Welcome to today’s Qualified at the Intersection. I want to talk about something serious.
When my mother was alive, she used to say, “Donald Trump wants to send us back into the field.” She said that based on things she heard him say, things I also remember.
I remember watching a rally during his first campaign in Minnesota. He looked out at the crowd and said everyone looked so great because of “the racehorse theory.” He said that out loud.1
The racehorse theory is a Nazi theory about white racial purity. And Trump talked like this all the time during his first administration. My mother had a deep concern that Donald Trump would find a way to functionally re-enslave Black people.
So she would not be surprised to hear the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, say they want to violate the 13th Amendment. Rollins said, unironically, that Medicaid recipients could replace undocumented immigrant labor in the fields, in meat processing plants, as gardeners, as babysitters.2
And who do you think which Medicaid recipients do you think would bear the brunt of that kind of labor?
Yes, Black people, who account for only 20% of Medicaid recipients. White people make up about 40%. But there are context clues that they mean Black folks.
Every time Trump talks about immigrant labor, he calls it “Black jobs.” He doesn’t say those jobs are being taken from poor white folks. He doesn’t say working-class white Americans need those jobs. No. It’s always Black people.
He only identifies fruit picking, meat processing, and gardening as Black labor.
And let me say: there is nothing dishonorable about those jobs. They represent honorable work. Black people have done that work for generations. We’ve been the gardeners, the unpaid slave labor, the caretakers of your children. We’ve walked that road. We’re not above those jobs, but they are not OUR jobs.
But there is something telling about the way he speaks of them.
So when the Secretary of Agriculture says Medicaid recipients should do that work, my mother’s prophecy comes true. It’s not hyperbole. It’s not fiction.
They have found a way to legally re-enslave Black people, through “work requirements,” through contracting partners who profit off forced placements, and push us back into what Trump clearly believes is the only place we belong.
Because when Trump talks about “Black jobs,” he doesn’t say “Black people who need jobs.” He doesn’t say “working-class Black families.” He envisions a world where Ph.D.s pick fruit. Where MBAs clean hotel toilets. That’s how he sees us.
So we are in the middle of an end run.
On one side, we’re “not qualified” and dismissed as DEI hires. Stephen Miller’s legal group is suing to push Black professionals out of workplaces. On the other side, Trump and his cronies are using DEI rhetoric as a weapon to reinstate unqualified white men, like Pete Hegseth and others, into positions of power and eject Black folks from professional spaces altogether.
And it’s working.
When I started writing Qualified, the unemployment rate for Black women was around 4.7%. It’s now 6.1%. That’s a substantial rise, and it’s driving overall Black unemployment up. This is part of a coordinated, multi-pronged attack. And it’s happening in real-time.
But because it’s happening in pieces, one here, one there, people aren’t sounding the alarm the way my mother did. But we should be alarmed. We must be.
And here’s the bitterest pill: the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke, the woman who said this out loud, is a white woman who only has that job because Black people fought, marched, bled, and died for her civil rights.
And now she stands at the podium to say: “Go back to the fields if you want medical care.”
This is not a theory. This plan is to push us out of professional spaces, cut off our income, and force us into labor. And when people say, “Start your own business,” I ask: with what capital?
They are also working to defund minority-owned business programs. They are going after any mutual aid, any form of pooling or support. Just look at the attack on the Fearless Fund. We are being hemmed in from all directions, and too many don’t know it.
It’s like Jurassic Park. You’re watching the raptor in front, but it’s the one coming from the side.
This isn’t just talk.
And with a Supreme Court that is starting to resemble the Plessy Court, the one that upheld Jim Crow segregation, it is entirely possible they would not view forced Medicaid labor as a violation of the 13th Amendment. They might argue: “Well, it’s for wages. It’s for healthcare.”
Thus completing my mother’s prophecy.
And yes, this could happen to you even with a PhD or an MBA. Their corporate “job placement” partners will place you where they want, not where your training belongs: in the field, in a factory, or in domestic service.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. This is policy.
And you know what? This past Fourth of July, I was at a gathering with other Black folks and some white friends. Everyone was relaxed, laughing and barbecuing. And I looked around and thought:
They don’t know how much danger they are in.
They don’t know how close we are to the edge.
We are balancing on the head of a needle.
Our institutions aren’t ready. The NAACP. The Urban League. They are not treating this like the existential crisis it is.
We need targeted litigation and coordinated economic resistance. We need to swarm our dollars and shut this down while we still have resources left.
Because they are moving fast to separate us from our jobs. And without generational wealth, most Black people cannot endure long-term unemployment. That makes us vulnerable to the very “work requirements” they’re designing for us, not for others.
And no matter what the Medicaid statistics say, I don’t believe white recipients will be first in line for fieldwork. I believe, as always, they’ll send 20% of Black Medicaid recipients to make up 100% of the labor.
Believe people when they tell you who they are.
This vote. This presidency. I have no patience left for people who said, “I don’t like Kamala Harris.” I have nothing for folks who said, “Both parties are the same.”
As the old folks used to say:
A hard head makes a soft ass.
Some folks are about to learn the truth of that the hard way.
This isn’t the most uplifting edition of the newsletter. But when the Secretary of Agriculture says out loud that Medicaid recipients should go back to the fields?
Yeah. We’re here.
And it’s time for some straight talk.
—
Shari Dunn
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5389919-agriculture-secretary-migrant-laborers/
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