The Impact of the Trump Administration's Attack on DEI

Contributed by Rene' Sylar

Black History Month, Day 3: The Impact of the Trump Administration's Attack on DEI.

I was too young to remember most of this, but I live with the results of it every single day.

This photo is my family.

Two parents who served this country, in uniform and in civil service and two little kids who grew up with something generations before us were denied: stability.

My father retired from the Air Force after 20 years as a Senior Master Sergeant. After that, he went to work for the Social Security Administration. My mother also served in the military.

What I remember isn’t policy; I remember outcomes.

*A home we owned.

*A swingset in the backyard.

*Saving long enough to buy an above-ground pool (and learning to swim, something that 64% of African Americans say they cannot do. THAT is a direct result of lack of access to places where they could learn to swim)

*Dinners around a small, hideous Formica table.

*The year my sister and I were “old enough” for our own phone line (My GOD landlines!)

That’s what opportunity looks like when it reaches a family.

Here's why this matters:

After the Civil Rights Act, the federal government became one of the single most important pathways into the Black middle class.

By the late 1970s, roughly 20–25% of the federal workforce was African American, significantly higher than the private sector at the time. Federal jobs offered something the private market routinely denied Black workers: fair hiring standards, promotion pathways, benefits, and protection from discrimination.

That didn’t happen by accident.

It happened because of:

• civil rights enforcement
• affirmative action
• equal employment rules
• and later, what we now call DEI

Those policies didn’t give my parents “special treatment"; they gave them access.

Now fast forward. When the Trump administration signed the executive order titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” it sounded reasonable, maybe even virtuous.

But here’s what that language erases:

Merit has never existed in a vacuum.

Opportunity has NEVER been evenly distributed.

And neutrality has always favored whoever already had access.

When DEI is dismantled in the federal workforce, families like mine feel it first, even if they don’t recognize it immediately.

Because fewer pathways into stable government work means:

• fewer Black families building generational security (African American families have roughly 1/10th the wealth of white families)
• fewer pensions, benefits, and ladders upward
• fewer kids growing up with the quiet confidence that comes from stability

This isn’t about ideology.

It’s about infrastructure.

DEI didn’t create my family’s work ethic, ambition, or resilience.

But it created the conditions where those things could actually pay off.

When those policies are attacked, what’s really being dismantled is the bridge between service and stability.

That bridge built my life. And that’s why this matters.