Civil Rights, Reversed: When “Equality” Masks Inequality, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

 Civil Rights, Reversed: When “Equality” Masks Inequality

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

March 28, 2026

There is a through line connecting two arguments that, at first glance, may appear distinct but are in fact deeply aligned. One, advanced by Christopher Rufo, calls for a “colorblind” reinterpretation of civil rights law—one that would prohibit any consideration of race, even for remedial purposes. The other, emerging from more radical libertarian circles, goes further: it claims that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 itself is an illegitimate infringement on freedom of association and suggests it should be dismantled altogether. 

What links these positions is not merely their skepticism of race-conscious policy, but a shared project of narrowing—if not undoing—the legal architecture of civil rights itself. For a revealing articulation of this trajectory, see Ross Douthat’s interview with Rufo in The New York Times (Douthat, 2025).

Taken together, these positions mark not a debate over policy nuance, but a coordinated redefinition of civil rights. One narrows its meaning to the point of inversion. The other seeks its outright elimination. Both rest on the same premise: that efforts to address inequality are themselves the problem.

Let us begin with the “colorblind” argument. Its appeal lies in its simplicity: no advantages or disadvantages based on ancestry; no consideration of race in admissions, hiring, or public policy. Equality, in this view, is achieved by ignoring history and the politics of difference altogether.

Digital graphic by Angela Valenzuela

But this formulation depends on a false premise—that we are operating on a level playing field. We are not. 

What this argument ultimately masks is not neutrality, but grievance politics reframed as principle. Under the banner of “colorblind equality,” what is being advanced is a narrative of injury—that white Americans, and particularly those aligned with dominant institutional power, are now the true victims of discrimination. This is not a legal argument so much as a political one. It converts historically grounded efforts at remedy into perceived acts of injustice, recasting inclusion as exclusion and equity as unfairness. 

Digital graphic by Angela Valenzuela

In doing so, it mobilizes resentment while disavowing it, presenting grievance as constitutional fidelity. But grievance politics, however carefully dressed in the language of rights, does not resolve inequality—it obscures it. And in the current Texas context, it provides the affective fuel for policies like anti-DEI Senate Bill 17 and Senate Bill 37 where the rhetoric of neutrality legitimates the restructuring of institutions in ways that ultimately consolidate, rather than challenge, existing hierarchies.

The United States did not arrive at inequality by accident. It was produced through centuries of law and policy: enslavement, segregation, exclusion from housing and employment, and systematic disinvestment. The Jim Crow laws were not merely social customs; they were legal regimes that structured access to opportunity. The Civil Rights Act was enacted precisely to dismantle those regimes and, crucially, to enable remedies where their effects persisted.

To collapse race-conscious remedies into “racial favoritism,” as Rufo does, is to erase this history. It is to treat corrective measures as equivalent to the harms they were designed to address. This is not legal reasoning; it is what I would call policy theater—a reframing of institutional retrenchment as moral clarity.

We see the consequences of this reframing most clearly in Texas.

With SB 17, the state has effectively banned DEI initiatives across public universities, invoking the language of neutrality while triggering widespread anticipatory compliance. Programs have been dismantled, trainings canceled, and academic units reorganized in ways that extend well beyond the statute’s text. At the University of Texas at Austin, the consolidation of departments focused on race, ethnicity, and gender signals not simply administrative efficiency, but a reorientation of institutional priorities.

SB 37 builds on this foundation by weakening faculty governance and centralizing authority, reducing the capacity of academic communities to respond collectively to these changes. The result is not a neutral landscape, but a managed one—where the boundaries of permissible knowledge are increasingly shaped by political directives.

This is the paradox of the “colorblind” project: in the name of limiting the role of the state, it invites a different kind of state intervention—one that withdraws protections while actively restructuring institutions.

Digital graphic by Angela Valenzuela

The libertarian argument takes this logic to its endpoint. If any government mandate for nondiscrimination is an infringement on liberty, then civil rights law itself must be dismantled. Businesses, employers, and institutions should be free to associate—or refuse to associate—on any basis, including race.

At first glance, this may appear as a principled defense of freedom. In reality, it rests on a deeply flawed understanding of both freedom and history.

