If employees of a Western non-governmental organization (NGO) had ventured into Fanta Citron, the shantytown where I grew up in Mvog-Ada, Yaoundé, Cameroon, they would have been shocked. There, children worked. From the age of 4 or 5, we were involved in household chores. We cleaned, did the laundry, drew water from neighborhood springs and public fountains, and helped in the kitchen. We were also earners. In my case, I sold cassava sticks every evening. That was our daily life.
At my mother’s, I was responsible for cleaning our small space in the family home, where my uncles, aunties, and their children also lived. The house was big, but that didn’t stop us from being on top of each other. One of the rules was cleanliness. My mother had a saying that has never left me:
“Being poor does not mean being filthy,” she would often tell my siblings and me.
To her, it meant that even if I had only one T-shirt, it had to be clean, no matter that I wore it every day of the week to school. I had to mop the floor every morning and possibly re-mop it in the evening if a stain was visible. Usually, my mother would leave early in the morning, like most of the women in the neighborhood, to fetch goods that she would later sell at retail. By the time I finished mopping the floor, she was already gone. When I came home from school in the evening, I would boast about how I made the floor shine. I would desperately seek her praise and her approval.
“Mom, did you see how the floor was shining?” I remember saying to her often, in her language — in our patriarchal society, it was my father’s language that was considered mine, not my mother’s. “I mopped and re-mopped; I scrubbed hard like you said; there were sauces that had stuck.” Our mud or, more often, plastered houses had floors made of cement.
“That’s good,” my mother would often reply, a response that frustrated me. I thought I was doing a better job than some of my cousins, who were regularly praised by my aunties. I felt my mother was being unfair. Each time, I told myself I would scrub even harder to make her proud of me. But each time, my mother was stingy with compliments.
Over time, my frustration had built up, and I was boiling inside. One evening, when I came home from school, my mother called me. I ran over, thinking that I would finally receive the compliments I deserved.
“I see indeed that the floor shines here,” my mother began. “You see, I am even sitting on it. You know that when I come back from the market, I often lie down here to take a little nap.”
“Yes,” I replied. “That’s why I make this spot the shiniest.”
“See, that’s the problem,” my mother said. “You clean only what I see, what’s immediately obvious to the naked eye. But if I pushed the gas stove, it’s completely filthy underneath.” She stood up and did just that. A thick layer of dust, combined with matchsticks that had fallen, had piled up. I was ashamed. My mother didn’t stop there. She moved her suitcase, uncovering another mound of dirt. She kept going. I was mortified. I hid my face in my hands.
“You see, mopping means mopping everywhere, not just the surface that’s immediately visible. Mopping only what’s obvious isn’t cleaning, it’s shoddy. Do you understand now why I didn’t congratulate you as you had hoped?”
I nodded, feeling ashamed. I realized I had done nothing but cut corners all these months, doing the bare minimum and focusing only on impressing her.
My mother’s words have come back to haunt me in recent days as I watch and listen to my Black brothers, to whom I reach out across the United States, to get their thoughts on the first 30 days of Donald Trump’s second presidency. One thing keeps coming back like a beat we cannot do without: DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion).
The president and his lieutenants see it as a centerpiece of his second administration. Therefore, they have framed the fight against DEI as a battle for fairness and meritocracy. The message is clear: the most qualified and best performers should be rewarded. It’s not about who you know, or your race, gender, sex, age, etc. They are building — and marketing — a colorblind, gender-blind, sexual-orientation-blind America. It’s a fight worth having, we would all agree.
In the name of meritocracy, they have decided to eliminate all initiatives and programs that could give an unfair advantage to some while excluding others. Their target is DEI programs and initiatives, which have their roots in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited employment discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, and other criteria. DEI aimed to level the playing field in the workplace for Black, Brown, and other minority groups.
For centuries, Black people, for example, were denied education in America, and every attempt to build generational wealth was squashed — such as the destruction of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, or the redlining policies of the 1930s to 1960s. These historical discriminatory practices made it difficult, if not impossible, for Black people and people of color to obtain loans to start a business, buy a house, or pursue any other financial opportunities.
For Trump and his newfound close ally Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, DEI is blamed for all of America’s ills. They argue that it has fostered laziness, worthlessness, racism and sexism against White men, while promoting incompetence, among other issues. They have even baselessly accused DEI programs of being the cause of the fatal collision last month between an American Airlines commercial jet and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter during a routine training flight near Reagan Washington National Airport.
“I put safety first, Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen,” Trump told reporters at the end of January, referring to DEI programs at the Federal Aviation Administration under Democratic presidents.
“We want the most competent people. We don’t care what race they are,” the President also said. “If they don’t have a great brain, a great power of the brain, they’re not going to be very good at what they do and bad things will happen.”
