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Excerpt:

In his second term, Mr. Trump has taken a particularly aggressive position on issues of race and diversity, tapping into real tensions about the role that race should play in American society.

“We’ve seen it for a long time, his entire life,” Mr. Jackson said of Mr. Trump’s ability to stoke racial divisions. “It’s just frustrating to see that mind-set play out into policy.”

In the first months of his second term, Mr. Trump has abandoned core tenets of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Pentagon has ordered military leaders to review all books in their libraries that address racism and sexism. The administration announced this week that it would begin screening immigrants seeking to live or work in the United States for “anti-American ideologies.” Mr. Trump has banned almost every refugee from entering the country, with the exception of white South African farmers who federal officials have said would better assimilate into the United States.

Federal agencies have obscured published references to the contributions of Black heroes, from the Tuskegee Airmen who fought in the military, to Harriet Tubman, who guided enslaved people along the Underground Railroad. He has accused the Smithsonian Institution of incorporating “divisive, race-centered ideology” in its exhibits on race.

Several of Mr. Trump’s appointees have amplified extremist views, including on official social media accounts. The Department of Homeland Security in June shared a poster that called for reporting “foreign invaders,” an image that was originally shared by a podcaster who hosts a Christian nationalist show and calls himself a supporter of the “Old American Right.” The host has said the concept affirms “the domination and pre-eminence of the European-derived peoples, their institutions and their way of life.”

The social media accounts of federal agencies have pumped out images portraying American cities as chaotic hellscapes, and immigrants as violent criminals. The accounts have also shared stylized videos of Mr. Trump’s militarized crackdown.

Sheryll Cashin, a professor of law, civil rights and social justice at Georgetown University, said Mr. Trump’s use of language and symbolism to demean people who do not look like him marked an important shift.

“Ideas that we thought were no longer appropriate for mainstream politics are now central again,” she said.

Mr. Trump’s views on race have been center stage in his public life going back decades, to his days as a developer in New York City in the 1980s.

Back then, he purchased full-page advertisements in newspapers, including The New York Times, calling for the return of the death penalty after five Black and Latino teenagers were arrested and later wrongfully convicted of the rape of a jogger.


Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/us/politics/trump-diversity-black-americans.html?searchResultPosition=1