Freedom of association has never been absolute, particularly in the public sphere. Once an entity opens itself to the public—whether a restaurant, a university, or an employer—it becomes part of a broader civic infrastructure. The rules that govern that space are not arbitrary constraints; they are conditions that make participation possible.

Without such protections, “freedom” becomes asymmetrical. Those with power retain the freedom to exclude, while those without it bear the consequences.

This is not a hypothetical concern. It is a historical fact.

Prior to the Civil Rights Act, discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and education was not episodic—it was systemic. Entire populations were excluded from the basic institutions of public life. To suggest that market forces alone would have corrected these injustices is to ignore the depth and durability of structural inequality.

Here, the libertarian argument converges with the “colorblind” one. Both assume that inequality is either no longer significant or irrelevant to the question of justice. Both prioritize formal neutrality over substantive fairness. And both, in doing so, risk entrenching the very inequalities they claim to transcend.

As Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has argued, colorblind ideology functions by masking structural inequality, allowing it to persist under the guise of neutrality (Bonilla-Silva, 2018). And as Kimberlé Crenshaw reminds us, civil rights law has always been contested terrain—expanded through struggle, and vulnerable to retrenchment (Crenshaw, 1988).

What we are witnessing now is a moment of such retrenchment.

The language of civil rights is being repurposed to constrain remedy. The concept of freedom is being narrowed to exclude considerations of equity. And the institutions tasked with fostering knowledge and opportunity are being reshaped accordingly.

The stakes are not abstract.

They are visible in classrooms where faculty hesitate to engage certain topics. In departments that are merged or dissolved. In students who find fewer spaces where their histories and experiences are taken seriously as objects of study. In a broader climate where the line between policy and politics grows increasingly difficult to discern.

The question before us is not whether we believe in equality. It is what kind of equality we are willing to defend.

Digital graphic by Angela Valenzuela

Is it an equality that ignores history, overlooks power, and quietly reproduces existing hierarchies? It is an equality that recognizes the unfinished work of democracy—one that understands that justice requires more than neutrality—one that requires attending to the conditions that make inequality endure?

In Texas, this question is no longer theoretical. It is legislative. It is institutional. And it is unfolding in real time.

The answer we choose will determine not only the future of civil rights law, but the meaning of freedom itself.

References

Bonilla-Silva, E. (2018). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States (5th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.

Crenshaw, K. (1988). Race, reform, and retrenchment: Transformation and legitimation in antidiscrimination law. Harvard Law Review, 101(7), 1331–1387.

Douthat, R. (2025, March 7). The anti-D.E.I. crusader who wants to dismantle the Department of Education. The New York Times.

Professors Are Being Watched: ‘We’ve Never Seen This Much Surveillance’ by Vimal Patel, New York Times, Feb. 4, 2026

Friends:

In a recent New York Times investigation, reporter Vimal Patel documents a dramatic shift in the landscape of American higher education: professors are no longer simply teaching—they are being watched. From Texas to Florida to Indiana, new laws require syllabi to be posted in searchable public databases, while formal complaint systems and outside political groups invite students and activists to scrutinize, record, and report classroom speech.

The result, as Patel shows, is not greater intellectual diversity but a culture of surveillance. Faculty describe teaching in a climate of suspicion where vague “viewpoint diversity” laws and keyword searches create incentives for self-censorship. Some quietly maintain dual syllabi—one for public posting and one for students. Others remove words like “diversity” and “equity” under threat of course cancellation. What once unfolded within the professional norms of peer review and shared governance is increasingly subject to political oversight and viral outrage.

At stake is far more than transparency. As critics in the piece note, the pairing of publicly accessible databases with a politically charged environment transforms syllabi from tools of learning into instruments of surveillance. When classrooms are treated as arenas for ideological enforcement, the relationship between students and faculty shifts from one of mutual trust to one of guarded suspicion. The questions the article raises are urgent and unsettling: Can academic freedom endure when the lecture hall itself is deemed a suspect space? And how are these interventions—seen in Florida, Texas, and Indiana—spreading, shaping the contours of higher education across the country?

-Angela Valenzuela

Professors Are Being Watched: ‘We’ve Never Seen This Much Surveillance’

Scrutiny of university classrooms is being formalized, with new laws requiring professors to post syllabuses and tip lines for students to complain.

