Belonging and America
This blog is about professional Belonging in law firms. Yet Belonging at work doesn’t operate in a vacuum. And it’s hard to ignore the vigorous demolition project now underway all around us, as our new President rapidly seeks to transform what belonging means for America.
First is our understanding of what belongs to America. Greenland? The Panama Canal? The Gulf of Mexico? Mars?
Next is our understanding of who belongs in America. We’re now told that:
- Refugees and persons seeking asylum do not belong here;
- Non-Binary and Transgender people do not belong here, in other than their “immutable biological classification as either male or female”;
- Women in the U.S. Armed Services no longer belong in combat; and
- Despite the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, persons born in the United States do not belong here as citizens if their father was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident and their mother was here under a student, work, or tourist visa (BTW, such would apply to any future Kamala Harris).
On the other hand:
- Police officers convicted for murdering an unarmed black moped rider or covering it up belong among us, not in prison; and
- Persons convicted for beating, spraying, and tasing police officers or for other crimes during the storming of the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 also belong among us, not in prison.
Perhaps most clearly of all, we’re told that DEI itself does not belong.
The January 20, 2025 Executive Order Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing requires that every federal government agency, department, and commission must terminate “all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions (including but not limited to ‘Chief Diversity Officer’ positions); all ‘equity action plans,’ ‘equity’ actions, initiatives, or programs, ‘equity-related’ grants or contracts; and all DEI or DEIA performance requirements for employees, contractors, or grantees.”
And the January 21, 2025 Executive Order Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity expressly revokes 60 years of Executive Orders that mandated equal employment opportunity in federal employment and federal contracting. It also compels the OMB to “[e]xcise references to DEI and DEIA principles, under whatever name they may appear, from Federal acquisition, contracting, grants, and financial assistance procedures” and to “[t]erminate all ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ ‘equitable decision-making,’ ‘equitable deployment of financial and technical assistance,’ ‘advancing equity,’ and like mandates, requirements, programs, or activities, as appropriate.”
The January 21st E.O. also sets it sights on DEI in the private sector, tasking the Attorney General to submit recommendations on how to “encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI.” The Attorney General must also prepare a “strategic enforcement plan,” including:
- “specific steps or measures to deter DEI programs or principles (whether specifically denominated “DEI” or otherwise) that constitute illegal discrimination or preferences. As a part of this plan, each agency shall identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more, State and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars”;
- “[o]ther strategies to encourage the private sector to end illegal DEI discrimination and preferences and comply with all Federal civil-rights laws”;
- “[l]itigation that would be potentially appropriate for Federal lawsuits, intervention, or statements of interest”; and
- “[p]otential regulatory action and sub-regulatory guidance.”
More broadly, these E.O.s promote the canard that equal employment opportunity conflicts with merit-based hiring and advancement. Merit is a fine-sounding thing in the abstract, but it’s always been easier to see “merit” in someone in whom we readily see ourselves, in people who look just like us. And, lest we forget, the point of equal employment opportunity is to make sure that people who have merit will also have a fair and equal shot.
This blitzkreig against belonging, rapidly rolled out in the first 48 hours of the new Administration, reminded me of the definition of Belonging used in this blog:
Belonging is your sense that you are part of something greater than yourself that you value and need and that values and needs you back; it cannot be achieved without factoring in social identity and use and misuse of power.
Here we clearly see raw Presidential power, systematically used to erase or “otherize” targeted social identities and to forcibly change our fundamental understanding of who and what belongs in America.
The “shock and awe” of it all cannot be denied (indeed, shock and awe may be the point). Just imagine how this feels to those who are targeted, and who are made to feel that they do not belong. Some of those targeted may be folks within your own organization, left wondering, viscerally and fearfully, what this all means, and what comes next. They will likely also be left wondering, and watching, how your organization will respond.
In the meantime, I find some comfort in the final words in Samuel Huntington’s book American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony:
Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope.