Black federal workers find themselves being disproportionately targeted through a combination DEI cuts, employee buyouts and layoffs executed by the Trump administration.
President Donald Trump’s purge of federal employees has, so far, been his most wide-ranging actions taken to transform the federal government. But as Trump and administration officials make a case for why shrinking the federal “bureaucracy” is necessary to eliminate so-called government waste, advocates, current and former federal employees, and Democratic lawmakers warn that Trump’s operation to drastically reduce the federal workforce could have long-lasting impacts to the Black middle class.
The federal government is the largest employer in the United States, with just over 3 million workers. Of those workers, Black Americans make up more than 18%, despite making up 13% of the U.S. population. The over-index of Black workers can be seen within federal agencies. Data shows Black Americans make up 30% of the Education Department, 20% of the Department of Health and Human Services, and 24% of the Veterans Affairs, according to a report from NBC News. However, the news outlet found that Black workers could also be overindexing in the number of Trump job cuts carried out by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is led by billionaire Elon Musk.
For decades, federal government jobs have allowed Black Americans to enter the middle class after historically facing work discrimination in the private sector.
“This is going to supremely affect Black America, especially because the average [Black] family’s wealth is significantly lower than that is of white America,” said Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross, who noted many of Black Americans across the country “built their careers off” the federal system.
She told theGrio, “We’re talking about people who have been loyal to government, who have been loyal to not only the mission of the agencies, but also to the Constitution.” Cross said Black Americans hold a notable level of “patriotism” that is connected to the “strong civil rights fights we continue to fight every single day.”
But now, Black federal workers say they find themselves being disproportionately targeted through a combination DEI cuts, employee buyouts and layoffs executed by the Trump administration. However, some of those firings or layoffs continue to be challenged in court. One former federal employee, who spoke to theGrio anonymously to protect their safety amid increasing harassment against Black and brown federal workers as a result of a “DEI Watch List” website published by a pro-Trump and Project 2025 nonprofit, said she and countless other Black employees were “tasked to do our jobs that were approved under administrations as far back as the George W. Bush administration.”
The former federal employee, who worked in the health equity space, told theGrio that beyond the personal and professional impact on Black federal employees, she is most concerned about the impact of those job eliminations on Black communities around the nation. Though racial equity programs have been dismissed and disparaged by the Trump administration, the former federal worker noted those equity-focused programs led to more “visibility of initiatives that matter to populations most at risk.” She explained, “What’s rooted in the work that we do is helping people to understand how to reach people where they are…that’s why you have vaccine hesitancy. It’s a lack of trust.”
However, there’s no greater worry than the economic impact federal job cuts could have to the Black middle class. Pew Research data shows that the status of Black Americans in the middle class remains fragile, as they are more likely to fall out of the middle class as they often fall in the lower-tier of income. Any disruptions to the job security within the Black middle class could see progress reverted.
According to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, “The decades long progress made by Black federal employees is in serious danger of being upended in a fraction of time it took to build.” The advocacy organization added, “Federal employment opportunities provide substantial economic independence and stability for Black middle class Americans and should be protected and expanded.”
Michigan Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, who is running for governor in the 2026 election, recently told theGrio that the targeting of federal workers is “deeply personal and offensive.” Gilchrist shared, “Had Musk and Trump been in power during my dad’s 34-year career with the federal government, they could have destroyed my family’s livelihood.”
Ameshia Cross, the Democratic strategist, noted that America is being “re-envisioned by Trump,” telling theGrio, “That re-envisioning is one that takes us back, not only to the Jim Crow era, but I would also argue before that.” As Trump and Republicans in Congress also lay the groundwork to extend or make permanent Trump’s 2017 tax cuts that largely benefited wealthy Americans and corporations, Cross added, “We also have to look at how millionaires and billionaires get their wealth, it is off the backs of working-class people who never see those returns.”
Protecting the rights of Black federal workers has been decades-long work with actions taken by several U.S. presidents dating back to 1941 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order prohibiting government contractors from engaging in employment discrimination based on race, color or national origin. Those efforts were later expanded by Presidents Harry Truman, who desegregated the U.S. military, and John F. Kennedy, who established the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 established the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which more permanently gave the federal government the tool to investigate and enforce racial discrimination protections in the federal workforce.
Now that President Trump has rescinded much of those commitments and enforcement mechanisms through executive actions, Dr. Alvin Tillery, a professor of political science at Northwestern University and founder of the Alliance for Black Equality, told theGrio that he suspects the Trump administration will also move to ban the collection data on racial discrimination that is critical to the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act.
“These are all things meant to put Black people and other people of color back into a racial caste system where discrimination against them was legal,” said Tillery. “This is his first step toward that.”
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