Today, President Trump has ordered the Pentagon and the State Department to not recognize Black History Month.
My understanding is that February was chosen as the month to celebrate Black History Month because Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass both shared February birthdays. President Ford recognized Black History Month in 1976 and President Reagan issued a Proclamation recognizing Black History Month in 1986.
Here is some Black and White history:
No NFL team has hired Colin Kapernick who was fired in 2016 for kneeling during the National Anthem to protest police shootings of Black men and other injustices experienced by the Black community.
The NFL has fined Nick Bosa $11,255 for wearing a MAGA hat on the field Oct. 27, according to multiple reports. The San Francisco 49er star edge rusher crashed an interview with Brock Purdy after their “Sunday Night Football” victory wearing the hat and pointing to it.
-Fox News
Some very recent history: (from Public Citizen):
- On January 20, Trump was inaugurated for the second time.
- That same day, the former head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) resigned after intense pressure from Trump crony Elon Musk (who was upset that the FAA had fined his company SpaceX for violating rules around rocket launches).
- On January 21, Trump fired the director of the federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
- That same day, Trump froze hiring of new air traffic controllers. (Even though there is a profound shortage of controllers nationwide, which has resulted in understaffed air traffic facilities and overworked controllers — something Public Citizen has been urging government leaders to address for years).
- Also on January 21, the Trump regime essentially disbanded the federal Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which was created by Congress in 1988 after the bombing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
- Trump never bothered to appoint an acting director of the FAA until yesterday — after the tragedy that claimed 67 lives.
It will take time for the National Transportation Safety Board to identify exactly what went wrong. And while there is no indication that Trump’s actions were responsible, his moves can only make air travel less safe.
Here’s some more of what Trump had to say about efforts to bring even a modicum of diversity to our nation’s aviation workforce:
Trump alleged that the Obama administration had determined the FAA was “too white.” Of course it did no such thing.
“You have to go by brain power. You have to go by psychological quality.”
“We want somebody that’s psychologically superior.” (At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s a major red flag when politicians who are already saying patently racist things start tossing in words like “superior.”)
Trump was asked how he could determine that diversity hiring had caused the crash. He quickly — and snarkily — responded, “Because I have common sense.”
Trump and his MAGA minions are doing more than blaming “DEI” for every ill. They are weaponizing the racist, sexist proposition that white men are always and automatically “meritorious” — despite the glaringly obvious counterexample of their own administration — while anyone else is inherently unqualified.
Recommended Reading:
A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn
The Kapernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World by Dave Zirin