With all of the sheer oddities coming from Trump and Spicer over the last few weeks, it feels like we’ve kind of forgotten all about Betsy DeVos. But not to worry, Betsy’s been busy over at the Department of Education and this one is as eye-rolling and jaw-droppingly maddening as the rest of the news out of the White House. Betsy has announced her pick to head up the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. As with any good champion of civil rights, Candice Jackson has a personal history with this topic, which should make this a perfect fit for her. After all, she was the victim of “reverse discrimination” as a white woman, or so she claims, when she was a student at Stanford University back in the 1990s.
As an undergraduate studying calculus at Stanford University in the mid-1990s, Candice Jackson “gravitated” toward a section of the class that provided students with extra help on challenging problems, she wrote in a student publication. Then she learned that the section was reserved for minority students.
“I am especially disappointed that the University encourages these and other discriminatory programs,” she wrote in the Stanford Review. “We need to allow each person to define his or her own achievements instead of assuming competence or incompetence based on race.”
Let’s discuss this, shall we? There was one section in one class designated for minority students and poor, little old Candace felt like that was excluding her? This was probably one of only a handful of spaces on campus that were not open to her (and hey, it’s not like there were bodyguards with machine guns blocking her from entering in the door) but she was worked up about it enough to make a fuss about it? Talk about white privilege. And that’s not all. Candace brings with her a number of other questionable (and that’s putting it mildly) leanings related to civil rights issues to the position.
A longtime anti-Clinton activist and an outspoken conservative-turned-libertarian, she has denounced feminism and race-based preferences. She’s also written favorably about, and helped edit a book by, an economist who decried both compulsory education and the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.
While in college at Stanford, she joined the Stanford Review, penning a series of strange and problematic articles in which she outlined her “message of freedom to Stanford through the only conservative publication on campus.” Yikes! In addition to having no relevant qualifications to speak of, other than sharing Betsy’s fringe beliefs (again, she has no background in civil rights law whatsoever), it is almost certain she is being brought in to dismantle this office which is responsible for protecting students across the country from racial, gender, disability and age discrimination. Just in case you weren’t keeping track, here are the things Candace believes in: reverse discrimination (not a real thing), feminism moves women backward not forward (also not a real thing), conservatism should be chosen over feminism (not even sure where to start with that one).
And if all this weren’t scary enough, here’s the last little bit that really ought to frighten you:
In 2009, Jackson co-wrote a Christian country song with her father and brother, called “Freedom, Family and Faith.” The lyrics had an anti-government tinge: “Some politician wants our liberty/ They say just trust me, we’re all family/ I’ve got a family and hey, it’s not you/ Don’t need Big Brother to see us through.”
None of this is encouraging. In fact, we can all probably start taking bets now as to how long the Office of Civil Rights will last under DeVos and Jackson’s tenure. It likely will won’t be an office for too much longer.