Some of the Trump administration’s actions on race and citizenship as reminiscent of the U.S. before the Civil War, said NAACP President Derrick Johnson.
In an interview with The Hill, Johnson likened Trump’s efforts to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857 that ruled Black Americans were not citizens.
“There was a decision … called the Dred Scott decision. And it was in that decision where the Supreme Court held that Blacks had no rights that whites were bound to uphold,” Johnson said Wednesday. “We’ve seen this administration’s reversal of [DACA] in that same light.”
Johnson’s sentiments come in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision last week that the Trump administration did not follow proper administrative procedures in its attempted reversal of the Obama-era DACA program, as well as a raging national debate over the treatment of Black Americans.
The NAACP was among the litigants who successfully convinced the Supreme Court to rule against Trump. Its decision to defend DACA came in part because of the organization’s traditional role of being a voice for Black communities, including immigrants.
“DACA, oftentimes people seem to think of the Latinx community, when in fact it was far more reaching than that,” Johnson said.