In Texas and elsewhere, professors must share their syllabuses online. Some faculty members worry about censorship. Callaghan O'Hare for The New York Times

by Vimal Patel | New York Times | February 4, 2026

College professors once taught free from political interference, with mostly their students and colleagues privy to their lectures and book assignments. Now, they are being watched by state officials, senior administrators and students themselves.

In Oklahoma, a student disputed an instructor’s grading decision, drawing the notice of a conservative campus group, Turning Point USA, that has long posted the names of professors criticized for bringing liberal politics into their classrooms. The instructor was removed.

In Texas, a student recorded a classroom lesson on gender identity that led to viral outrage and the instructor’s firing. Now, Texas has set up an office to take other complaints about colleges and professors.

And several states, including Texas, Ohio and Florida, have created laws requiring professors to publicly post their course outlines in searchable databases.

Ben Robinson, an Indiana University professor, teaches a class on the history of German thought. 

A student filed a complaint saying he talked about his personal politics.Credit:

Jeremy Hogan for The New York Times

The increased oversight of professors comes as conservatives expand their movement to curb what they say is a liberal tilt in university classrooms. In the last couple of years, they have found sympathetic ears in state legislatures with the power to pressure schools, and their efforts have gained momentum as the Trump administration has made overhauling the politics and culture on campuses a focus.

But all of this, some professors and free-expression groups say, is leading to a wave of censorship and self-censorship that they argue is curbing academic freedom and learning.

“We’ve never seen this much surveillance,” said John White, a University of North Florida education professor who was asked to remove words such as “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion” and “culture” from his syllabus. He said he changed his syllabus under threat of his course being canceled.

Lawmakers, and sometimes university administrators, argue that the new scrutiny and rules make for stronger universities at a time of widespread calls for more accountability.

Peter Hans, the president of the University of North Carolina system, announced in December that all 16 of its campuses, including the flagship in Chapel Hill, will create searchable databases of syllabuses starting in the fall. In a recent opinion column, he wrote that “more transparency” was the answer to increased scrutiny of higher education.

“Getting an honest, realistic look at how our faculty are trying to reach an anxious generation with depth and rigor should inspire more confidence in our public universities,” he wrote.

Conservative groups that have monitored campuses have applauded the moves. Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president of Defending Education, a group that has publicly posted college syllabuses, said more transparency will help parents and students decide which courses to take.

“Exactly what are you teaching that you’re ashamed of?” she said.

The scrutiny has been especially intense in departments like gender studies and Middle Eastern studies that touch on contested issues. Some professors say the new rules have turned teaching into a minefield in those disciplines, inviting online trolls looking for keywords and directing online mobs toward professors.

Jonathan Friedman with PEN America, a free-expression group, said in an interview that posting syllabuses so the public has a better grasp of what occurs in college classrooms may sound innocuous. But “publishing syllabi when it is coupled with this McCarthyist environment is really dangerous,” he said.

Some states, including Florida, have mandated that the syllabuses be in databases searchable by keywords. “There you see the clear aim to essentially scan and scrutinize for hot-button topics,” he said.

Professors are adapting to the new reality, in some cases looking for ways to provide only the bare minimum of information required or otherwise avoid scrutiny. One professor at a school where faculty must post their course plans said he now effectively has two syllabuses: one he will submit for public posting and another for students. He asked not to be identified for fear of retribution against his institution.

Isaac Kamola, a Trinity College professor who has studied right-wing websites, said the current surveillance follows efforts by Campus Reform and Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, which began singling out professors for their perceived liberal biases over a decade ago. Turning Point included a “watch list” of professors, leading to a torrent of critical and abusive emails to those who found themselves on it.

Now that governments and universities are involved, he said, “Everybody is walking on eggshells,” Dr. Kamola said. “Faculty are walking on eggshells. Administrators are walking on eggshells. Students are walking on eggshells. And what you get is the opposite of free speech.


