AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President Trump wants to cut the size of the federal workforce. He's offering many workers a deal to be paid until the fall if they quit. Whether the move is legal or actually possible will likely be fought out in the courts. Because of the makeup of the workforce, this plan will have an outsized impact on Black and Hispanic employees. For generations, these jobs have lifted up the poor and been a path to the middle class.
Dorothy Brown is a law professor at Georgetown University, and she discusses this path in her book, "The Whiteness Of Wealth." She joins me now. Welcome.
DOROTHY BROWN: Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here.
RASCOE: So can you give us a little civics lesson? Like, what is America's civil service, and what has it done for Black and other workers?
BROWN: What it's done for Black workers and other government workers is it comes with security of position, which means it's hard to fire you for no cause, right? You have to mess up on your job in order to lose it. It also comes with tax-free benefits. And those tax-free benefits include retirement accounts and health insurance accounts. And the best part of the retirement account that the federal government provides is something called a defined benefit, which means when you retire, you get a guaranteed income amount. It's not based on whether you're a good investor. It's that you are guaranteed a certain amount of income which will enable you to retire and live a good life.
RASCOE: Could the administration's offer have an outsized impact on minorities, or just if Trump follows through with plans to shrink the federal workplace?
BROWN: If he is effective after the court battles that are sure to come and he downsizes the federal government, one would expect a disproportionate impact on Black workers who work in the federal government at numbers higher than the 13% rate of Black Americans. So yeah, one would expect that. And one could expect a hit in D.C. because of all the government workers that live and work in D.C.
RASCOE: And do you think that it could affect Black unemployment? I mean, Black unemployment is always higher than white unemployment. Even best of times, worst of times, it's generally about double white unemployment. Do you think that it could have an impact?
BROWN: It absolutely could. It absolutely could. And that's why it's very important for people to think about who is going to be impacted by the policies that the Trump administration is laying out.
RASCOE: Obviously, this is a country where, you know, employers have discriminated against people of color. But some listening may say, this isn't the 1960s. Do you really need government jobs to help lift people out of poverty in 2025?
BROWN: Well, given our significant racial wealth gap, yes, you do. But I would say more importantly, it's not that a government job is designed exclusively to lift people out of poverty. Government jobs are designed to carry out the government agency's charge. So the federal government leads the way, or should be leading the way, in antidiscrimination.
RASCOE: If these changes that the Trump administration is pushing for go into effect, how will it affect the Black workforce as a whole and economic mobility in the Black community?
BROWN: I don't think it's going to be as easy to get rid of the civil service obligations as the Trump people think it is, but I digress, OK? So assuming for the sake of argument that it goes away and Black Americans disproportionately lose their job, as we mentioned early, there's going to be a higher unemployment rate. Because of the racial wealth gap, there are fewer resources for Black workers to fall back on as a cushion while they look for a different job.
We know that there is still race discrimination in the labor market, so it's going to be difficult all around. And to the extent a Black worker may be terminated from the government with a savings account - right? - with some cushion, they're going to use it up. So there'll be less for the next generation going forward.
RASCOE: That's Dorothy Brown. She teaches tax law at Georgetown University and she's the author of "The Whiteness Of Wealth." Thank you so much for joining us.
BROWN: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
