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60 YEARS OF PROGRESS IN EXPANDING RIGHTS IS BEING ROLLED BACK BY
TRUMP − A PATTERN THAT’S ALL TOO FAMILIAR IN US HISTORY  
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Philip Klinkner, Rogers M. Smith
February 13, 2025
The Conversation
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_ U.S. history is not a steady march toward greater equality,
democracy and individual rights, these liberal values compete with an
alternative set of illiberal values that hold that citizenship should
be limited by race, ethnicity, gender and class. _

There’s a long history in the U.S. of denying the rights, liberties
and benefits of democracy to some Americans., rob dobi/Getty Images

 

60 years of progress in expanding rights is being rolled back by
Trump − a pattern that’s all too familiar in US history
For many Americans, Donald Trump’s head-spinning array of executive
orders
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in the early days of his second term look like an unprecedented effort
to roll back democracy and the rights and liberties
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of American citizens.
But it isn’t unprecedented.

As we have written
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American history is not a steady march toward greater equality,
democracy and individual rights. America’s commitment to these
liberal values has competed with an alternative set of illiberal
values that hold that full American citizenship should be limited by
race, ethnicity, gender and class.

The most famous example of this conflict is the Jim Crow era
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after Reconstruction, when many of the political and legal rights
gained by African Americans in the Civil War era were swept away by
disenfranchisement, segregation and discrimination. From roughly 1870
until 1940, democracy and equal rights were retreating, not advancing,
leaving what was described in the 1960s by President Lyndon Johnson as
“the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice
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Today, the Trump administration is seeking to roll back America’s
commitment to equality and engaging in a broad effort to limit
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– if not outright deny – the rights, liberties and benefits of
democracy to all Americans.

President Donald Trump attacked the FAA’s DEI initiatives during a
press conference on the D.C. plane crash.

Progress, then rollbacks

The biggest gains in African American rights
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came during the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II and the
Cold War, when the United States confronted enemies that Americans
believed contradicted its liberal values – the British monarchy,
Southern slaveholders, fascist dictators and communist tyrants. The
United States highlighted its commitments to democracy and human
rights as a way of contrasting itself from its enemies.

But once the pressures of war faded, America’s illiberal values
reasserted themselves. With the end of the Revolutionary War and the
Civil War, the movement for greater equality stalled and many of the
previous gains were rolled back.

The onset of World War II and then the Cold War forced Americans to
renew their commitment to democracy and human rights for all
Americans. This period is often described as the Second Reconstruction
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Like the First Reconstruction a century earlier, the federal
government helped to ensure civil and voting rights for African
Americans
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These efforts laid the groundwork for advancing the political and
civil rights of women, other racial and ethnic groups, immigrants,
disabled persons and, eventually, members of the gay and lesbian
community.

But like the First Reconstruction, these changes generated intense
backlash.

Bigger than anti-DEI

Since the demise of the Cold War over 30 years ago, the Republican
Party has increasingly sided
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with those seeking to roll back the gains of the Second
Reconstruction.

Even before Trump first ran for president, the Republican Party began
adopting
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nativist, anti-immigration policies
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In 2012, a Republican-dominated Supreme Court gutted a key provision
of the Voting Rights Act [[link removed]], the
landmark 1965 law barring racial discrimination in voting
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of the signal achievements of the Second Reconstruction.

In 2016, Trump rose to the Republican nomination by expressing and
amplifying the racist and xenophobic views of many white Americans
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including the claim that Barack Obama was born outside of the U.S.
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immigrants were criminals and rapists
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and that the U.S. should close its borders to anyone from Muslim
countries
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Since his second inauguration, Trump has mounted a full-scale effort
to undermine the policies of the Second Reconstruction. This effort
has been masked as an attack on diversity, equity and inclusion
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– or DEI – policies. According to Trump and other critics of DEI,
these policies are themselves racist
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they allegedly single out white Americans for shame and scorn.

As scholars [[link removed]] of
race and American politics
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believe that, overall, DEI initiatives have combated racial
discrimination and expanded the pools
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of talented people who can contribute to the nation’s progress.

The Trump administration’s effort to end DEI programs is really an
attack on decades of efforts by the federal government to make good on
the promise of America: to engage in rigorous nondiscrimination
efforts and open up opportunities for all.

