ASALH Historians: “Trump 2.0 Impact on Black Americans from SCOTUS to Job Loss of 300,000 Black Women”

Fern Gillespie
Our Time Press spoke to the leadership of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the founding organization of Black History Month for insights on “Trump 2.0 Impact on Black Americans.” Leading Black History historians Dr. Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead, the president of the ASALH and a professor of communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland and Brooklyn resident Dr. Zebulon Miletsky, an associate professor of Africana Studies at Stony Brook and ASALH Chair of Communications discussed their concerns about this presidential administration in Part 2 of the Our Time Press conversation.

OTP: What are your thoughts about the Supreme Court greenlighting the Trump administration’s destruction of multiculturalism and diversity?
DR. WHITEHEAD: I think that when you look at the steps and I go back to Project 2025, which if people use that as a handbook, it talks about how every step to get you to this point. Setting up and having a right wing leaning Supreme Court just didn’t happen overnight. These were steps that we’re taking from Trump 1.0. Actually, coming from stopping Barack Obama from being able to fill a Supreme Court seat.

By the time Trump 2.0 had the majority in the House, the Senate, in SCOTUS and the executive branch, we’re just starting to see what happens when you have the three branches all lined up and leaning heavily toward one party. And if they are all walking in lockstep. There is no resistance in SCOTUS. That majority is giving him the space he needs to enact the policies that he’s had been talking about that Project 2025 lays out.

OTP: What do you think about the impact of Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor being the lone liberal voices in the Supreme Court?
DR WHITEHEAD: One of the best things I think about is Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is her voice. I call her, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, The Supremes. The three sisters who are singing for justice right now. They’re doing something that Thurgood Marshall talked about. He talked about how the court changes.

That when you’re in the minority, your dissents are even more important because in the sense that you’re laying down the breadcrumbs essentially for future lawyers to follow. How do you unpack something that’s already in place? If you go back and actually read the dissents of Clarence Thomas, who remember, did not speak at all for years Clarence Thomas is certainly active now. It was in those dissents that him and Scalia, for example, laid down the breadcrumbs for future lawyers to follow to dismantle Rove vs. Wade.

That was a battle to get to the Dobbs decision. To lay down the breadcrumbs to whitewash the Voting Rights Act. What Justice Brown Jackson is doing right now is a fascinating study with her dissents. She actually joins the dissent with Sotomayor and Kagan and this she’ll write a separate dissent to take it one more step farther. She writes in this language where she’s even moving away from traditional lawyers speak.

It’s almost like she’s having a conversation with you in her dissent. It becomes a conversational tone. She’s laying out what needs to happen to be able to overturn what her colleagues have put in place. That’s why her voice is so important. We knew she was going to be in the minority, but she’s doing exactly what people hoped that she would do.

OTP: As an historian, when do you think that America will return to the pre-Trump era of diversity?
DR. WHITEHEAD: I don’t think it will happen now. It won’t be Gen. Z. We’re now talking Gen. Alpha and Gen Beta. They will have a pathway to be able to overturn what’s being put in place right now. I’m a pessimist and sometimes optimist. I think we’re looking 50 to 75 years out at this point. The way policies are being overturned and new policies are being put in place. It’s not going to be an immediate effect in terms of turning over what Trump has put in place.

I just use Plessy vs Ferguson (separate but equal) in 1896 as an example. It took us until 1954 (Brown vs Board of Education), a whole different Supreme Court, different presidents, different house, different Senate to be able to overturn what was set in 1896. But it didn’t change in 1954. It took people going to the streets in 1963, 1965, 1967 to be able to actually implement the changes that were stated in 1954 with Brown. Some people think America moves very quickly. You have to have a wave of change with the law, policies, practices, procedures. What it didn’t change is what I call the 5th frontier and didn’t change in the hearts and minds of people.

DR. MILETSKY: The Republicans have become the party of hate. The party of anger. The party of backlash. This is much like the period after Reconstruction where you have a white backlash for years against Black folk, Black progress, ideas and laws. That’s what we’re in. We’re in a second White backlash. Our forebears got through it and so will we.

OTP:How do you advise Black Americans to get involved with the stress of dealing with this administration?
DR. MILETSKY: I think churches are also getting involved and realizing this is a crisis of confidence and heart. This requires people who can spot a problem that’s growing. Have the presence of mind. They organize, make phone calls, write your legislators. Don’t give into this normalization of fear. Like executive orders or laws. In my church, we’ve started a social action ministry. We speak out. People of good conscious are the ones that are going stop this nonsense.

OTP: Over 300,000 Black women in professional positions in the federal government, corporations and colleges suddenly lost their jobs during the Trump administration. What is this impact?
DR. WHITEHEAD: It was not lost on ASALH that 300,000 Black women lost jobs. That’s another step, because you are dismantling the Black middle class. It is happening right before us. I do know that black and brown people are really suffering right now, and I don’t think we’re suffering as much as we’re going to suffer. I think once school gets started in September, I think people are really going to see the impact of the decimation of the black middle class.

When you start talking about that number of Black women losing their jobs and what does that mean for the Black community, it’s going to be a devastating moment for us. And then we’re going to have to talk about how does the community come together to provide financial support, emotional support. We are going to have to do more things we’ve done in the past that allowed us to survive during very challenging racial and economic times.
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History will be holding our annual meeting and conference from September 24th to 28 in Atlanta focusing on “African Americans and Labor.” register, contact: www.asalh.org