David Smith
10–13 minutes
A day after Donald Trump announced that he was firing Lisa Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, the White House proudly released a photo. It showed Trump, his cabinet and other officials giving a thumbs-up. Of the 24 people in the Oval Office, only one was Black.
For those who have studied the US president’s long and troubling history of racism, the two events were more than mere coincidence. They were indicative of a man who has recently brought white nationalist perspectives from the margins back to the mainstream.
Trump has vehemently denied that he is a racist, pointing to a modest increase in support among African American voters in last year’s election, when his opponent was a Black woman. But critics suggest that his effort to oust Cook fits a pattern of purging diverse voices from the higher ranks of leadership.
“He chose to fire her out of all the governors because she’s a Black woman,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the organisation Black Voters Matter. “His goal is to get control of the Federal Reserve and for that to no longer be an autonomous, independent body. But what he does recognise is that in America everything is about race. It is as lethal as a nuclear bomb.”
Cook taught economics and international relations at Michigan State University, and was previously on the faculty of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She was a Marshall scholar who received degrees from Oxford University and Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta.
Cook dedicated much of her scholarship to examining how racial discrimination and targeted violence created barriers to economic advancement for African Americans. She also advised the Nigerian and Rwandan governments on banking reforms and economic development.
In 2022 she was confirmed to the Fed’s board of governors by the Senate in a party-line vote. Republicans argued that she was unqualified and found her research overly focused on race; Democrats brushed off such critiques as unfounded.
On Monday, Trump said he fired Cook after the director of a housing regulatory agency, whom the president appointed, alleged that she committed mortgage fraud. She refused to resign and filed a lawsuit claiming that Trump has no power to remove her from office.
Trump’s order aligned with his effort to expand his power across once independent parts of the federal government and broader economy and culture. It also marked another potential high-profile removal of a Black leader from the federal government amid Trump’s broader crusade against diversity and inclusion policies.
Brown observed: “He knows that racism and sexism is a very effective tool to cast doubt and that’s the pathway. Lisa Cook isn’t even the chair of the board. So why would you pick her?
“He picked her because he is betting that, in an industry that is probably 90% or more white male, his odds of removing her are greater than the odds for removing others from the board. That in itself is rooted in the history and how insidious racism is built into the fabric of how we see people of colour in this country.”
Over the past seven months Trump has targeted other prominent Black leaders. He fired Gen Charles Q Brown Jr, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, the second Black man to serve in the position. Brown had delivered speeches about racial discrimination and issued policies that promoted diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes in the military.
The president dismissed Carla Hayden, the first Black person to serve as librarian of Congress, after a conservative advocacy organisation accused her of being a “radical”. He ousted Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black woman to sit on the National Labor Relations Board, which hears private-sector labour disputes.
Donald Trump’s cabinet meets on Tuesday. In contrast to Joe Biden’s historically diverse cabinet, Trump’s has only one Black member. Photograph: Abaca/Shutterstock
Trump’s critics argue that his life and career have given succour to white supremacists. In 1973 he and his father were sued for housing discrimination in New York; in 1989 he took out full-page ads in several newspapers calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, Black and Latino youths who were later exonerated.
Trump broke through in national politics with the “birther” conspiracy theory, falsely claiming that Barack Obama was not born in the US and therefore ineligible to be president. After a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides”.
He has reportedly described Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries”, has called Covid-19 the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu”, and, on the campaign trail last year, said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country”, echoing the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has imposed a travel ban on many of the world’s poorest countries even as the US granted refugee status to about 50 white South Africans, claiming they were victims of racial persecution and “white genocide”.
He issued executive orders to curb DEI initiatives in the federal government and even sought to blame DEI for an air crash. He is seeking to purge “divisive, race-centered ideology” from Smithsonian Institution museums, suggesting that there is too much focus on “how bad Slavery was”.
The attempt to fire Cook is the most dubious move yet, prompting an outcry from Democrats and civil rights groups, who pointed to her gender and race as vital factors.
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Congresswoman Nanette Barragán of California posted on the X social media platform: “If you haven’t noticed yet – this is a disturbing pattern for Trump. Fire or drive out smart, competent women, in particular women of color, from high ranking positions and fill many of these positions with white men.”
Derrick Johnson, president and chief executive of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said: “Dr Cook’s credentials outshine Trump’s entire cabinet. This president simply cannot stomach Black excellence when it reveals his failures, particularly those in positions of power. In reality, this is about bending the Federal Reserve to Trump’s will, and he’s using racism as a tool to do it.”
But Trump’s actions are being cheered on by white nationalists. Far-right groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have been quoted as saying that they no longer need to take to the streets to demonstrate because the president has so comprehensively adopted their talking points and embraced their agenda.
Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist, observed: “When you have white supremacists who are holding key roles in government and you have leaders in this country who come and play footsie to their drumbeat they don’t have to resist because what they want is laid out for them in the form of a buffet.”
Trump has been quick to point to Black allies when politically expedient, such as Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, the representative Byron Donalds of Florida and Alveda King, a niece of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King. But critics note there is no guarantee this will translate to policies that address racial injustice.
Nor has it manifested in significant representation at the heart of government. Towards the end of the first Trump presidency, the Washington Post identified 59 people who had held cabinet positions or served in top White House jobs. Only seven were people of colour and only one – the housing secretary, Ben Carson – was Black.
In his second term, Trump has picked only one Black person to serve in his cabinet: Scott Turner, the secretary of housing and urban development. Joe Biden, by contrast, appointed the most diverse cabinet in history with more women and people of colour than any that had come before.
Seawright said: “We went from generational progress to generational rollback, and what this president and this administration has done in seven months could take 70 years at least to replenish. It should be a friendly reminder for all people, but particularly African Americans, that all progress is not permanent.”
Trump’s cabinet includes Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host with no experience of running a major organisation, at the Pentagon; Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic, at the health department; and Linda McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive, at the education department. The White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, has associated with white nationalist thinkers and groups and is the architect of his hardline immigration policy.
Rashad Robinson, a civil rights leader and former president of the group Color of Change, added: “We live in a very diverse country, a country with many different types of people that come from many different backgrounds, and the president exhibits his values by who he puts in office.
“This is not simply that Donald Trump has put only one Black person in his cabinet. It’s that Donald Trump has gone out of his way to find some of the most unqualified and ill-equipped people to put in those jobs as a way to actually avoid having to put Black people in his cabinet.”
For Brown, the voting rights activist, Trump’s cabinet picks demonstrate that he is “as racist as hell”. She added: “Quite frankly, I’m glad he doesn’t have a whole lot of Black people in his cabinet because that would be deeply embarrassing to me. Who would work in that mess?”