Students at Florida State University. The state mandated that professors’ syllabuses be searchable by keywords.Credit. Erich Martin for The New York Times

At the annual meeting last month of the American Historical Association, the largest gathering of historians, a panel titled “Queering and Gendering Your Syllabi in an ‘Anti-Woke’ Era” explored how to convey to L.G.B.T.Q. students that the course will be welcoming while avoiding online critics trolling for keywords. A panel member, Dan Royles, a historian of modern America, said that he includes topics that indicate gay history will be covered without using words that conservatives have been trying to stamp out. For example, he notes that his class will include key events like the AIDS epidemic and the anti-gay backlash to disco.

“None of this is happening in good faith and we shouldn’t treat it as such,” Dr. Royles said during the panel. He later added, “Minimum compliance is a good guideline here." Some conservatives have pointed to efforts by left-leaning faculty and students to quell speech they disagree with — so-called “cancel culture” — that similarly sought to police and quiet right-wing speech. They say it upset the traditional balance, in which relatively conservative governing boards allowed faculties free rein over intellectual pursuits.

Professors should learn that “the lecture hall is not a place to push an agenda,” said Zachary Marschall, the editor in chief of Campus Reform.

Mr. Friedman, from PEN America, acknowledged that campuses faced free-speech threats from the left in recent years, sometimes leading to career consequences. But “nowhere in that was a serious effort to use the power of government,” he said, adding, “The stakes of this are simply much higher.”

Benjamin Robinson, an Indiana University professor, is one of those under the new microscope. In his class on the history of German thought, he touches on Kant, Hegel, Arendt and Nietzsche, connecting the thinkers’ big insights — “the aha moments” — to real-life experiences and contemporary politics.

In late 2024, a student anonymously complained, saying that Dr. Robinson — who has been vocal about his pro-Palestinian views — had spoken negatively about Israel, mentioned personal experiences like being arrested at a protest at the Israeli consulate in Chicago and “repeatedly spoke against Indiana University” during his classes.

The university found in favor of the student and reprimanded the professor, citing a recent state law meant to improve “intellectual diversity” and prevent students from being subjected to political views unrelated to the course.

The university’s provost, or top academic officer, said during a faculty meeting last month that Indiana’s Bloomington campus had received 10 complaints in 2025 under the new law.

Dr. Robinson said the vagueness of the law “is utterly chilling.”

“It establishes a hostile, suspicious relationship between faculty members and their students,” he said. Rick Van Kooten, the dean of Indiana’s liberal arts college, wrote in a letter of reprimand to Dr. Robinson that his concern was not so much the speech related to Gaza or that he brought his personal experience into a lecture. Rather, he explained, he did it repeatedly, which risks “shifting the focus away from the academic content and toward personal political narratives.”

The professor received a written warning, which he said put his employment at risk under another provision of the viewpoint diversity law, which weakens tenure and mandates periodic reviews of faculty members by trustees.

Dr. Robinson, who is Jewish, acknowledged that he referred to Israel’s conduct as a genocide in class but he insisted that he never asked students to agree with him. He said he brought up his personal experiences of activism during a discussion of Kant and the philosopher’s distinction between private and public stances.

“If I can’t appeal to people’s intuitions, what it’s like to publicly use reason versus to have a private feeling of conscience,” he said, “if I can’t evoke what that feels like, I can’t possibly teach Kant.”

Vimal Patel writes about higher education for The Times with a focus on speech and campus culture.

To Their Shock, Cubans in Florida Are Being Deported in Record Numbers Cubans had long benefited from legal privileges unavailable to immigrants from other countries. President Trump has changed that.

Friends:

There is so much going on that it's hard to keep up. I'm deeply saddened by the recent death of Alex Pretti, the most recent shooting of a Minneapolis resident killed yesterday at a protest by federal immigration agents.

As appalling as that is, I want to alert everyone to a quietly devastating shift that is unfolding in Florida. Cubans—long treated as a special humanitarian case in U.S. immigration policy—are now being deported in record numbers under President Donald Trump.

As New York Times reporter Patricia Mazzei documents, families who once believed themselves protected are being torn apart with little warning, including parents separated from breastfeeding infants and longtime residents deported over decades-old convictions. Legal pathways for Cubans have been slashed, family reunification halted, visas denied, and even pending asylum and residency cases frozen. Detention centers like the Everglades facility ominously dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” now hold Cuban migrants who never imagined they would be treated like everyone else. 

