Look, we didn’t need any more evidence that President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI agenda is really just white supremacy reinforcement disguised as a fight against anti-white discrimination, but the commander-in-segregation-policies has just declared that high-speed internet is “racist,” presumably against white people.
Actually, according to the New York Times, it’s a law signed by President Joe Biden that aimed at expanding high-speed internet access for underserved demographics, including veterans, elderly people, disabled people, poor people and folks from rural communities. Well, when Trump read the language in the law, assuming he reads and is able to comprehend what he reads, he must have ignored all of those groups of people who could be of any race and focused in on the part where the law also seeks to to improve internet access for ethnic and racial minorities, because that was seemingly all it took for him to denounce the legislation, which he threatened to end “immediately,” as a law aimed at providing “woke handouts based on race.” He also called the law “totally unconstitutional,” which is rich for a president who recently answered “I don’t know” to a reporter who asked him if he’s obligated to uphold the Constitution, which is also a question asked by many state officials who are challenging the constitutionality of his policies in court.
From the Times:
In reality, the law barely mentions race at all, only stating that racial minorities could be covered by the program while including a nondiscrimination clause that says that individuals could not be excluded from the program “on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or disability” — language taken from the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Digital Equity Act, drafted by Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, provides $60 million in grants to states and territories to help them come up with plans to make internet access more equal, as well as $2.5 billion in grants to help put those plans into effect. Some of that funding has already been disbursed to states with approved plans — including red, rural states like Indiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa and Kansas. Hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding were approved by the Biden administration in the weeks before Mr. Trump took office, but have not yet been distributed.
Here’s the thing: Whether Trump’s misunderstanding and mischaracterization of the law is intentional or just another example of the president not understanding how literally anything works (it’s probably both), we are talking about better access to high-speed internet here. We’re not talking about reparations, college admissions, special hiring practices, or anything else that typically gets your average white and comically fragile conservative screaming about reverse Jim Crow, or whatever. We are talking about the internet — a tool that has become necessary for employment, education and a myriad of basic needs — and a law that improves access for communities that need improved access. It’s a no-brainer, and the only reason our no-brain president wants to end it “immediately” is that it might inadvertently improve conditions for Black people and people of color.
It’s the same energy the Trump administration had when it recently ended a wastewater settlement for a mostly Black Alabama town, falsely (and absurdly) calling it “environmental justice as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens,” simply because environmental racism was addressed in the reaching of the settlement. So, a mostly Black town where residents had been complaining about well-documented wastewater sanitation issues for years, but they have to continue having their health put at risk because the White House is full of white nationalists who only wish to see systemic racism addressed when it’s fictional systemic racism suffered by white people. It was a court decision that, much like Biden’s grant program, had nothing to do with DEI, but it was labeled DEI by default because Black people were being helped.
Maybe Trump and his ilk are just racist. Maybe it’s really that simple.
SEE ALSO:
Barack Obama’s Cherry Blossom Photobomb Charms The Internet
Internet-Famous Black Pianist Ignores Disgruntled White Man Who Shouts At Him: ‘Hope You Die!’
