Weeks ago, I turned 44. My birthday arrived during one of the weightiest public comment periods in U.S. racial and gender history.
Between July 24 and August 24, the public submitted 2,856 comments to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in response to its proposal to no longer require employers to preserve and submit demographic workforce data.
The weight of a 60-year-old requirement—followed by 12 Republican and Democratic administrations—to be banned.
The weight of the requirement’s mother—the Civil Rights Act of 1964—to be cast away.
The weight of workplace racism and sexism to be concealed again. The weight of witnessing this regime make America 1963 again.
Racism and sexism are old societal cancers. Without the ability to mass-screen the American workforce each year for the tumors of racial and gender inequities, those malignancies swell and spread unrecognized, undiagnosed, untreated, as they did in 1963. Racist and sexist practices will end up killing off more high-risk groups, like Black workers, from the most coveted positions. And those groups will be blamed for their own passing away. The remaining few will be hounded as “DEI hires” and lynched by the media.
And it would have all been preventable.
When I turned 44 last month, I thought about recommendations from the American Cancer Society. A colonoscopy for women and men at age 45. Annual mammograms for women at age 45. Potential screening for prostate cancer at age 45 for higher-risk men like me (My father had prostate cancer before age 65, and I’m Black).
Between 1975 and 2020, cancer screenings averted 25% of breast cancer deaths, 79% of colorectal cancer deaths, and 56% of prostate cancer deaths, according to a study.
Imagine if the Trump administration banned these screenings, if the regime had that power. Imagine if the regime claimed health care providers would now only examine patients when they complain about symptoms. (Not trying to give Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, another lethal idea. Just following the analogy.)
Imagine the outrage of American families.
My partner is living with stage IV breast cancer. I survived stage IV colorectal cancer. Ma and Dad both survived cancer due to early detection. I suspect nearly every American extended family has been impacted by cancer. We can imagine the mass outrage because we can imagine the mass recognition of the harm to come from ending mass cancer screenings.
Imagine the U.S. towns rocked by demonstrations. The round-the-clock news coverage. The experts evidencing the devastating impact on high-risk groups. On you. On me. On the people we love.
Well, experts have been evidencing the devastating impact of the EEOC’s plan to end mass demographic workplace screenings on high-risk groups. On you, if you are a woman or person of color. On me. On the women and people of color we love. On even White men, as studies show homogeneous teams fail to outperform or innovate as much as diverse teams.
Almost every American family has likely experienced workplace racism or sexism. But there has not been round-the-clock news coverage about the EEOC’s rule change. U.S. towns are not rocking with demonstrations. Like the people who died of cancer centuries ago and often didn’t know, our livelihoods are being increasingly killed by racism and sexism and often we don’t know.
That is the plan. Mandated ignorance is the regime’s plan. The second step in the racist authoritarian’s playbook: “Inequity data should be ignored,” as I listed months before the EEOC’s rule change. This is the latest and perhaps greatest effort of the regime to ban racial and gender data collection in government reports. Any day now, Trump’s EEOC is set to announce it’s finalizing the rule change.
On June 18, 1964, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, opposed the Civil Rights Act and the EEOC using the same logic as Trump’s EEOC. “I am unalterably opposed to discrimination of any sort,” but the “provisions” of this bill “fly in the face of the Constitution,” Goldwater said. The first “reason” Trump’s EEOC provided to stop the data reporting requirement: a “conflict” with the “U.S. Constitution.”
Trump’s EEOC also repackaged the arguments of Jim Crow segregationists in the Senate who filibustered the civil rights bill for 60 working days—with Goldwater’s support—and opposed the EEOC’s creation. South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond called the bill “the most radical and revolutionary legislation since the Reconstruction Acts of nearly a century ago.” The bill “denies many constitutional and traditional due process safeguards,” he said, and later mocked “the euphemistic title of ‘Equal Employment Opportunities.’”
Earlier that day, Thurmond’s ally, Mississippi Sen. John Stennis, argued that, due to the bill, “The employees will feel that the Government man got them the job.” (An ancestor of today’s “DEI hire.”)
The bill passed the Senate on June 19, 1964. Section 709 (c) stipulated employers “shall (1) make and keep such records relevant to the determinations of whether unlawful employment practices have been or are being committed, (2) preserve such records for such periods, and (3) make such reports therefrom.”
In 1966, the EEOC debuted this reporting requirement. At the time, newspapers had long separated “help wanted” advertisements for women and men, until the EEOC ended this sexist practice. But many of the EEOC’s initial findings involved “facially neutral hiring and employment systems” that the data showed excluded certain workers, particularly Black workers. These hiring systems remain in new forms, like today’s AI screening tools biased against Black and Asian job candidates.
