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apartheid
How to Use 197 Forbidden 'Woke' Words and Still Get a Grant From the Trump-Musk Government
A grant proposal concerning reparations for the descendants of slave owners, submitted in good faith to Elon Musk during this cruel and unusual time of oppressive wokeness.
Mar 27, 2025
Dear Elon,
On behalf of the Diversified Organization of Grant Enablers, (the original DOGE), thank you for ordering the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation to flag proposals that contain certain oppressive“woke” words you don’t like. We’re not wild about them either.
Forbes leaked the list of the 197 terms, rendered here in bold italics. (And kudos, dear sir, for not banning George Carlin’s seven dirty words!)
BTW, the biased media is inflating the number of forbidden words, trying to make you look bad. For example, it counts as individual terms diverse, diverse backgrounds, diverse communities, diverse community, diverse group, diverse groups, diversified, diversify,diversifying, and diversity. Fake news, is it not?
But we have a suggestion. Rather than ban them, giving the liberals something easy to roast you with, why not put them to work in an anti-woke context? That’s what our professional team of DOGE grant writers has done in a model culturally appropriate proposal. You will love it, even though it uses just about all the barred terms. (Sorry, we failed to squeeze in people + uterus.)
We don’t want to brag, but this can’t-miss proposal will shake up the lunatic left. You will want to immediately fund it, even while chain-sawing so many others into sawdust. And when you spread the word on X, your popularity with anti-woke key groupsis going to skyrocket! Even Steve Bannon will snuggle up to you.
Thanks for purifying our thoughts and bringing your antiracist Afrikaner sensibility to our great nation.
Proposal For Reparations for the Descendants of Slave Owners (DSO)
Britain abolished slavery in 1833 and provided former slave owners 20 million British pounds (the equivalent today of $22.1 billion US dollars) as compensation. Racial justicedemands a similar response from the U.S. federal government for the descendants of U.S. slave owners.
In South Africa today, oppressedwhite farmers face land confiscation without compensation from its BIPOC government. Slave owners in the U.S. were victims of a similar injustice after the Civil War, punished for their identity. Without reparations, which have been too long denied, their descendants are victimized again generation after generation.
To promote a truly inclusive society based on equity, equality,and diversityfor all, we must recognize and celebrate our cultural differences. While we are a nation of immigrants, we also are a nation of slaveowners!
For too long implicit bias and hate speechhave been used against those, due to no fault of their own, who were born into slave-owning families. These key populations, labeled DSO here, should be considered at riskminorities. They helped create our national identityand contributed significantly to our cultural heritage. Racism in America would have little meaning without them.
Our proposal is a multicultural exploration ofrace and ethnicityamong the slave-owning class, and their extended contact with indigenous communities and the Hispanic minorityalong the Gulf of Mexico. These marginalized non-white groups, including males and females, also owned slaves and suffered losses due to emancipation.
We must put aside our stereotypesabout the plantation class. This underappreciatedand undervaluedpopulation is difficult to analyze due to our own unconscious bias against all aspects of slavery. The DSO have lost their voice and its once fearsome power, since some ancestors of slaveowners are burdened by a crippling sense of guilt and so are underrepresented in modern political discourse.
To advocate for reparations for DSO members is not to whitewash their faults. Slave-owners promoted systemic racism, segregation, and white privilege— even for white non-slave-owners— but we should acknowledge their genuine sense of belongingformed though the intersectionalityof socioculturaland socioeconomic factors in plantation society.
Even though white womenwere systematically placed on a pedestal, they were never excluded from institutionalslave-owning power. They adored their narrow gender identity. These women of high status were never marginalizedby aggressive feminists. They were totally at ease with being biologically female and with the genderthey were assigned at birth.
Also, we can find no transgenderand transexualmembers of slave-owning society and the DSO. Women did not run domestic plantation life in order to overcome disparities or spew meaningless pronounsin polite society. This wholesome tradition has been carried on by the DSO and provides another reason for just compensation.
A key, but seldom discussed factor, is the gender-based violence suffered at the hands of marauding Yankee soldiers. The DSO may deserve additional compensation for thetrauma suffered as well as any resulting mental disabilities of their forebearers.