The shock runs deep through Florida’s Cuban communities—especially among elders who remember being welcomed as refugees—and fear has replaced the sense of security that once defined Cuban life in the state. 

What emerges is not simply a change in immigration enforcement, but a moral rupture: a severe policy reversal that erases history, fractures families, and leaves even lawful, working, and deeply rooted immigrants living in constant fear of disappearance. That this transformation has unfolded with the support—and in some cases the explicit rhetoric—of Marco Rubio, the nation’s most prominent Cuban American political leader, makes the rupture all the more painful and consequential.

This, together with the hardship we are witnessing in Minnesota underscores a simple truth: elections matter. Our power must be reclaimed at the ballot box.

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

To Their Shock, Cubans in Florida Are Being Deported in Record Numbers

Cubans had long benefited from legal privileges unavailable to immigrants from other countries. President Trump has changed that.

By Patricia Mazzei

New York Times,

Reporting from Miami

Jan. 19, 2026

Leer en español

Heidy Sánchez took her 17-month-old daughter to a routine check-in last April with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tampa, Fla. During the appointment, federal authorities told her that she was being detained and that her husband should pick up their daughter, who was still breastfeeding.

Two days later, Ms. Sánchez, 44, who worked as a home health aide, was deported.

Ms. Sánchez’s story quickly spread across social media, in part because she is Cuban, a group that had long been treated differently than other immigrants, even when they entered the country illegally.

REMAKING AMERICA

This story is part of a series about how President Trump is changing the country, state by state.

That has changed under President Trump.

He has repatriated more than 1,600 Cubans in 2025, according to the Cuban government. That is about double the number of Cubans who were repatriated in 2024. And in the years that Mr. Trump has been president, he has sent more Cubans back than his three predecessors.

Those numbers are greater for Cubans who were deported by land into Mexico. Some of them had been in the United States for decades and built families and businesses, but were removed because of an old criminal conviction — say, from Miami’s infamous cocaine cowboys days in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

President Trump has repatriated more than 1,600 Cubans in 2025, according to the Cuban government.Credit...Alfonso Duran for The New York Times



Little Havana in Miami.Credit...Alfonso Duran for The New York Times

Some Floridians worry that these deportations could stain the state’s proud Cuban identity.Credit...Alfonso Duran for The New York Times

Nowhere has the shock of treating Cubans like other migrants been felt more than in Florida, which was shaped in modern times by exiles of the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

Families, businesses and communities that once felt removed from or immune to immigration enforcement now must face it head-on. Some Floridians worry that these deportations could stain the state’s proud Cuban identity, turning older immigrants against newer ones.

Under Mr. Trump, many other countries saw similar increases in repatriation. The difference is that Cubans had not previously been targeted as aggressively for removal. Regular deportation flights to Cuba began in January 2017, under President Barack Obama, paused during the coronavirus pandemic and restarted in 2023.

Many Cubans have also been detained for weeks or months in a facility in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” At another nearby detention facility, Cuban detainees protested last June by writing “SOS Cuba” on their shirts and spelling out “SOS” with their bodies in the recreation yard.

Legal immigration has also been all but cut out. Mr. Trump enacted a travel ban on 19 countries, including Cuba, and ended a family reunification program. U.S. officials are rejecting visa applications, which can take years to complete. Last month, the Trump administration paused all Cuban immigration cases, including pending naturalization, residency and asylum applications.

“It’s the most sweeping rollback of Cuban migration channels since the Cold War,” said María José Espinosa, the executive director of the Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas, a nonprofit strategy organization based in Washington.

Polls suggest that most Cuban American registered voters, who tend to be Republican, continue to support Mr. Trump, said Michael J. Bustamante, an associate history professor and director of Cuban studies at the University of Miami who studies Cuban American political culture. But he said that he had noticed “a growing amount of unease” throughout the community.

