One of the nation’s oldest civil rights organizations on Thursday declared a “state of emergency” for antidiscrimination policies, personal freedoms and Black economic advancement in response to President Donald Trump ’s upending of civil rights precedents and the federal agencies traditionally tasked with enforcing them.
The National Urban League’s annual State of Black America report accuses the federal government of being “increasingly determined to sacrifice its founding principles” and “threatening to impose a uniform education system and a homogenous workforce that sidelines anyone who doesn’t fit a narrow, exclusionary mold,” according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.
“If left unchecked,” the authors write, “they risk reversing decades of progress that have made America more dynamic, competitive, and just.”
The report, to be released Thursday at the group’s conference in Cleveland, Ohio, criticizes the administration for downsizing federal agencies and programs that enforce civil rights policies. The authors aimed to highlight what they saw as a multiyear, coordinated effort by conservative legal activists, lawmakers and media personalities to undermine civil rights policy and create a political landscape that would enable a hard-right agenda on a range of social and economic policy.
“It is not random. It is a well-funded, well-organized, well-orchestrated movement of many, many years,” said Marc Morial, president of the Urban League. “For a long time, people saw white supremacist politics and white nationalism as on the fringe of American politics. It has now become the mainstream of the American right, whose central foundation is within the Republican Party.”
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Another contributor, Rep. Yvette Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said civil rights advocates and their Democratic allies must do more to communicate with and educate people.
“When you have an administration that’s willing to take civil rights gains and call it reverse racism, then there’s a lot of work to be done to unpack that for folks,” the New York Democrat said. “I think once people understand their connection to civil rights gains, then we will be in a position to build that momentum.”
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