Meanwhile, slave-owning men were real men, biologically maleswith no wanton legacy of men having sex with men(MSM). And please forgive us for a personal judgement: These god-fearing slaveowners left their descendants with not the faintest expressions of non-binary awareness, thank goodness.
Because of the uncompensated destruction of the slave-holding structures, we regret to report that more than a few white plantation women became commercial sex workers in order to survive the marauding armies. The anguish and mental healthproblems facing white plantation prostitutes should be considered when awarding reparations. While it is too late to do something for them, our unconscious bias about sex should not distract us from a path of justice for their descendants.
Another important thread connects the slave owners to the climate crisisthey and their descendants experienced. Monocrops repeatedly planted to raise cash in trade depleted the soil on Southern farms, creating pollution in their drinking water and a more generally degraded environmental quality. Westward expansion of slavery took more and more land from Native American tribes. Without climate scienceto inform them, effective solutions were missed and succeeding generations paid the price. We compensate farmers today for crop failures and tariff losses, why not do the same for the DSO including tribalDSO?
We hope that grant reviewers will look beyond their built-in anti-slaveowner confirmation bias, as well as their preconceived notions about race and ethnicity. It’s time to hone our cultural sensitivity and embrace a true cultural diversity, one that includes both descendants of slaves and slave owners. Our all-inclusive survey will make plain the biases we hold against this DSO class.
Since the Civil War, polarizationhas led to oppression and vilification of our great but marginalizedplantation heritage. This injustice can only be rectified by fair and equitablecompensation for the undervalued and underserved,whose relatives had their Blackhuman capital stripped from them.
Our project asks only that we adjust our orientation and increase the diversityof those considered the victimsof slavery. We must foster inclusiveness, devising just and equitable compensation programs for all descendants of slavery, including the DSO.
Social justice requires that we overcome our own prejudices and promote diversityof thought. By doing so, we all should recognize that slave-owning descendants too should be considered among our most vulnerable populations, entitled to equal opportunities when reparations are considered.
Now is the time to rectify the historical inequity faced by the DSO.
Now is the time to enhance the diversity of reparations recipients and the way they are viewed.
Now is the time to fund our bold proposal which strives, like no other, to bring community equity to all our people.
Cc: Rober Kennedy Jr., J.D. Vance, and the descendants of Robert E. Lee
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South African Diplomat Called a 'Disgrace' by Marco Rubio, Returns Home a Hero
The Trump administration's ouster of South Africa's Ambassador to the U.S. Ebrahim Rasool was certainly meant to warn other countries about the consequences of challenging the United States—but it may well backfire.
Mar 24, 2025
On March 14, Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly berated South Africa’s Ambassador to the U.S. Ebrahim Rasool in a most undiplomatic tweet, writing: “South Africa's Ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country. Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS. We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA.” On Sunday, March 23, the South African ambassador returned home to a hero’s welcome.
The United States lost a seasoned South African representative who had previously served as ambassador under President Obama, was a member of South Africa’s National Assembly, and was active (and imprisoned) during his country’s anti-apartheid struggle. And ginning up the conflict with a country that has such tremendous international standing may prove to be a bad move for President Trump.
Trump administration was incensed by remarks the ambassador had made earlier that week when speaking, via video, at a South Africa conference. He commented on the MAGA movement, saying that it is driven by white supremacy and is a response to the growing demographic diversity in the United States. The ambassador also expressed concern about the movement’s global reach, including support from Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and has connections with extreme right movements overseas. The ambassador called his nation, South Africa, “the historical antidote to supremacism.”
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the decision to expel Rasool was “regrettable” and that “South Africa remains committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship with the United States.”
Ambassador Rasool, who says he has no regrets, was greeted by a massive crowd as he landed in Cape Town.
Rasool’s expulsion is only the latest manifestation of U.S. displeasure with South Africa. On March 17, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce listed a litany of issues the U.S. has with South Africa, including its “unjust land appropriations law”; its growing relationship with Russia and Iran; and the fact that it accused Israel of genocide in the International Court of Justice. Bruce denounced the ambassador’s lack of decorum, which she called obscene, and painted South Africa as a country whose policies make the United States and the entire world less safe.
