Just when the press was starting to buy into Donald Trump’s pathetic trolling of his “beleaguered” Attorney General Jeff Sessions, we are reminded just how much power Sessions actually wields. No matter how difficult the relationship, he has refused to let go since he was in lock step with the white nationalist message that Trump rode to the White House. In the few short months since his confirmation, he has used his position to undo much of the progress made under the Obama administration—effectively turning the Justice Department into a weapon for protecting white privilege. In the latest blow to equality and sanity, the Justice Department announced that it is preparing to mobilize resources to investigate and sue universities over their affirmative action policies that discriminate against white applicants.
The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.
The document, an internal announcement to the civil rights division, seeks current lawyers interested in working for a new project on “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”
Note that in an agency full of lawyers, they are now “seeking” out lawyers interested in working on this project. That’s likely because any of the lawyers who are civil servants that have spent their careers working to protect civil rights realize that this is a monstrosity. This is a backlash to an increasingly multiracial, diverse America. It continues to perpetuate the myth that white people have somehow been robbed of opportunities as America becomes browner. And it continues to paint people of color as unqualified, undeserving takers who get into these schools because of their color and not due to any of their own merit—when this is not based in truth and when these institutions have denied them access for centuries.
Roger Clegg, a former top official in the civil rights division during the Reagan administration and the first Bush administration who is now the president of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, called the project a “welcome” and “long overdue” development as the United States becomes increasingly multiracial.
“The civil rights laws were deliberately written to protect everyone from discrimination, and it is frequently the case that not only are whites discriminated against now, but frequently Asian-Americans are as well,” he said.
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Studies actually show that while people of color have benefited from affirmative action, women, and in particular, white women, have benefited disproportionately. Moreover, once a minority gets in the door, affirmative action doesn’t keep them there. They often have to work twice as hard to get half as much. While white men are often given the benefit of the doubt and assumed to be qualified and capable simply because they are white and male—women and minorities have to overcome all kinds negative assumptions and stereotypes about their qualifications and how they gained access to these spaces. This kind of biased thinking has tangible consequences and leads to disparities in grade distributions, job opportunities, income/wage gaps and other opportunities down the road.
To suggest that affirmative action—which was designed to level a playing field which was uneven for centuries and still is—is somehow discriminatory against whites, is based in racism and white supremacy. It is retrograde thinking and has no place in policy.
“This is deeply disturbing,” she said. “It would be a dog whistle that could invite a lot of chaos and unnecessarily create hysteria among colleges and universities who may fear that the government may come down on them for their efforts to maintain diversity on their campuses.”
This is really not surprising, given where we are as a country. We do need to make college more accessible for everyone who wants to go—not just people of color. And poor white people and people of color need to stand in solidarity with one another because this is actually a divide and conquer strategy that will get both groups nowhere. It is true that America is unequal and always has been. It is true that there are real barriers to educational access and financial mobility and success for lots of people and, no matter what the Trump administration wants its base to believe, they are not because brown and black people have benefited from affirmative action programs. This is a dangerously slippery slope that will not only have detrimental impact on educational opportunities for people of color.
When people of color do well, this nation does well. It’s only a matter of time before the administration undoes programs for first generation students, poor students, disabled students, etc. as well. They don’t care about anyone. This is why they should have never been allowed to take office in the first place.