The Re-Enslavement Agenda

By Maurice Woodson

When Donald Trump and the Republican Party pushed mass deportations of immigrant workers, the underlying assumption was clear and racist: that Black Americans would eagerly rush to fill the low-wage jobs left behind. To them, the work of scrubbing dishes, harvesting crops, and cleaning hotels was “Black work”—a twisted relic of the same thinking that once confined Black Americans to servitude.

It’s insulting. It’s enraging. And it’s entirely disconnected from the lived reality of Black America today.

Black Americans are not defined by the backbreaking labor of America’s underclass, though many worked those jobs with pride, resilience, and dignity when doors to other opportunities were slammed shut. Today, Black Americans are doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, managers, nurses, and corporate leaders. They’re creating startups, directing multimillion-dollar organizations, and running businesses that anchor communities. In many cases, they outpace white competitors in innovation, education, and leadership.

And yet, archaic racist assumptions linger. The Trump-era belief that eliminating immigrant labor would somehow “force” Black Americans back into menial work reveals a deeper agenda—an attempt to re-enslave, not physically but economically, by stripping away diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that have expanded opportunities and access.

Since 2020, Trump and his allies have waged a calculated assault on DEI. Their policies and lawsuits have already cost nearly a million Black workers their jobs, eliminating programs and positions that had supported upward mobility for years. The goal is not efficiency or fairness. It’s regression: to force Black Americans to “know their place” in a racial hierarchy designed to keep them underpaid, undervalued, and overworked.

But the plan is backfiring. Black America isn’t waiting to be boxed into “less than.” Across the country, Black workers are demanding—and creating—living wages, ownership, and futures built on self-determination. Entrepreneurship is surging in Black communities, even in the face of systemic barriers. Cooperative economics, digital innovation, and professional networks are reshaping what work looks like, refusing to bow to racist labor expectations.

There is nothing shameful about farm work, dishwashing, or cleaning. Those jobs are essential, worthy of respect, and performed with dignity by countless workers, many of whom are immigrants risking everything to provide for their families. But they are not jobs that define or confine an entire race.

The real insult is in believing they should.

Trump’s anti-DEI crusade and anti-immigrant rhetoric are two arms of the same re-enslavement agenda: one strips away opportunities at the top, the other tries to force Black Americans into a narrowed lane at the bottom. But history shows that forced lanes never hold. From slavery to Jim Crow to the corporate boardroom, Black Americans have pushed, innovated, and redefined their future on their own terms.

The re-enslavement agenda is doomed to fail. But it must be named for what it is: not just political theater, but a deliberate attack on Black progress, dignity, and freedom.

And in calling it out, we refuse to be forced backward.

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