• How Trump is hurting people of African descent in the US, Africa and the world

By Leroy Wilson, Jr., Esq.

As we continue to celebrate Black History Month in the United States and elsewhere, I think it might be helpful to consider the meaning of this month in the context of the second Trump Presidency.

I am not sure that some commentators within the African continent understand that when they glorify President Trump, they are not acting in the interests of their own people.

Some agreed with his statement calling Haiti and African countries “shithole countries,” largely because the leaders of these countries wield dictatorial power over their citizens, and some leaders are corrupt.

Unfortunately, they have forgotten that Trump has said repeatedly that he intended to be a dictator.

He was not joking.

African Americans are the only group of people who were enslaved in America. We were given our rights by constitutional amendment, and the passage of laws and court cases that we fought for.

When slaves were freed, the outgoing government promised the freed slaves “40 acres and a mule.” Black Web succinctly summed it up by saying:

The “40 acres and a mule” is a phrase that refers to a section of Special Field Orders, No. 15 issued by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman in 1865 after slavery was officially abolished via the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. With the Union Army poised to vanquish the Confederate soldiers in the U.S. Civil War, Gen. Sherman’s declaration to divvy up land owned by the Confederacy to formerly enslaved Black people was a promise that became upended by the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

With Andrew Johnson taking control of the White House in succession, the promise was dismissed with the land going back to the original owners. Historians note that this takeback began a long and systemically planned series of maneuvers to keep Black people from ascending to the same level as their white counterparts, even during the largely fruitful yet brief period of Reconstruction. Today, proponents of reparation for the descendants of Black slaves in America point to this broken promise as grounds to advance their cause.

In addition, the Supreme Court at that time curtailed almost all the rights that Congress gave the newly freed slaves.

With President Trump, history is repeating itself.

Over many decades that followed the Civil War, African Americans were able to gradually gain further rights, leading to several favorable court decisions and the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964,1965 and 1968, providing for equal employment, voting and housing opportunities.

Then the Kennedy and Johnson administrations began to use legislation and executive orders to protect and expand the rights of African Americans.

Beginning with President Nixon, the Republicans began an all-out assault on these rights. Nixon started perverting the language by using “forced busing,” in connection with school desegregation, and describing legislation as “reforms, or “improvements” when in fact they were just the opposite.

Over the years, Republicans were able to gain enough political power to put their conservative members on the courts, including the United States Supreme Court.

That Court, seeing the political power that African Americans began to wield, started repeating the post-Civil War history by severely curtailing the civil rights of black people.

Nowhere was this more predominant than it was in crippling the right to vote. The Republican dominated court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act – which is where the people’s power rested.

The states, acting swiftly after Supreme court rulings, enacted a welter of restrictive laws to deprive black people of voting rights.

Republican politicians continued to push the narrative that white Americans were being discriminated against because of efforts to grant previously denied equal opportunities to black people.

President Trump, gifted with the ability to communicate using simple, seemingly innocuous words, tapped into these grievances and was elected again in 2024.

Beginning this term, like Andrew Johnson, Trump immediately began to demolish many of the measures intended to protect the rights of African Americans and others.

He issued several executive orders and nominated people to run agencies that they had vowed to destroy, and others who undermined the agencies.

Because of space limitations, I will highlight just a few of the harmful things that Trump has done which will affect the lives of people of African descent, in the United States, Africa, and elsewhere.

During his campaign, Trump continued his attack on Haitians by falsely saying that Haitians in Springfield, Illinois were eating white people’s pets, dogs and cats, and that they were undocumented.

To its credit, in February, the City of Springfield, and multiple residents and local officials, sued the Blood Tribe hate group, its leaders and some members for conspiracy to violate civil rights, public nuisance, telecommunications harassment, menacing, ethnic intimidation, and inciting violence. The Blood Tribe actively promoted these lies.

After his election, President Trump’s issuance of Executive Order 14173 Trump revoked E.O. 11246 that President Johnson issued in September 1965.

Johnson issued E.O. 11246 to require predominantly white federal contractors (such as large corporations) that received federal funds to hire qualified black contractors and employees to do government work.

Over the years, corporations, businesses, and other entities developed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs to put teeth into E.O. 11246, now commonly referred to as “DEI” or “DEIA” programs.

On his first day in office, with no facts, Trump issued E.O. 14173 and described “DEI” or “DEIA” programs as illegal.

This follows Trump’s practice of issuing statements without any factual basis, and having his followers believe that the mere fact that he said them makes them true.

He frames the E.O. 14173 as if it promotes equal opportunity but actually gives those formerly subjected to E.O. 11246 the basis to discriminate.

This E.O. 14173 is drafted in such a way that those entities which formerly had DEI of DEIA programs did not know what to do. AS a result, some abandoned their programs; others did not.

Trump made what was legal under E.O. 11246 now illegal under his E.O. 14173. very beneficial under E.O. to African Americans and other excluded groups under E.O. 11246.

He has consistently created images and described black people as dumb, and incompetent. Yet he confers refugee status on Afrikaners under a program that he had repealed.

While he paints this picture, he has appointed white people to his cabinet who are objectively unqualified. It matters not that his statements about black people are false. He, Vance, and Musk thrive on the practice of declaring lies to be truths.

Yet, he claims that his appointees have merited their positions.

Trump and his new Secretary of Defense disparaged all black people, women, transgender people and other historically disadvantaged people serving in the military by suggesting they achieved their positions and promotions solely based on their immutable characteristics with which they were born, such as race, gender, sex, and so forth.

From the rooftops they yelled that going forth, every member of the military would occupy their positions on “merit.”

This is embedded white nationalist rhetoric and provides cover for anything they do with white people, i.e., they achieve their positions on merit; others are prima facie unqualified.

Without listing all of Trump’s unqualified appointees, Defense Secretary Hegseth is a good example. He proclaims that the military will be merit based.

In the United States Senate of 100 Senators, 50 voted that he was not qualified, including Mitch McConnell, the former Republican Majority leader of the Senate.

Despite the many contributions that African Americans have made to America, white people in power have consistently restricted and deprived black people of these rights by using various methods.

One of these methods has been to erase the accomplishments of black people from American history.

President Trump and his cohorts are doing their best to continue this effort.

As Wiley Adams, the President of the National Bar Association (USA) said recently, while discussing several Trump Executive Orders:

The administration’s systematic efforts to dismantle all DEI initiatives is an egregious attack on the progress our nation has fought tirelessly to achieve. DEI programs serve as a crucial means of addressing systemic disparities, providing opportunities, and ensuring that all individuals, regardless of race, gender or socioeconomic background, have a fair chance of succeeding. Rolling back these efforts is a direct affront to the principles of equal justice under the law and to those who have fought to create equal access to education, housing and business opportunities. Rolling back these efforts is also an attempt to pretend that the reasons the initiatives were created were not real and no longer exist. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson rightfully declared that “deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”

Black History was created to keep the accomplishments of African Americans as a visible part of American history.

Following Trump’s lead, there is currently a massive effort of many states to prohibit teaching this history as part of the American history curriculum.

Africa, from whom we are descended, should follow what Trump is doing because some of his actions affect Africans wherever we are, directly.