing decisions regarding affirmative action. Considering recent success, I wonder what the Trump administration plans to do to pressure corporations that refuse to eliminate their DEI programs, such as Costco and Delta Airlines.
Anti-DEI executive orders have made me think about how they are negatively affecting people in the military who often come from more rural areas and are people of color. As someone with family in the military, I have been thinking a lot about how these orders are just going to make it more difficult for those who are already working in the branches by affecting recruitment and retention.
These anti-DEI orders are such a setback for the American population. Recently, I saw that Trump was being sued by a group of plaintiffs, including the city of Baltimore. They claim the recent actions are unconstitutional. I wonder what the outcome of this lawsuit will be. From a European standpoint, this situation feels utopian because no such thing has ever happened. For example, the Belgian government adopted laws to protect women against discrimination in the workplace. If the Prime Minister were to try to amend or abolish those laws, he would be held back by many things such as discussion and vote by the Parliament.
I think one of the most dangerous parts of these executive orders has been the narrative around them. By continuously framing DEI as somehow opposed to equity—branding it as a way to legally discriminate—conservative media has made it very easy to believe that DEI is morally wrong. This narrative is frustrating when the text of EO 11246 explicitly outlines the purpose of most federal DEI initiatives: to combat discrimination. Your post has me thinking about the article we read towards the beginning of this semester, where a rural Coloradan describes not being hired because of his rodeo belt-buckle. Seems like DEI would have been pretty useful, in his case.
The demonization of DEI is extremely frustrating to me as well. I think the revocation of EO 12898, while only one of the flood of executive orders in the last couple of weeks, is especially notable to me because it seems as though the goal of revoking that order is simply to make it easier to pollute and pave over poor communities. Who stands to benefit? Only a company that would have had to avoid doing so. Is there any merit in that?
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