Ybor City in Tampa, a historic Cuban neighborhood. Nowhere has the shock of treating Cubans like other migrants been felt more than in Florida.Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York Times

Many Cubans have also been detained for weeks or months in a facility in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York Times

Mr. Trump enacted a travel ban on 19 countries, including Cuba, and ended a family reunification program.Credit...Zack Wittman for
The New York Times

As a senator, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Trump administration’s most prominent Cuban American, often criticized Cuban immigrants who received government benefits like food stamps and Medicaid, and frequently returned to the island. Over the summer, Mr. Rubio said in a video commemorating huge anti-Communist protests in 2021 that many Cubans had found it “easier” to “abandon” the island than stay and fight the regime.

Immigration enforcement in South Florida has not involved a mass federal operation, as in Los Angeles or Chicago, and previous administrations had made changes that started to erode Cubans’ immigration privileges. Still, Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration campaign has shaken some Cubans unused to feeling at risk in the United States.

“I am scared of everything,” said Javier González, a 36-year-old salesman in the heavily Cuban city of Hialeah, northwest of Miami.

Mr. González and his family crossed the United States-Mexico border in February 2022, fleeing what he described as a threat to his life in Cuba, where he was a political dissident.

Mr. González and his wife, like hundreds of thousands of recent Cuban migrants, were released under what is known as conditional parole. That does not allow them to apply for residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act, a law that Congress passed in 1966, and leaves them vulnerable to deportation.

But Mr. González and his wife legally obtained Social Security numbers, work permits and driver’s licenses. He applied for political asylum and has a pending court date in 2028. He found work as an HVAC technician. Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to deport criminals seemed sound to him.

Then early last year, ICE officers, during regular check-ins in South Florida, started detaining Cubans with conditional parole. Now, to avoid immigration sweeps, Mr. González said he avoided unnecessary car rides and local Hispanic supermarkets. He cannot fathom the repression he might face in Cuba were he to return as a former dissident.

“Sometimes I tell myself, ‘Why do you have to feel as if you were a criminal when you are an upstanding person?’” Mr. González said. But, he added, “They can grab you and do whatever they want.”

Some older Cuban American immigrants are angry over the turnabout in circumstances. Alicia Peláez, 78, arrived in the United States as an unaccompanied minor in 1960, under Operation Pedro Pan, a secret program run by the Catholic Church with help from the State Department that resettled some 14,000 young Cubans.

Alicia Peláez, 78, arrived in the United States as an unaccompanied minor in 1960, under
Operation Pedro Pan.Credit...Alfonso Duran for The New York Times

Dominoes in Little Havana in Miami.Credit...
Alfonso Duran for The New York Times and the Miami Freedom Tower

“We were welcomed into the country,” said Ms. Peláez, who is a registered Republican, but has not voted that way in recent elections. “Now, it’s the complete opposite.”

Ms. Sánchez, who was separated from her baby and husband, remains in Havana, with a pending visa interview that will determine whether she can apply for a waiver to return to Florida.

She came to the United States through the border, presented herself to request asylum, and waited in Mexico. But she missed a hearing because of safety reasons, which resulted in a deportation order and nine months of detention. In the end, she was released in the United States because Cuba at the time did not accept her repatriation.

Once in Florida, Ms. Sánchez studied and became a nursing assistant. She met and married her husband, an American citizen, who petitioned for her residency. She underwent fertility treatments and had their daughter. Three months before her deportation, they had bought a house.

After being returned to Cuba, Ms. Sánchez said she was so upset that she had to see a psychiatrist. Her daughter, in Tampa, was no longer her cheery self.

“She didn’t laugh anymore, which really worried us,” Ms. Sánchez said.

Her husband and daughter visited Ms. Sánchez over Christmas, which lifted their spirits, she said. But she did not know how she would handle more months of separation.

Her daughter, she said, “is our joy, our happiness, our life.”

Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.

These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration, New York Times, March 7, 2025

Friends:

It's good to know the exact words that are disappearing so that they can come back once we have new leadership. It's a weird list, by the way—and very lengthy. Either Trump and DOGE are taking cues from Texas or the other way around, as an earlier published piece that I wrote titled "Monopoly Tycoons in a Game of Jenga: The Censorship of Bodies, Protest, and Speech at UT-Austin" suggests.

Whether UT-Austin or the U.S. government, no list like this should exist to begin with in the "free" world—or any other world, for that matter. And yes, we should be outraged by this since we can't transform reality unless we can name it. I love this appropriate quote by Nisargadatta Maharaj that links our very humanity to the ability to name:

"The mind craves for formulations and definitions, always eager to squeeze reality into a verbal shape."

