For Trump, Civil Rights Protections Should Help White Men

New York Times

25-05-2025

In his drive to purge diversity efforts in the federal government and beyond, President Trump has expressed outright hostility to civil rights protections.
He ordered federal agencies to abandon some of the core tenets of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, on the basis that they represented a 'pernicious' attempt to make decisions based on diversity rather than merit.
But in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has turned to those same measures — not to help groups that have historically been discriminated against, but to remedy what he sees as the disenfranchisement of white men.
The pattern fits into a broader trend in the administration, as Trump officials pick and choose which civil rights protections they want to enforce, and for whom. Across the government, agencies that have historically worked to fight discrimination against Black people, women and other groups have pivoted to investigating institutions accused of favoring them.
'The plain message that they are conveying is: If you even think about, talk about or claim to be in favor of diversity, of equity, of inclusion, of accessibility, you will be targeted,' said Maya Wiley, the president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
'They're conveying that white men are the most discriminated against people in American society,' she added, 'and therefore entitled to affirmative action.'
The White House has defended its actions as part of an effort to put merit ahead of diversity.
'The Trump administration is dedicated to advancing equality, combating discrimination and promoting merit-based decisions, upholding the rule of law as outlined in the U.S. Constitution,' said Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman.
During his campaign for president, Mr. Trump expressed concern about what he called 'a definite anti-white feeling in this country.' Now in his second term, he has made quick work of addressing it. He has made a major push to root out programs that promote diversity, which he has suggested lead to the hiring of incompetent people.
In recent weeks, agencies have launched investigations that signal the administration's shift in its civil rights enforcement.
On Monday, the administration said it had opened a civil rights investigation into the city of Chicago to see if its mayor or others had engaged in a pattern of discrimination by hiring a number of Black people to senior positions.
The investigation came after Chicago's mayor, Brandon Johnson, praised the number of Black people in top city jobs during remarks at a local church. Speaking to congregants, Mr. Johnson said some of his detractors had claimed he only ever talks about 'the hiring of Black people.'
'No,' he continued. 'What I'm saying is when you hire our people, we always look out for everybody else. We are the most generous people on the planet.'
The head of the civil rights division at the Justice Department, Harmeet K. Dhillon, said the comments justified investigating the city's hiring practices to see if they discriminated against people who are not Black.
The Office for Civil Rights at the Education Department is investigating whether Chicago's public school system is violating the Civil Rights Act with its 'Black Students Success Plan,' alleging that it favors one group of academically underperforming students over others.
And last month, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission launched an investigation at Harvard University, alleging that the school had engaged in discriminatory hiring because it showed a significant increase in the percentage of minority, female and nonbinary faculty earning tenure over the past decade while the rates for white men declined.
In a letter sent to the university on April 25, the acting chairwoman of the E.E.O.C., Andrea R. Lucas, said she had started the investigation based on the university's expressed desire for 'demographic diversification of the faculty.'
Ms. Lucas said she believed the university may have violated the Civil Rights Act by intentionally treating individuals of certain groups differently from another protected class.
While she wrote that other groups could have been discriminated against, including Asians, men, or straight people who applied for jobs or student training programs, her justification was focused almost exclusively on the outcomes of white men.
In her letter, Ms. Lucas cited now-deleted statistics retrieved from the university's archives that showed that the percentage of tenured white male faculty dropped from 64 percent in 2013 to 56 percent in 2023. She also noted that while white men made up 56 percent of tenured faculty, they represented only 32 percent of tenure-track faculty.
The data, she wrote, gave her 'reason to believe that these trends and the underlying pattern or practice of discrimination based on race and sex have continued in 2024 and are ongoing.'
The E.E.O.C. investigation, which was first reported by the conservative news site The Washington Free Beacon, is one of several the administration has launched in its battle to get the nation's oldest university to bend to the president's agenda.
Both the E.E.O.C. and Harvard declined to comment for this article.
Ms. Lucas's letter to Harvard was sent two days after Mr. Trump issued an executive order banning the use of 'disparate impact,' a legal theory that helps determine whether certain policies disadvantaged certain groups, even unintentionally.
Conservatives have denounced disparate impact because it relies on outcome data to allege and prove discrimination — the basis on which Ms. Lucas lodged her charge against Harvard.
Even those who have criticized the use of disparate impact in the past said the E.E.O.C. investigation smacked of hypocrisy and retribution.
'This is obviously hypocritical on its face,' said Michael J. Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank and a vocal critic of disparate impact analyses. 'Here the administration is using statistics to launch an investigation, and just two weeks ago, they said that they were going to ban this practice. So, which is it?'
The E.E.O.C., the nation's primary litigator of workplace discrimination, has become a powerful tool for the Trump administration as it tries to pressure institutions that do not align with the president's agenda.
Last month, it began questioning the hiring practices of 20 of the country's biggest law firms, claiming that their efforts to recruit Black and Hispanic lawyers and create a more diverse work force may have discriminated against white candidates.
The E.E.O.C. investigation into Harvard was also unusual, former E.E.O.C. officials said.
Using diversity statements and data as evidence is extremely rare, as was a charge of this nature being initiated by a commissioner rather than an individual claiming workplace discrimination.
Jenny R. Yang, a former chairwoman of the commission, said that the basis for the investigation would not make for a strong case on either disparate impact or disparate treatment theory.
'Aspiring to promote diversity is not the same at all as considering race and gender in an individual hiring decision,' Ms. Yang said. 'They're essentially doing what they falsely disparaged disparate impact of doing.'
In a statement, Mr. Fields, the White House spokesman, reiterated the administration's position on Mr. Trump's civil rights goals, and the president's grievances against Harvard.
'The Trump administration is committed to advancing equality, combating antisemitism, promoting merit-based decisions and enforcing the basic terms of government contracts,' Mr. Fields said.
But civil rights experts said the administration's goals are clear.
Catherine E. Lhamon, who previously served as the head of the Office for Civil Rights at the Education Department, said the investigations showed a pattern of 'performative misapplication of federal civil rights law.'
'The Trump administration's transparently vendetta-driven investigations categorically do not focus on fulfilling Congress's guarantee that federal nondiscrimination protections apply equally,' Ms. Lhamon said. 'Civil rights, properly understood, do not pit one group against another but protect all of us.'