Imagine if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. contended that cancer screenings “were born of their time” and no longer needed. And he pointed to the decline in cancer deaths since the screenings were introduced.
Trump’s EEOC claimed mass workforce data collection programs “were born of their time” and no longer necessary. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was “passed to address entrenched and widespread discriminatory practices that permeated American workplaces,” Trump’s EEOC explained. Ironically, racist and sexist practices have probably permeated more workplaces since the regime returned to power.
The financial well-being of Black adults declined in 2025, according to the Federal Reserve. Black college-educated adults had the sharpest decline in financial security last year. Despite comprising 14.1% of the woman workforce, Black women composed 54.7% of all women’s job losses from January to August 2025, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. The regime’s mass firings of federal workers only explained a small part of these job losses.
The regime is like a quack doctor striving to eliminate the empirical proof that his sham narratives and practices allowed workplace sexism and racism to spread and kill off high-risk groups from the most coveted positions and workplaces.
These sham narratives and practices? Framing the tumors of racial and gender inequity as healthy—no need to get those symptoms checked out and treated. Delegitimizing and banning existing effective treatments, like equity programs. Playing up how uncomfortable and targeted these treatments are—since when were treatments not targeted and uncomfortable? Smearing antiracist and feminist experts striving to heal workplaces of racism and sexism as grifters attempting to harm White people and men.
Project 2025 recommended the regime work with Congress to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to end the collection of workplace demographic data. Jonathan Berry, now the Solicitor of Labor at Trump’s Department of Labor, made this recommendation.
And yet, Trump’s EEOC is bypassing Congress. Republican politicians have let their hand-picked Supreme Court justices and agency leaders—who don’t face voters—do this racist and sexist work.
And if you let Trump’s EEOC tell it, stopping this data collection would prevent “discrimination” because employers are being encouraged “to engage in discrimination to avoid potential EEOC enforcement actions or to address perceived inequitable outcomes.” Imagine if Kennedy said stopping cancer screenings would prevent cancer because medical providers are being encouraged to diagnose and treat cancer.
The EEOC maintained that since some racial and ethnic categories have changed over time, that means they “are largely arbitrary.” And, identifying people by race and gender causes them to be viewed as “having inherent qualities.” And, the only way to stop “promoting racial stereotyping” is to ban this data collection (In fact, banning data collection allows racial disparities to swell untreated. People often use racist stereotypes to explain racial disparities). Imagine if Kennedy argued that since the categories of people recommended for cancer screenings have changed over time, that means they “are largely arbitrary,” dismissing the evolving research.
Revisions to racial and ethnic categories in recent decades reflect evolving research as well. And if people view certain racial groups as having inherent qualities, then they are being racist. Racist policies are the parents of racist ideas, and racist ideas are the parents of race. Collecting racial data must be predicated on the fact that race is not real, but racist policies and racial disparities are. And since racist policies and racial disparities are real, racial data collection is required to recognize and combat them.
But Trump’s EEOC opposes the “impermissible focus on ‘minorities’ and women.” Trump’s EEOC has focused on complaints made by White men, as if they are at the highest risk of facing workplace racism and sexism. In the EEOC’s latest batch of data (2023), White men sat in 57 percent of all executive-level roles despite comprising 29 percent of the workforce.
Still, in December, EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas asked in a video post on social media, “Are you a White male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws.” Imagine Kennedy taking to social media to ask, “Are you a male who has experienced discrimination for not being recommended for breast cancer screenings on account of your sex?”
Imagine if Kennedy argued that focusing cancer prevention programs on higher-risk groups “discriminated” against lower-risk groups. And argued that screening people aged 45 and older “discriminated” against younger people (when 91.6 % of all cancers are diagnosed in people aged 45 and older). And argued that screening women for breast cancer “discriminates” against men (when for every single man who dies from breast cancer, about 83 women die from breast cancer). And argued that testing Black men earlier for prostate cancer “discriminates” against White men (when Black men die at more than twice the rate of White men).
Bottom line: If Trump makes America 1963 again, then either White men are securing the most coveted jobs—as they largely did in 1963—or they are experiencing “discrimination.” And Trump’s 1963—like Thurmond’s 1963—won’t be for all White men. Only those who share Trump’s politics or wealth.
The rest of us will be holding the weight of history, struggling to know, without the data, all we’ve lost.
