Trump reverses decades of civil rights advances

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it illegal for employers in the United States to discriminate in “any term, condition of privilege of employment” based on “race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” The term “affirmative action” was first used in 1961 as part of a series of presidential executive orders with the foremost being President Johnson’s issuance of Executive Order 11246 in 1965 requiring all government contractors and subcontractors with contracts over $50,000 to develop written affirmative action policies and programs, now known as DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) initiatives. It is those executive orders that Donald Trump seeks to
reverse. His administration’s recent rollback efforts include a Feb. 14 letter from Craig Trainor, Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, to the Department of Education that calls for a swift end to DEI programs in schools and threatens the withdrawal of federal funds for any institution that does not comply.

Affirmative action was defined as “any measure, beyond simple termination of a discriminatory practice, adopted to correct or compensate for a past or present discrimination from recurring in the future.” Initial efforts in the late 1960’s usually meant that employers would add the terms “equal opportunity employer” to their hiring documents and job announcements but seldom took further steps to correct patterns of discrimination evident in their companies. In March of 1972 Congress amended Title VII to give the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) direct access to the courts to enforce civil rights employment laws. Legal sanctions, combined with the requirement that all employers of 100 or more employees had to file an annual hiring report with the EEOC, led many major firms and state and local governments to take positive steps to ensure that hiring was done in a fair and non-discriminatory manner.

Employer based affirmative action gradually became a combination of several activities that were initiated and practiced by many large firms and government employers throughout the United States in the early 1970’s. These employer-based efforts for equal employment opportunity focused in three broad areas:

The first, large firms and governments started extensive recruitment and specialized outreach to underutilized populations throughout their labor market areas. This process had two significant effects on hiring practices.  First, extensive recruitment added hundreds of new applicants to the employers’ labor pool requiring significantly more time to process, and secondly, a proportionately higher number of women and minority applicants participated making traditional white male hiring patterns difficult to maintain. 

 Second, firms and government agencies conducted a full review of the minimum qualifications for all jobs to ensure that only bona fide job-related requirements were used, and the hiring process was monitored to ensure that interviewing and testing procedures did not disproportionately screen out women and minorities. For example, The State California used to require that all Highway Patrol officers (CHP) had to be a minimum of five feet ten inches in height. There was no bona fide rational for this height requirement and it was discriminatory towards women and certain minorities. Current requirements for CHP officers have no height requirement but candidates are tested for physical abilities of being able to do 19 push-ups in one minute, 25 sit-ups in one minute, 300-meter run in 70 seconds, and 1.5-mile run in 15 minutes.

Third, efforts were made to eliminate overt racial and gender discriminatory practices by staff and managers and to create a positive social environment free of ethnic bias, sexual innuendo, racist statements, offensive jokes, and other cultural insensitivities. These efforts required sensitizing all employees to their own personal prejudices and offending practices. 

All large firms and government entities did not willingly proceed with affirmative action efforts in a timely or non-oppositional manner. Numerous employers resisted implementing these efforts either because of an unwillingness to commit funds or a reluctance to discontinue familiar practices. However, well publicized suits by EEOC prompted compliance by most employers, as fines became greater than the expense of implementing the changes.

It should be noted that hiring quotas based on race or gender were not then and are not now part of affirmative action employment programs in the United States. Employment selection based on race or gender quotas is a direct violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and illegal. Hiring quotas were only legal when court ordered due to prior proven discrimination of a specific class of people by a particular employer. 

A specific case that demonstrates prior proven discrimination was a 1985 suit against Lucky Stores Inc. in California. Lucky Stores was the second largest supermarket chain in the state. Between 1975 and 1983 Lucky Stores hired 3,600 employees into good paying $30,000 (equivalent to $110,000 in 2025 dollars) jobs to work in their San Leandro distribution warehouse. Only 16 women were hired during this period, when there was no legitimate reason for not hiring women. It was estimated by the court that 3,000 to 4,000 women were turned down or discouraged from applying during this period. Lucky Stores was ultimately required to implement a quota program whereby 30 percent of all new hires had to be women. The quota was limited to several years and men were still being hired during this time. By using a 30 percent quota, women as a class of people were granted relief from prior proven discrimination. 

The Reagan administration took an early lead attacking affirmative action as a quota-based program. It was during the mid-1980’s that a campaign, partially orchestrated by the conservative Heritage Foundation, was undertaken by right wing elements in the United States to conceptually link affirmative action to racial quotas. 

DEI and affirmative action have been strongly eschewed by conservatives who believed white-based urban legends that reported tales of gender and minority preferences and the passing over of better qualified white applicants for jobs or promotions. It is these urban myths that underly Donald Trump’s efforts to suppress all DEI. There is a desire by many businesses to deregulate government interference with a company’s hiring practices and Donald Trump is the ideal president to oversee such efforts. As a country we cannot allow a reversion back to Jim Crow racism and discrimination. We must stand firm in support of affirmative action and DEI efforts and resist Trump’s racist policies.