One of Trump’s first executive orders
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which prominently featured abandonment of DEI policies, also repealed
a 60-year-old executive order signed by President Johnson
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mandating “affirmative action” to end widespread discrimination by
the federal government and its contractors.

Antidiscrimination is discrimination?

These diversity initiatives have for more than 50 years included
requirements that beneficiaries of these policies must be qualified
for the benefits they obtain.

But to Trump and many conservatives, such policies force employers to
engage in racial and gender quotas to prove that they don’t
discriminate. Furthermore, these efforts to end discrimination,
according to Trump’s executive order, “diminish the importance of
individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination,”
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leading to “disastrous consequences
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In other words, Trump and others claim that efforts to end
discrimination are themselves a form of discrimination and force the
hiring of unqualified and incompetent people.

Trump made this view clear
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in his comments on the recent collision between a passenger airliner
and a military helicopter in Washington, D.C. Before any formal
investigation, Trump alleged that the crash resulted from Obama and
Biden administration efforts to diversify the Federal Aviation
Administration staff. Such efforts, he suggested, elevate unqualified
people.

“If they don’t have a great brain … they’re not going to be
good at what they do and bad things will happen
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he said.

Efforts to reverse DEI have been accompanied by other antidiversity
moves. One example: According to a news release, the Defense
Department will no longer use “official resources”
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to mark “Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Asian
American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride Month, National
Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness
Month, and National American Indian Heritage Month.”

Undoing 19th-century advances

The attack on DEI goes beyond the federal government. Other executive
orders mandate that K-12 schools
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as well as colleges and universities end DEI programs
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since they are “anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false
ideologies.”

Instead, Trump insists that schools engage only in “patriotic
education
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Such a policy will almost certainly prevent schools from honestly
addressing the ways in which racial, ethnic and gender discrimination
have influenced America’s past and present.

The Trump administration is attacking the First Reconstruction as
well. Another Trump executive order seeks to end birthright
citizenship
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for children of unauthorized alien residents.

That move would limit the 14th Amendment, one of the constitutional
cornerstones
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of the First Reconstruction. Passed in 1868 in order to guarantee
citizenship rights for African Americans, it begins by stating:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject
to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of
the State wherein they reside
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This provision was included in order to explicitly overturn the
notorious 1857 Supreme Court decision, Dred Scott v. Sandford, that
ruled that African Americans were not citizens and consequently
“they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect
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Pushback capacity

[A man at a protest holding an American flag and a sign saying
'Liberty + Justice for ALL.']
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A protester at a demonstration against the Trump administration at the
Texas State Capitol on Feb. 5, 2025, in Austin, Texas. Brandon
Bell/Getty Images
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How far can the Trump administration go in its efforts to undo the
Second Reconstruction?

Numerous legal challenges have already been filed
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In the case of the executive order limiting birthright citizenship, a
lower federal court judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan blocked
the order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional
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Many of these cases will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court,
which under Chief Justice John Roberts has been willing to overturn
long-established equal rights precedents. Besides its 2012 gutting of
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the court limited the reproductive rights of women by overturning its
1973 decision, Roe v. Wade
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Most recently, in 2023 the court ended a 45-year precedent that
allowed colleges and universities to engage in limited forms of
affirmative action
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in order to achieve more student diversity.

Yet despite years of attacks by conservatives and now the Trump
administration, most efforts to end discrimination and open doors to
all Americans, including DEI, remain popular
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And the groups empowered by the Second Reconstruction – racial and
ethnic minorities, women, immigrants, the LGBTQ community – are far
more numerous and have far more legal and political resources
available with which to fight back than those that were aided by the
First Reconstruction.

There are now no government pressures driving Americans to make
greater progress toward democracy and equal rights for all, as in the
relatively brief earlier periods of significant reform in America.

But those reforms have given many more Americans the capacity to push
back against policies that violate both American values and American
interests.[The Conversation]

Philip Klinkner
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S. Sherman Professor of Government, _Hamilton College
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Rogers M. Smith
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Emeritus Professor of Political Science, _University of Pennsylvania
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This article is republished from The Conversation
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the original article
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* Racism
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* Human Rights
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* World War II
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* Republican Party
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* diversity
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* Civil Rights
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* African Americans
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* US Civil War
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* jim crow
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* DEI
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