When attorney and content creator Jasmine Burton, known online as @finessquire, looked into her camera this week, she didn’t mince words.
Her tone was urgent, her message clear:
In a viral Instagram video that’s now making waves across political and legal circles, Burton lays out what she calls a “methodical and direct” attempt to dismantle Black economic progress in America — not through overt violence, but through policy, data manipulation, and erasure.
Her analysis is rooted in a sharp reading of employment numbers and federal policy changes that she argues are leaving Black Americans behind.
A Disparity Hidden In Plain Sight
“The national unemployment rate right now is around 4.5 percent — basically the same as when Trump first got elected,” Burton explains in the clip. “But Black unemployment? That’s up to 6.7 percent, with more than 300,000 Black folks out of work.”
Her point is devastating in its simplicity: if the national rate remains steady, yet one group’s unemployment rises, another group’s must fall.
“White people are getting jobs while Black people are losing them,” she says flatly. “The economy didn’t suddenly learn how to discriminate with a spreadsheet — someone made choices.”
Her words underscore a growing concern among economists and civil rights advocates: the façade of a “strong economy” can obscure widening racial disparities. Job growth, on paper, doesn’t tell the story of who’s getting hired — or who’s being pushed out.
The DEI Rollback Effect
Burton points to one driving factor behind the widening gap — the nationwide rollback of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs.
“By gutting DEI, they’re not just cutting budgets — they’re cutting off access,” she explains. “Qualified Black professionals who earned their seats at the table are being quietly replaced or locked out altogether.”
Since 2023, corporations, universities, and public agencies have faced mounting political pressure to dismantle DEI initiatives. What began as a conservative backlash has evolved into a coordinated effort, she argues, that affects everything from hiring pipelines to federal funding.
And Burton’s claims have context. According to The Onyx Impact Report, which she cites directly, an estimated $3.4 billion in federal grants have been frozen, over 591 books banned, and 6,769 data sets erased, many of which documented racial inequities.
“They want to fire Black people in the present,” Burton says, “and delete Black people from the past.”
The Broader Implications
Burton’s viral warning reflects a deeper anxiety simmering within Black professional spaces — especially among those who fought for representation in law, academia, and tech.
Her remarks echo recent findings from the Economic Policy Institute, which note that Black workers are disproportionately affected by corporate restructuring, particularly in industries once lauded for DEI leadership.
Legal analysts point out that the dismantling of DEI frameworks could have long-term consequences, not just for employment, but for civil rights compliance. Without data tracking race-based disparities, proving discrimination becomes exponentially harder.
“Erasure is a quiet form of oppression,” said one legal scholar. “When you remove the numbers, the evidence disappears — and so does accountability.”
“We Can’t Be One Step Behind Anymore”
For Burton, whose platform blends legal insight with sharp political commentary, the video is both a warning and a call to action.
“We can’t be one step behind anymore,” she urges. “We need to be two steps ahead.”
Her message resonates at a time when conversations around race, economics, and power are becoming increasingly polarized. By framing the rollback of DEI and data transparency as a true crime of policy, Burton reframes what many have treated as abstract political debate into a tangible threat to Black livelihoods.
It’s not about partisanship, she suggests — it’s about pattern recognition.
And if her words sound alarmist, that may be the point.
“It’s systemic. It’s methodical. It’s direct. It’s blatant,” she repeats at the end of the clip, a closing statement as precise as a legal argument and as raw as a warning cry.
