Last month, the White House issued an executive order to “combat offensive and anti-American race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating” in the Federal Government. It was referring, ironically, to the kind of discourse that supposedly plays out in antiracism and diversity workshops that have seen a resurgence in recent years, particularly since the last presidential election. For the present White House administration, these trainings and the ideology that supposedly undergirds many of them are anathema to what it means to truly honour America.

The executive order at one point refers to the antiracism and cultural-sensitivity ideology as an infection. In that regard, the executive order manages to stumble onto something like the truth: America is indeed infected, but that malady is grounded in the inequality we’re trying to address together, not in the ways we address it. In the presidential debate last Tuesday, Joe Biden touched on this, acknowledging, “The fact is that there is racial insensitivity. People have to be made aware of what other people feel like, what insults them, what is demeaning to them. It’s important people know.”

I know a thing or two about the vital importance of antiracism work, too. In my work at Catalyst: Ed, we partner with a network of nearly 150 diversity, equity and inclusion practitioners around the country. We connect these practitioners with the types of leaders and institutions that are grappling with inequalities in their hiring practices, leadership culture, compensation, promotion or team dynamics. We’ve supported antiracism efforts in higher education, school districts, philanthropic organisations and non-profit, along with other public-sector institutions.

In doing that work, I’ve learnt that resistance to antiracism trainings isn’t a reflection of partisan affiliation. If Trump’s executive order has its intended effect, there will be plenty of people who will be relieved — and they’re not all pro-Trumpers. At its best, antiracism is deep-tissue work, massaging into the muscles of consciousness, practices and beliefs that can sometimes shake people and institutions alike to their core. That means that many people, wedded as they are to nonconfrontational “harmony,” don’t easily wade into the pool of antiracism work, which asks us to not only hold up mirrors to our behaviours and beliefs, but also to see the way that we’re reflected in the eyes of others.

Antiracism antagonists come in many forms and share their messages in a multitude of ways. They’ve made themselves known in pop culture spaces like Gamergate and in their disdain for Star Wars’ recent attempts at diversity. They litter Twitter and social-media conversations like space debris, drifting into the conversations and accounts of queer, non-white and femme voices. They’ve been the “yes but” responses seeking to undermine endeavours such as The New York Times’ 1619 Project and academic attempts to expand curricular canons. But its detractors are also much more subtle than that at times, too. It’s your manager who consistently hires and promotes within their non-diverse network. It’s the way your black or brown female co-worker is routinely chastised for being “angry” or the way well-meaning Twitter users are snidely dismissed for including their gendered pronouns in their profiles. It is the policies and practices that provide superficial, disingenuous engagement with the communities we’re serving or the lopsided disbursement of philanthropic support.

It is because of all of this that antiracism and DEI work is so essential. It’s not just the White House that refuses to engage with DEI work; that reluctance transcends party politics, partly because neither Republicans nor Democrats are particularly eager to look at themselves. Workplaces aren’t separate from society, and many of the “outside ills” that we’ve inherited and maintained play themselves out intentionally and unintentionally in the workspace.

It’s not just about combating explicit, outright racism or politicised contempt for the other. Instead, it’s about confronting the ways that these spaces inevitably mirror many of the things that are happening outside of them: diminishment of people of colour’s experiences; limited mobility/access/compensation for diverse staff members/people of colour; cultures of nepotism that favour the select and the few; and a reluctance to engage in change/healing. When we give people licence to walk away from being able to address these issues, we send the explicit signal that “all is well” and that social, economic and political justice doesn’t matter to our collective progress.

That being said, this White House administration is especially ill-equipped to credibly criticise DEI practices. President Donald Trump’s racial transgressions have already been enumerated ad nauseam, so there’s nothing new to be gained in detailing them again. His rhetoric, policies and behaviours — none of which have been meaningfully challenged, stymied, redirected, chastised or disavowed by a GOP plurality — are just the type of source materials and attitudes that bolster the idea that these trainings are crucially important. But when he decries these programmes, he’s not so much seeking to defend his own behaviour as he is protecting an American myth that supports the flawed notion of our unerring goodness, in addition to reinforcing a persistent alt-right sentiment that rejects multiculturalism and pluralism.

America has been ill to its core since the day this land was stolen from its original people, then rebuilt on the backs of other people. Unchecked ignorance has dire consequences; left to its own devices, it paints irresponsible illustrations of our history and can even define how we literally treat and view the pain of others.

Allowed to fester in our ethical ether, you can see how we struggle to embrace everything from the rights of incarcerated brothers and sisters to how we can watch with horror as black Americans are slowly killed on video by the very forces purported to protect us all. There has been a collective shock and alarm at the White House’s executive order — a response that, centuries into our country’s existence and years into this administration’s, feels almost precious. But fervent beliefs about innocence and goodness do nothing to move us closer to illumination and humanity, while antiracism helps us sit with our discomfort. This work helps us look at the core that we hold tight and teaches us to loosen our fingers.

Antiracist practitioners and their tools are the keys to a better American conscience, not just in terms of history and politics, but also in the everyday way we decide how to treat and interact with one another. Trump’s executive order seeking to prevent these conversations and eliminate the cadre of those who facilitate them is ultimately an investment in the infection. Whatever the White House orders and whatever other resistance we face, we must keep discussing both the forms that injustice took in our darker pasts and the grey shadow it still casts over our present days. Consider it an executive order by we, the people.

• Tre Johnson is a freelance writer on race, culture and identity. He is based in Philadelphia