<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/22/us-black-history-dei>
"Democracy flourishes when Black Americans advance. The evidence is clear:
birthright citizenship, constitutional due process, anti-discrimination laws
from education to housing to employment and equitable small business
investments, are all byproducts of the systemic corrections known today as DEI.
Yet, in recent years, DEI has been used as a smokescreen by cynical politicians
and activists to roll back progress and consolidate power. Across classrooms,
museums, boardrooms and federal agencies, the key pathways to opportunity and
success are under attack through a coordinated disinformation campaign of
erasure, distortion and suppression.
The impact of these tactics is concrete and undeniable. Since the start of this
year, Onyx Impact’s research has found, 306,000 Black women have lost their
jobs and $3.4bn in grant programs investing in Black communities has been
slashed – including $9.4m in sickle cell disease research, $42m in programs
designed to address Black maternal mortality and $31m in cuts to address asthma
rates and air pollution harming Black children.
Concerted attempts to stifle the progress of Black communities is not new;
however, history has proven that when progress for Black people is erased,
everyone suffers. During Reconstruction, Black Americans made extraordinary
strides – holding office, building businesses and founding schools. Less
discussed is how other oppressed communities, from white sharecroppers to
Latino gauchos, also benefited from increased access to legal and economic
systems. When Black people faced a century of Jim Crow and state-sanctioned
discrimination, other communities saw a similar retreat on their access to full
citizenship. When the civil rights movement sought to eliminate the vestiges of
Jim Crow, its practices of nonviolent civil disobedience expanded freedom and
opportunity not just for Black Americans, but for communities of all
backgrounds. From the Native American movement to the advancement of gay rights
to women’s economic empowerment, Black civil rights opened the aperture for
expanded human rights.
Nevertheless, every time Black communities gain ground, forces threatened by
change work to push us back. As we face the current regime, DEI is the bulwark
that guarantees a pluralistic democracy. Its power is rooted not in politics,
but in the promise of America itself: that all people are created equal and
deserve a chance to thrive. Defending DEI, accurate historical education and
equitable access to opportunity protects the very principles that allow our
nation to live up to its highest ideals. Authoritarians and their acolytes
despise DEI because it secures the rights of all.
And when we do not recognize this, the consequences are immediate and real. The
newly released Onyx Impact report,
Blackout: The Real-World Cost of Erasing,
Distorting, and Suppressing Black Progress, documents more than 15,000
instances, in just nine months, where Black lives, histories and pathways to
success have been directly harmed or erased by the Trump administration and
their legislative and judicial cronies. This report provides not only a stark
account of harm but also a way forward. Its rigorous, data-driven analysis
empowers citizens, journalists and policymakers to recognize the instances and
patterns of erasure, distortion and suppression.
We must, though, understand these attacks as part of a deliberate campaign. The
goal is to rewrite our nation’s story and restrict the futures of Black
Americans, and by extension, any American deemed unworthy. We can be tempted to
view their actions in isolation, but that is by design."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