This is in stark contrast to the view of South Africa from the Global South, where the African nation’s foreign policy is often seen as exemplary. Since the end of apartheid in 1994, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has embraced a non-aligned foreign policy and has tried to resist pressure from Western countries. South Africa has also continued to show appreciation for nations such as Russia, Cuba and Iran that supported its anti-apartheid struggle.
South Africa’s non-aligned stance became a bone of contention with the Biden administration after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The United States pushed the world community to condemn Russia, but South Africa, along with many African nations, refused to take sides. South Africa has long had warm relations with Russia, dating back to the days when the Soviet Union trained and supported many of the ANC freedom fighters. Instead of condemning Russia, South Africa led a group of six African nations to advocate for negotiations to end the Russia/Ukraine conflict.
But it was Israel’s war on Gaza that placed the United States and South Africa on a collision course. Far from supporting the U.S. ally, Israel, South Africa accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians at the International Court of Justice. The Biden administration denounced the case as “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” but the case triggered an avalanche of global support for South Africa’s principled stand. Dr. Haidar Eid, a Palestinian academic from Gaza, reflected world opinion when he said said, “By bravely standing up for what is right and taking Israel to the ICJ, South Africa showed us that another world is possible: a world where no state is above the law, most heinous crimes like genocide and apartheid are never accepted and the peoples of the world stand together shoulder to shoulder against injustice. Thank You, South Africa.”
When President Trump regained the White House, he not only condemned South Africa for its ICJ case against Israel, but he became embroiled in a policy totally internal to the African nation. Most likely egged on by Elon Musk, Trump denounced South Africa’s Expropriation Act of 2025, which established a program to expropriate unused agricultural land that White owners refused to sell to Black purchasers. White South Africans (Afrikaners) controlled the oppressive apartheid government until it was overthrown in 1994, and Afrikaners continue to own the vast majority of the wealth (the typical Black household owns 5 per cent of the wealth held by the typical White household). But Trump called the White population “racially disfavored landowners” and shockingly, not only punished South Africa by cutting off U.S. aid, but also promoted “the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination.” While shutting U.S. doors to immigrants of color from around the world, Trump laid out the red carpet for the white Africaners. Little wonder Ambassador Rasool was moved to call the Trump administration a leader in white supremacy.
Trump’s decision to cut aid to South Africa coincides with the administration’s gutting of US AID, which has had a disastrous effect on South Africans suffering from HIV/AIDS. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was a U.S. program launched in 2003 by President Bush to provide life-saving HIV care and treatment. South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world, and the U.S. had contributed 17 percent of the nation’s $400 million HIV budget. This funding supported the anti-retroviral medication for HIV treatment of 5.5 million people annually. According to some estimates, the aid freeze could cause over half a million deaths in South Africa over the next decade.
In terms of the larger South African economy and possible fallout from U.S. cuts, the United States is South Africa’s second-largest export market (China is number one), with $14.7 billion worth of goods exported to the United States in 2024. South Africa also benefits from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a preferential trade program providing duty-free access to U.S. markets. If the Trump administration removes South Africa from AGOA eligibility, its exports will surely plummet.
To make matters worse, this week the U.S. stopped the disbursement of $2.6 billion to South Africa through the World Bank’s Climate Investment Fund, monies that are supposed to help South Africa transition from coal to cleaner energy sources.
The Trump administration’s tough stance on South Africa is certainly meant to warn other countries about the consequences of challenging the United States. But Trump’s actions may well backfire. In response to the cut-off in aid and trade, 100 Parliamentarians from around the world penned a letter calling on their own governments to support South Africa’s public health programs and to expand new avenues for international trade as a sign of “international solidarity with the South African people as they face this assault on their right to self-determination.” South Africa is also a key player in the growing alliance of BRICs, a grouping of large countries trying to counter the economic clout of the United States. The BRICs nations now represent roughly 45 percent of the world’s populations and 35 percent of global GDP.