I know that Trump's list is upsetting for a democratic (lowercase "d") mindset that respects free speech and decries censorship. It upsets me, too. However, the minute I feel my blood pressure rise, I readily take heart in the power of culture itself to overcome this trying moment.

According to cultural theorists like Gloria Anzaldúa, Emma Perez, and Homi Bhabha, culture is powerful. It can and will overcome censoriousness by emphasizing resistance, hybridity,  and the subversive potential of marginalized voices. To understand this, one must first know that, like race, ethnicity, or gender, cultures are neither fixed nor monolithic, no matter how hard one might wish this to be. Rather, they are continuously reshaped through interaction and negotiation, such as when we see this in the continual "re-mixing" of dance, music, food, and artistic expression.

This liminal, in-between space that the late Gloria Anzaldúa terms, "Nepantla," allows for new meanings and interpretations to emerge, challenging rigid, censorious policies and guidelines that seek to control discourse. 

A good example of Nepantla is the Mexican American experience that gave rise to "Spanglish," a fluid linguistic practice that blends Spanish and English. Speaking Spanglish has long been an actual skill that only Spanish-Engligh bilingual and bicultural individuals can speak. They acquired this by navigating multiple linguistic and cultural worlds simultaneously. Such adaptations exist for all languages across all contexts inevitably, historically. That's why not only there is no such thing as a "pure" language, by why those that seek it, die (e.g., Latin, Esperanto, Sanskrit, and Coptic).

Glad to see that "Chicana" and "Chicano" didn't make the list despite how progressive these terms are. The bad news is that this is so because they never made it on any website to begin with. The good news is that we never stopped being Chicana nor Chicano—or Chicanx. Not that we don't also have other identities and identifiers, but rather that we were correct in knowing from the very beginning that we Chicanas/os live entire existences in Nepantla—forever between worlds, entremundos.

Living in Nepantla gives us great skills that we should totally rely on in this current political moment. These have helped us to be better border crossers, traversing linguistic, geographical, socioeconomic, sociopolitical, and sociocultural borders—oftentimes all in the same day. And not always with ease, but criss-crossing nevertheless. 

We were made for this moment! 😁

Additionally, culture has an inherent transformative power that enables individuals and communities to reclaim their agency via storytelling, poetry, and multiple forms of artistic expression, and reinterpretation of dominant narratives. 

The larger point for U.S. society and the world is that instead of running away from culture—that is arguably moving at breakneck speed without anyone's permission—our task as the denizens and caretakers of future generations is to embrace ambiguity, irony, and an ongoing subversion of symbolic orders.

We must also be humble and willing to live with uncertainty. It's good for us all that culture resists simplification and censorship. Moreover, the power of culture, combined with the ease of technology we enjoy today is that alternative perspectives and suppressed histories will undoubtedly, if stubbornly, find a voice.

Separately, as researcher and teacher of teachers, future policymakers, and future school leaders, my main concern is that we not forget about decades of research that views teachers as the crucial link between culture and learning, especially for minoritized students. This basic understanding is ever the more important because our nation is only becoming more culturally and linguistically diverse while the teacher workforce is predominantly white.

Regardless of race, ethnicity, or color, the teacher workforce would do well to step back, reflect, and look at how racial and ethnic relations on the campus or school ground are always informed by cultural exchanges and power dynamics that shape not just student, but teacher, experiences, opportunities, and sense of belonging. This is something captured well in Vivian Paley's classic text White Teacher. Acknowledging these influences, educators can foster more diverse, inclusive, and equitable learning environments.

Do heed this core idea: Cultural exchange, reinterpretation, and hybridity weaken the grip of censorship by making it difficult for any single authority to fully control meaning. This dynamic nature of culture creates opportunities for resistance, dialogue, and the continual evolution of thought, which can and will erode the power of censorship over time.

Successful school leaders and teachers adapt their communication styles to align with students' cultural backgrounds. Theirs is ideally also, always, an ongoing project of building trust and community. 

