White supremacists are trying to reconquer the United States

Boston Globe

19-03-2025

A lot of folks would find those numbers embarrassingly low, but Trump and the other zealots who now run this country have decided they've lost too much ground to people who don't look like them, that every gain other people make is necessarily a loss for themselves.
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Every day, our new overlords make it clear they believe white people, especially white men, are the only ones they can be sure truly deserve their jobs. They can tell the others are unqualified just by looking at them. So the only possible explanation for the presence of people of color and members of other marginalized groups in desirable positions is that they're getting unfair advantages.
Those of us who live in real reality call that being white supremacists.
These racist throwbacks have always been with us, rearing their heads higher after big civil rights advances they find appalling. But now it's the government leading the revanchism.
'What is shocking for many is, the perpetrator of these efforts is so clearly the federal government,' said Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at UMass Amherst. 'That has not occurred since before the civil rights era.'
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The message now is that the
only way to stop white men's suffering is to put everyone else back in their places. Which means shutting down every impulse to make ours a more equal society – purging those who seek to make schools and workplaces look more like the actual world, erasing from government websites the excellence and achievements of nonwhite people –
Black veterans buried in Arlington cemetery. At the Defense department, this came courtesy of Secretary Pete Hegseth, a veteran with a
Trump and his henchmen are turning back the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement, targeting the very people that movement rose up to protect. Now, we are told, it is white people who need the protection of the federal government against employment discrimination. It is they who are persecuted, they who are harmed when books and history lessons teach kids that slavery was a horror and Rosa Parks was a hero.
And so these two Boston law firms, both of them committed to diversifying their ranks, got their threatening letters from EEOC. Many other firms did, too.
'This administration doesn't seem to be bothered by wasting taxpayer dollars engaging in frivolous legal action,' said Sophia Hall, deputy litigation director at Lawyers for Civil Rights.
But even if their demands are frivolous, or found to be legally dubious, a weaponized EEOC can still make life miserable for a company, Hall said. They can issue subpoenas and demand reams of documentation, sucking up resources.
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The letters alone could even be enough to chill diversity efforts at big law firms – or discourage them from representing clients who challenge Trump directives. We've certainly seen
The law firms did not respond to emails seeking comment. They have until April 15 to respond to Trump's demands, but they can also
resist them. Nteta's
If a bunch of high-priced lawyers won't stand up to Trump, who will?
Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at