The FAA has stated that DEI and similar programs do not apply to air traffic control hiring.
“DEI has caused people to DIE,” Musk, posted on X, formerly Twitter, on February 1.
The billionaire, who is leading Trump’s administration efforts, through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to shrink the federal government, claimed on January 30 that DOGE “has now saved taxpayers over $1 billion in crazy DEL contracts.”
I couldn’t verify this figure.
Some data have proven that targeting DEI programs will have the desired outcome for the President and his lieutenants: After the Supreme Court ended Affirmative Action in the summer of 2023, diversity representation declined at most Ivy League schools. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), for example, reported that its 2028 class, the first after the high court’s decision, was made up of the following: 5% Black, down 10% from the previous year; 11% Latino, down 1%; 37% White, up 1%; and 47% Asian, up 7%.
But other data showed that white women were the main beneficiaries of DEI in the workplace. According to a Forbes report, White women hold nearly 19% of all C-suite positions, while women of color hold just 4%. Overall, the representation of women in the workplace has increased at every level of corporate management over the past decade, as consulting firm McKinsey found in a 2024 report.
“I don’t even know what to say,” said my friend Bruce Holley, 63, one of the few veteran top executives of color on Wall Street. “I watch them and I listen to them. I just have one question for the President: How many people in his cabinet, starting with Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth, are qualified? My father must be turning in his grave.”
Holley’s father was in the military, and was stationed in Europe, including Germany. “Most of the people in his office are not qualified. He should practice what he says,” said Holley, who is a Harvard graduate.
On this cold February 18 evening in New York, Holley told me that despite his long, successful career, people still ask him whether he was accepted into Harvard decades ago because he was Black.
“What is your response to them?” I asked him.
“Nothing, I listen to them and then I just go back to work,” he told me.
Holley, like many Black men I have spoken to in recent days, is not opposed to the principle of meritocracy but would like to see it applied to anything that gives an unfair advantage to some at the expense of others. “Why only go after programs designed to give opportunity and visibility to minorities?” he told me. It is “shoddy,” to borrow my mother’s expression from decades ago.
If Trump and Musk really want to establish meritocracy and clean house properly, they must also target country clubs, golf courses, college athlete recruitment, and legacy programs, which, in different ways, allow some to enjoy privileges and access based more on their name, heritage, family, connections, and so on. It is called favoritism and cronyism.
Consider country clubs and golf courses, which are exclusive venues with selective and often opaque admission processes. These places foster relationship-building, expanding address books, and closing deals. Members feel they can trust each other and are more likely to do each other favors. They share similar interests, making it easier for a businessman to connect with potential clients or partners.
“Golf courses provide a unique environment for business networking, where executives can connect with other professionals in a relaxed and informal setting,” Zack Bates, the CEO of Private Clubs Inc., a company focused on marketing and consulting for high-end private clubs, including golf, sports, city, and country clubs, wrote in a 2023 post on LinkedIn titled “Swinging For Success: How Golf and Country Clubs Can Grow Your Business.”
He continued: “A country club membership offers access to exclusive events, such as golf tournaments, charity events, and dinners, where executives can meet potential clients, partners, and investors.”
Country clubs and golf courses are predominantly White and often serve as fortresses for White men who help each other. The criteria for being able to join are often opaque, and the ability to pay initiation fees and monthly dues does not guarantee admission.
They continue to grow: industry revenue rose by an average of 3.2% annually over the past five years, reaching $33.9 billion in the U.S., according to a 2025 report from market research firm IBISWorld.
It is undeniable that those who do not have access to these clubs start with a disadvantage compared to those who are members, because membership often implies trust or provides a reference necessary in the business world or job market. Members often assume they understand each other and share the same codes and values, which generally leads to them being a priori seen as competent and capable of doing the job.
If the goal, as Trump and Musk claim, is to give a chance to the most deserving, why not shake up the country clubs and golf courses whose members have an advantage over the rest of the population?
Let’s also consider colleges that recruit based on athletic performance, connections to donors, faculty, and staff, and especially legacy admissions, which give students with ties to alumni an advantage. According to a 2023 civil rights complaint against Harvard, between 2014 and 2019, applicants with connections to alumni or donors were seven times more likely to be admitted compared to other students. If meritocracy is the goal, this privilege must be challenged as well.
To build a race, gender, and sexual-orientation-blind society, the President and Musk, the world’s richest man, should tackle any kind of favoritism. That’s the only way they will show they are genuine and transformational in their efforts. Failing to do so would be a load of crap, as my mother implied decades ago. It would reveal a cynical and hidden motivation behind their rhetoric — one that some of their detractors have long claimed: taking minorities back at least 50 years, to a time when the room was full of people of one color, and only one color.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Luc Olinga's work on Medium.