For the rest of us, yes, let's challenge censorship and censorious policies and practices. However, let's all still live our best lives, everybody, no matter what.

Can't let any of this get us down. I know I don't have time for this and imagine you don't either. See you in Nepantla! 🩷

-Angela Valenzuela

References

Anzaldúa, G. (2004). Borderlands/la frontera. Aunt Lute Books.

Bhabha, H. K. (2012). The location of culture. Routledge.

Chávez, M. S. (2015). Let’s meet in Nepantla: The possibility of third space as a place “others” call home. Journal of Latinos and Education, 14(4), 336-344.

Paley, V. G. (2000). White teacher. Harvard University Press.

Pérez, E. (1999). The decolonial imaginary: Writing Chicanas into history. Indiana University Press.

***

These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration

By Karen Yourish, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Isaac White and Lazaro Gamio 

March 7, 2025

As President Trump seeks to purge the federal government of “woke” initiatives, agencies have flagged hundreds of words to limit or avoid, according to a compilation of government documents.

Reporting was contributed by Julian Barnes, Christopher Flavelle, Dylan Freedman, Apoorva Mandavilli, Katrina Miller and Nicholas Nehamas. See more on: U.S. Politics, Donald Trump



Notes: Some terms listed with a plus sign represent combinations of words that, when used together, acknowledge transgender people, which is not in keeping with the current federal government’s position that there are only two, immutable sexes. Any term collected above was included on at least one agency’s list, which does not necessarily imply that other agencies are also discouraged from using it.

The above terms appeared in government memos, in official and unofficial agency guidance and in other documents viewed by The New York Times. Some ordered the removal of these words from public-facing websites, or ordered the elimination of other materials (including school curricula) in which they might be included.

In other cases, federal agency managers advised caution in the terms’ usage without instituting an outright ban. Additionally, the presence of some terms was used to automatically flag for review some grant proposals and contracts that could conflict with Mr. Trump’s executive orders.

The list is most likely incomplete. More agency memos may exist than those seen by New York Times reporters, and some directives are vague or suggest what language might be impermissible without flatly stating it.

All presidential administrations change the language used in official communications to reflect their own policies. It is within their prerogative, as are amendments to or the removal of web pages, which The Times has found has already happened thousands of times in this administration.

Still, the words and phrases listed here represent a marked — and remarkable — shift in the corpus of language being used both in the federal government’s corridors of power and among its rank and file. They are an unmistakable reflection of this administration’s priorities.

For example, the Trump administration has frequently framed diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as being inherently at odds with what it has identified as “merit,” and it has argued that these initiatives have resulted in the elevation of unqualified or undeserving people. That rhetorical strategy — with its baked-in assumption of a lack of capacity in people of color, women, the disabled and other marginalized groups — has been criticized as discriminatory.

Indeed, in some cases, guidance against a term’s usage has arrived alongside directives intended to eliminate the concept itself. Federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are one example; the Gulf of Mexico is a very different one.

That shift is already apparent on hundreds of federal government websites. A New York Times analysis of pages on federal agency websites, before and after Mr. Trump took office, found that more than 250 contained evidence of deletions or amendments to words included in the above list.

Here are some notable examples. Words that have been removed are shown in red with strikethroughs, and words that have been added are in green with underlines.

Federal Aviation Administration’s job page

National Park Service’s Stonewall National Monument web page




2021 Head Start memo

Key topics page of State Department’s Office of Global Change



The total number of web pages identified by The Times as having changed is an undercount. The analysis involved searching for changes on more than 5,000 total pages, but it did not capture the entire universe of the federal government’s web presence. In addition, the pages were captured for comparison in early February, and more changes may have been made between then and now.

The president and some of his closest advisers, including Elon Musk, have frequently portrayed themselves as champions of free speech. One of the executive orders Mr. Trump signed on his first day back in office decried what it described as a pressure campaign by the Biden administration to stifle First Amendment rights “in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate,” by way of putting pressure on tech platforms. “Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society,” it continued.

Indeed, the office of the presidency carries with it a tremendous power to drive the discourse. But the pattern of vanishing words established here suggests Mr. Trump and his administration may be more interested in chilling the national conversation — at least when it comes to their own disfavored topics — than in expanding it.

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