Trump’s expulsion and threats have also had a unifying effect inside South Africa. Ambassador Rasool, who says he has no regrets, was greeted by a massive crowd as he landed in Cape Town. For the people of South Africa and worldwide who oppose white supremacy, Rasool is not a disgraced ambassador. He is a hero.
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Why the Rest of the World Should Boycott Trump’s America
Trump is effectively boycotting the world by withdrawing from international institutions and violating international norms. The world should return the favor.
Mar 24, 2025
The Trump administration objected so strenuously to a recent speech by South Africa’s ambassador that it expelled him from the United States.
What did Ebrahim Rasool say that was so objectionable? Honestly, the speech he made at a webinar sponsored by a South African research institute was rather boring.
But embedded in his remarks is this observation: “Donald Trump is launching… an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilizing a supremacism against the incumbency at home.”
Don’t come here, don’t invest here, don’t buy from Tesla or Amazon or any of the other corporations that have kissed Trump’s ring.
This sentence requires a bit of interpretation. The “incumbency” in this case is the federal bureaucracy; the diversity, equity, and Inclusion programs in government and business; anti-racism initiatives more generally; and even elements of the Republican Party that haven’t been Trumpified. “Supremacism,” meanwhile, is white supremacy.
Essentially, the ambassador was pointing out that Trump and MAGA have launched a campaign to advance white supremacy in a country where the civil rights movement achieved enough progress to qualify today as the mainstream.
This isn’t a wild accusation. Among all the racist actions of the current administration, perhaps the most outrageous is Trump’s promise to expedite American citizenship for white Afrikaaners from South Africa that, Trump insists, are experiencing discrimination.
So, while the administration is deporting Black and Brown people by the thousands and trying to claw back birthright citizenship from even more people of color, it is offering to fast-track citizenship for a bunch of white people from Africa. This is not an Onion headline. It’s white nationalism. Even if Afrikaaners were experiencing discrimination in South Africa—which they’re not—privileging their entrance into the United States over Afghans terrified of returning to Taliban rule, Haitians escaping social collapse, or Sudanese fleeing civil war would still count as racist.
Trump’s overtures to the Afrikaaners are also a startling reversion of U.S. policy to the apartheid-friendly positions of the 1980s, when the Reagan administration bucked world opinion by maintaining strong relations with the white minority regime in South Africa. At that time, the anti-apartheid movement in that country was calling on the world to boycott, sanction, and divest from (BDS) South Africa.
Now that a white nationalist has (again) become president of the United States, it’s time to take inspiration from the anti-apartheid movement. As the Trump administration imposes restrictions on travel from 43 countries to the United States, as it slaps tariffs against allies and adversaries alike, as it cozies up to autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as it dismantles federal programs designed to help people in need all over the world, as it withdraws from the Paris climate accord and the United Nations Human Rights Council, as it illegally deports thousands of people and sends some of them to horrific prisons in El Salvador, as it voices support for far-right, neo-Nazi political parties, as it threatens to seize Greenland and absorb Canada, it’s time to call on the world to treat this country as a pariah.
András Schiff has just done that. The great pianist announced this week that he has cancelled upcoming engagements and will not perform in the United States. This comes after he has refused to play in Russia and his native Hungary as well. “Maybe it’s a drop in the ocean; I’m not expecting many musicians to follow,” Schiff said. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s for my own conscience. In history, one has to react or not to react.”
Such a boycott should not be a permanent shunning but a specific response to policies that are in clear violation of international law and universal values of democracy and human rights. Yes, the United States has been in violation of such principles in the past. But this time, the Trump administration has crossed so many lines that it threatens to overthrow the very system of international law.
Once the U.S. government abandons its policies of white nationalism, among other unacceptable positions, it can be welcomed back into the community of nations. Until then: Don’t come here, don’t invest here, don’t buy from Tesla or Amazon or any of the other corporations that have kissed Trump’s ring. Trump is effectively boycotting the world by withdrawing from international institutions and violating international norms. The world should return the favor.
Isolating the Trump Administration
The Trump administration’s indiscriminate tariffs have already prompted a number of countries to respond in kind. Canada has imposed $32.8 billion in tariffs against the United States, while Europe has imposed $28 billion worth. China announced a “15% tariff on U.S. coal and liquefied natural gas, along with a 10% tariff on other products, including crude oil, agricultural machinery, and pickup trucks.”
