In a nearly 100-minute speech to Congress this past week, President Donald Trump used the time to continue his attacks on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) and “wokeness,” addressing everything but the true threats that are altering the daily lives of Americans, such as the cost of living, and the erosion of government institutions and supports. While his enablers in Congress and in corporate America are trying everything in their power to undermine our basic protections, he keeps us spinning and distracted with anti-DEIA rhetoric.
He and other authors of his playbook have embraced anti-DEIA rhetoric as their most potent tool. They co-opt DEIA’s very meaning to imply that it is not about meritocracy, when that is exactly what it has always been about. They divide the country by insinuating that DEIA has caused widespread discrimination against qualified white male Americans and is the root of our nation’s pain.
Rather than beginning his second term with an effort to improve the economy, Trump has used his power to shutter ongoing DEIA in government, then weaponized the federal government’s spending power against state and local governments and private companies that wanted to continue advancing DEIA. In so doing, Trump threw American governance into chaos rather than improving efficiency. Federal agencies, private businesses, preeminent universities, and even nonprofits have been roiled. While some were already eager to wipe out their DEIA programming, others have been forced to act against their freedom of judgment.
Thankfully, a few still uphold the proudly American values of not bowing down or kowtowing but instead fighting back. Rev. Al Sharpton is one of the few.
As vice chair of the board of the National Action Network (NAN) and a daughter of Dr. William Augustus Jones, Jr., who first mentored Sharpton in the Civil Rights Movement and taught him the math and methods of boycotting, I find it reassuring that in this cataclysmic moment for our America, Sharpton is applying all the knowledge and skills he has amassed since his early days of activism and is fighting back. He has brought together a diverse group of leaders to commence a “buy-cott” in support of companies such as Costco that have vowed publicly to continue DEIA, and they are acting against those companies that have dropped DEIA and are most vulnerable to civic acts of resistance.
Indeed, the attacks on inclusion have devastatingly set back our country’s efforts to end marginalization of all Americans, racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism. However, I caution that Trump’s false, manipulative, and relentless rants about DEI are as much acts of deflection as they are deception — much like a game of three-card monte.
As a teenager in the early 1980s in New York City, I remember well the card masters who engaged pedestrians on street corners in Times Square and along Delancey Street. They would lure passersby, very often tourists, into a game of three-card monte with the promise of winning a pile of cash by following one of three cards lying flat on a cardboard box, as the master of deception moved the card around and misdirected the player.
With quick movements, changing and faking directions, the card master would deceive the bidder, and most often (too often), the bidder would lose their money.
Like those everyday people fooled into playing three-card monte, only to lose, we who believe in and are committed to freedom must be careful not to be sucked into Trump’s games of disorder and deception or we may very well lose, too.
In the last several weeks, Trump and his allies who stand to gain from disorder, such as Elon Musk, have been dismantling the basic structure of our government, including the parts that protect our individual and collective wellbeing. They have threatened to withhold federal funding for education, health, income, food, civil rights enforcement, infrastructure, international aid, environmental protection, and more, as well as to shut down agencies. Rather than appointing people with expertise, they have put people in positions of leadership who are committed to disorder.
To distract from their decimating of our basic protections in health, education, economic, environmental, and public safety, Trump has used his false rants like a card-shuffler to divert attention solely to DEIA: classic three-card monte.
We must speak with our wallets against corporate entities vowing to shut down DEIA but also be clear that this alone won’t stop Trump and his base. Ending DEIA is not their primary goal — they aim to remove the guardrails of our democracy for all. In this card game, they distract the public in one direction while seizing power in the other.
If there ever was a time for movement-building, it is now. Our efforts must be aimed at the actions and actors that threaten to harm us the most. We must support the national and local organizations that are doing the legal and policy work to both fight back and advance the common good. As local, state, and midterm elections approach, we must engage civically and vote for humanity politics up and down the ballot.
And we must educate our own. We must teach the critical thinking and history that reveals how this three-card monte has been played throughout our history and is being played now. We must help ourselves and all Americans fight for a country that doesn’t play games with our lives but provides economic security for all.
Jennifer Jones Austin, Esq., is chief executive officer and executive director of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies.
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