Democratic Black mayors are on the frontlines of the opposition to President Donald Trump‘s crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion, among other dizzying actions coming from the White House. Mayor Justin Bibb of Cleveland, Ohio, the new chair of the Democratic Mayors Association, tells theGrio that he and other mayors are uniquely positioned to make the case for why DEI makes the United States stronger, not weaker.
“This country was built on the backs of Black Americans when it comes to the original sin of this country in slavery,” said Mayor Bibb during a recent interview marking Black History Month. “This false argument that it’s between diversity, equity, and inclusion versus a merit-based system is an insult to many of the Black mayors I talk to and an insult to many of my residents here in Cleveland.”
On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order eliminating all DEI offices, positions and funding programs throughout the federal government. The order calls the concept of equity “illegal” and “immoral discrimination.”
Mayor Bibb said that while he and his mayoral colleagues are disheartened by the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle decades-long efforts to close racial disparities in various sectors, including employment, housing, health care, and more, he believes there is a “business case” to make as it relates to the benefits of DEI. “I think mayors, and especially Black mayors, are in a unique position to make that case,” he explained.
“We know that the biggest thing we can do to be a competitive country is to make sure that we have an equal playing field for all Americans. And that’s true in cities like Cleveland and Detroit and Nashville, all across the country,” said Bibb, 37, who became Cleveland’s youngest Black mayor in 2022.
The mayor pointed out an irony about where the Republican Party now stands on racial equity considering it was a Republican who first implemented affirmative action programs at the White House.
“People often forget that it was a Republican president in Richard Nixon who actually executed and implemented affirmative action programs at the federal government to hire Black folks across the federal government to make sure Black Americans had access to federal contracts, to make sure that Black Americans were able to be leaders and be a part of unions in this country,” Bibb explained.
There are already implications from Trump’s anti-DEI order, as several federal agencies have opted out of observing Black History Month — (BHM) despite President Trump himself hosting a BHM reception at the White House with Tiger Woods — and some private companies have opted to roll back DEI policies.
Mayor Bibb told theGrio that despite these setbacks, it’s important to actually “highlight” the companies and organizations who “doubled down on their commitment to support diversity, equity, and inclusion,” including Costco, McKinsey and his hometown basketball team, the Cleveland Cavaliers.
“We also need to continue to tell the stories and the contributions that people of color have had in this country. Folks like Dr. King, folks like Ken Chenault, we have always been at the vanguard of government, at the vanguard of culture, at the vanguard of business in this country,” he continued. “And we need to tell that story to the American people and remind them that it’s important that we always uphold our values of diversity, equity, and inclusion, because it has always been a part of the American experiment. And it’s a core value of what makes this country great.”
As a Black mayor on a shortlist of history makers himself, Bibb said he recognizes that he stands on the shoulders of history-making political giants like Carl B. Stokes, Cleveland’s first Black mayor who was elected in 1968.
“He campaigned on making sure that Black Clevelanders were a part of Cleveland’s transformation in the late 1960s. And he also became a leader in the environmental justice movement,” Mayor Bibb recalled. “When our river, the Cuyahoga River, caught on fire … in 1969, he did a nationwide pollution tour, talking about the importance of having clean waterways in urban centers across the country. And because of his legacy and that commitment, it led to the Clean Water Act, which then led to the [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency].”
But now efforts to continue the work of Mayor Stokes and others across the country to address environmental harms in Black communities are faced with challenges, as a result of Trump eliminating the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and the potential withholding of critical funding. Mayor Bibb told theGrio that the city of Cleveland “won an over $100 million grant from the EPA with a local organization called Growth Opps to install solar panels all across our city and really across the entire Midwest to support lowering energy costs for working class and middle-class Ohioans.” However, he lamented, “right now that grant is in jeopardy.”
Despite the worrying implications of what Trump’s crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion could mean for years and, perhaps, generations to come, a recent federal court ruling blocking key parts of the president’s order on DEI provides at least some hope for cities across the country. In the ruling in favor of the plaintiffs — which included the Baltimore City mayor and city council — Judge Adam B. Abelson granted a preliminary injunction last Friday. He also prohibited enforcement against publicly traded companies and large universities.
As some Black Americans struggle to process the actions of the Trump administration and are taking them quite personally, Mayor Bibb said it’s important to look to history as a guiding compass.
“Black Americans are built with the resilience and the inherent hope and optimism … We’ve been through worse times. We came out on the other side of slavery. We came out on the other side of the legacy of Jim Crow. We’ve come out on the other side of inherent racism and discrimination in this country to see monumental wins in politics and in business and the culture,” said the Cleveland mayor.
“And so I hope that we use this moment to double down on what makes us great as a people, but also we use this moment to get back up and to fight for what we believe in, fight for our values, because our ancestors are expecting us to do that.”