The residents of these regions are also adjusting their travel plans accordingly, a move that Robert Reich recently endorsed. The Washington Post reports:
Canadians are skipping trips to Disney World and music festivals. Europeans are eschewing U.S. national parks, and Chinese travelers are vacationing in Australia instead. International travel to the United States is expected to slide by 5% this year, contributing to a $64 billion shortfall for the travel industry, according to Tourism Economics. The research firm had originally forecast a 9% increase in foreign travel, but revised its estimate late last month to reflect “polarizing Trump Administration policies and rhetoric.”
Trump’s policies are hurting the United States, from the travel industry and research institutes losing federal grants to the average consumer who is paying for all the tariffs through higher prices.
Some observers recommend that other countries resist the temptation to shoot themselves in the feet by imposing penalties of their own. Economist Dani Rodrik, for instance, suggests that retaliatory tariffs will only hurt the countries imposing them, so the best strategy “is to minimize the damage by staying as far from the bully as you can and waiting for him to punch himself out and crumple in a corner.”
Another option, economist Gabriel Zucman urges, is to apply tariffs to U.S. oligarchs: “If Tesla wants to sell cars in Canada and Mexico then Musk himself, as main shareholder of Tesla, should have to pay tax in Canada and Mexico. Put a wealth tax on him, and condition Tesla’s market access to him paying the tax.”
Changing travel plans, slapping tariffs on U.S. goods, taxing U.S. plutocrats: These are all potentially useful strategies. But they don’t go far enough.
Hit the Hornets’ Nest
You’ve heard this advice before: Don’t antagonize him, don’t make him lash out, don’t further endanger those around him. But abusive husbands only continue their unacceptable behavior in the face of such coddling.
Many international leaders hope that they can avoid Trump’s wrath by praising him, treating him to military parades when he visits, or at least laying low in the hopes that he won’t direct his wrath in their direction.
Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for instance, has done his best to curry favor with Trump, particularly after the disastrous White House meeting last month. In this way, he was able to restart U.S. military aid and intelligence-sharing. But he’s still on the verge of being sold out at the bargaining table if and when the Trump administration accepts Russia’s hardline terms for a cease-fire and peace deal.
The alliance against fascism worked in World War II. The anti-apartheid movement was successful. Let us now stand against the Trumps and Putins and Netanyahus of the world.
Still, you might object, no country is powerful enough to put Trump in his place. And those that might have a shot at doing so—China, Russia—are more interested in working with Trump to divide the world into spheres of influences.
But that still leaves a lot of countries that can band together, like an army of small and mid-sized Lilliputians to tie down the power-drunk Gulliver. They simply have to hit the United States where it hurts. Don’t buy products from American companies that support Trump. Don’t allow those businesses to invest in your countries. Reorient your currency transactions away from the dollar.
These measures should not come all at once. Rather, they should be staged strategically to force Trump to back down from his most noxious policies. Name-and-shame tactics don’t work with leaders who have no shame. Grab him by the wallet—it’s the only language he understands.
Will such measures hurt ordinary Americans? Probably. But no more than Trump is already hurting us. The tariffs that countries have imposed in retaliation against Trump’s actions will adversely affect nearly 8 million U.S. workers, the majority in counties that voted for him. But these costs are nothing compared to what the world will suffer as a result of Trump’s cuts in foreign assistance, which will likely kill hundreds of thousands of people a year.
One last recommendation: Don’t cut off all communication with the United States.
In the 1980s, the anti-apartheid campaign fostered considerable contact between the United States and South Africa. But it was a relationship based on solidarity between civil society organizations. My dear friends in Canada, Mexico, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America: Please do not equate Trump with the United States. Yes, a lot of people here voted for him. But they are starting to have buyer’s remorse. Let’s join hands across borders and party lines and say, “We will not tolerate racist bullies.”
The alliance against fascism worked in World War II. The anti-apartheid movement was successful. Let us now stand against the Trumps and Putins and Netanyahus of the world. They are the 1%, and they are vastly outnumbered.
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