The First Shall be Last, and the Last Shall be First: The Inversion of Racial Justice in the Second Trump Administration

The views expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights or Harvard Kennedy School. These perspectives have been presented to encourage debate on important public policy challenges.

The slew of executive orders signed by President Trump demonstrate the erection of policies designed to privilege the heirs of beneficiaries of racial oppression all the while dismantling policies designed to provide restitution to the descendants of the disinherited who were robbed by racial oppression.

“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” Matthew 20:16. As a child in South Los Angeles I remember hearing these words of Jesus, words of radical justice, proclaimed from the pulpit of my grandfather’s church in voices marked by heavy Southern accents. You see, despite my family’s church being in South Los Angeles, most of our parishioners were elderly Black folk who had moved to Los Angeles during the great migration. My grandparents and their peers fled from Jim Crow racism in places like Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi to find better economic opportunities and evade de jure racial discrimination in housing and employment. These words about the first being last, and the last being first were both paradoxical and encouraging. These words said by Jesus at the conclusion of a parable were received by ears attuned to hermeneutics of justice who translated this ancient phrase into a prophetic declaration of a brighter future. The phrase represented the blueprints for the abolition of the racial apartheid, segregation, and discrimination which exiled them from their hometowns in the deep South. As a racial justice lawyer, I carry this vision of my childhood community into my work as I currently work in many of the states where the elders of my youth were born and raised. 

           Unfortunately, the vision of my elders is currently under siege by the policies of the second Trump administration. The slew of executive orders signed by President Trump demonstrate the erection of policies designed to privilege the heirs of beneficiaries of racial oppression all the while dismantling policies designed to provide restitution to the descendants of the disinherited who were robbed by racial oppression. For example, on February 7, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14204, “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa,” and vowed to “prioritize humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program, for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.” Conversely, on January 21, 2025 President Trump issued Executive Order 14173, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,”  to purported curtail the “ dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) or ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation.”  On the one hand, the Trump administration offers white South Africans, descendants of colonizers, preferential treatment in the U.S. immigration system. These Afrikaners and their ancestors were the beneficiaries of a government whose policies robbed indigenous Black South Africans of economic, social, and political agency from 1948 to 1992. These Afrikaners still hold a disproportionate share of wealth in the country compared to their Black counterparts.[1] Conversely, the Trump administration seeks to prohibit Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs designed to remediate the legacy of racial discrimination faced by the descendants of enslaved Black Americans who were robbed of economic, social, and political agency for centuries in this country. The current vision of the second Trump administration embraces with open arms unsubstantiated allegations[2] of discrimination by the descendants of South African segregationists while rejecting the undisputed histories of racial oppression faced by descendants of enslaved Black Americans. The recent decision to prioritize white South African refugees[3] while dismantling policies designed to remediate the legacy of state sanctioned discrimination represents an inversion of racial justice and the hopes that my grandparents and their peers carried to Los Angeles over half a century ago. The current Trump administration espouses colorblindness for policies which benefit Black Americans while adopting explicit racial preferences for the descendants of white segregationists in South Africa. We must call out these contradictions and the ways in which they serve to revitalize state sanctioned racial preferences, harkening to eras of state sanctioned white supremacy. We must remember that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion measures would never have been needed if my enslaved Black ancestors weren’t first the recipients of state sanctioned white social homogeneity, racialized economic inequality and racial exclusion. Under the second Trump administration, the first being last and the last being made first may be delayed but I still have hope in another childhood bible verse: “Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low…”  Isaiah 40:4. One day the playing field will truly be leveled, but until then I will keep shoveling dirt and hopefully make a small dent in the mountains of racial injustice whose weight the disinherited has borne for far too long.