A few years ago, as the leader of a statewide civil rights agency in Kentucky tasked with investigating and adjudicating discrimination complaints, I came across an interesting, but not uncommon, scenario. In 2020, a white man who was denied a promotion to a newly created position filed a complaint alleging workplace racial discrimination. The new position at his workplace required a specific certification and a requisite number of years of prior work before becoming eligible. The candidate who got the job, a Black man, had both the required certification and the number of years needed for this role. The white man met neither requirement, but complained that his denial was solely because he was white.
I was flummoxed, but not surprised. Cases such as this one served as a precursor to where we are today: a culture that has turned civil rights protections on their heads to serve the agenda of white supremacy.
Recently, in a video post to social media that resembled a late-night personal injury attorney advertisement, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) chair Andrea Lucas urged white men who feel discriminated against to file EEOC complaints and “recover money,” framing them as a newly neglected victim class.
Lucas was appointed by President Donald Trump and has helped advance a campaign to redirect civil rights enforcement toward claims by white men and against so-called discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. This move, alongside the Trump Administration’s other actions to gut core civil rights tools, signal something important: The administration doesn’t believe in equal justice for everyone. Despite data showing discrimination against people of color and women is an issue in the workplace, the administration maintains that only white people deserve protection, even from fake foes and oppressors.
On April 23, 2025, Trump signed an Executive Order declaring “disparate-impact liability”—a legal framework by which discrimination can be substantiated without proof of intent by the discriminating party—“unlawful.” Trump ordered federal agencies to deprioritize enforcement of any statute or regulation that uses disparate-impact analysis—data that shows a policy or practice disproportionately impacts a protected class or group. This analysis is often used in cases involving the Civil Rights Act and Title VII, denials of access to housing or credit, and other cases in which discrimination occurs. The order requires the Department of Justice, EEOC, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other federal agencies to identify and roll back disparate-impact-based rules and ongoing cases.
Later that year, an internal EEOC memo directed staff to close disparate-impact investigations in line with the Executive Order. The EEOC is prioritizing discrimination against white people, Christians, and pregnant women while the administration ignores systemic race and national-origin actions and strips protections for transgender workers nationwide.
In her video, Lucas urged white men to come forward as victims of DEI discrimination, echoing Vice President J.D. Vance’s attacks on DEI as discriminatory against white men. Vance shared the video and went on to say that now they no longer have to “apologize for being white.”
This sentiment grossly reframes civil rights laws away from remedying historic and ongoing exclusion and toward attacking equity efforts.
In considering these actions by the Trump Administration, it’s important to look at the actual trends in discrimination filings. The majority of actual discrimination cases came from disability, anti-Black racism, gender, and age discrimination. A review of EEOC data shows a 10 percent increase in racial discrimination charges (cases filed that are deemed to warrant an investigation) since 2023, from 27,505 in 2023 to 30,270 charges in 2024. Overall, the EEOC received 88,531 new charges of discrimination in 2024. A recent workplace diversity survey highlights racism as the top issue employers should take a stronger stance against, followed closely by ageism and misogyny. Discrimination happens in actions towards individuals of color and in pay disparities. A 2024 study found that women working full-time year-round in 2023 earned about 82.7 cents on the dollar vs. men; with larger gaps for Black and Latina women who earned 66.5 and 57.8 cents on the dollar, respectively.
So while the Trump EEOC is telling white men to come forward, all available evidence shows persistent, large-scale discrimination against women, Black workers, and other marginalized groups—not an epidemic of anti-white bias.
On top of continued and heightened racial discrimination, the economy under Trump also has seen fewer Black workers able to find a job. By November 2025, Black unemployment jumped to 8.3 percent, its highest in years, while overall U.S. unemployment was 4.6 percent. Unemployment for Black Americans now outpaces all groups. One possible explanation for this drop, racial equity advocates say, is companies’ desire to avoid costly battles with white applicants alleging discrimination.
The connection is clear: When anti-discrimination enforcement is weakened and disparate-impact analysis is sidelined, Black workers lose protections exactly as they face rising unemployment and economic precarity. The administration’s narrative of white male victims is wildly out of step with who is actually being pushed out of jobs and shut out of opportunity.
Across the country, conservative lawsuits—like Missouri’s lawsuit against Starbucks for the company’s DEI programs—argue that any effort to remedy racial or gender inequality is systemic discrimination against white workers. Historically, the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VII were used to address racial inequities impacting historically marginalized groups. Today, isolated or hypothetical harms to white men are blown out of proportion while the government deemphasizes structural discrimination and efforts to curtail it.
Most harmful of all, the Supreme Court and white conservative groups co-opt the language of equal protection to upend equal protection. In the Harvard affirmative action case, the Supreme Court used equal protection language, the language that was designed to ensure access for people of color, to go against results based on equity. Since then, white conservatives have used that case to challenge anything that might help people of color achieve equitable outcomes.
As Black workers face rising unemployment and wage gaps, the Trump Administration is preaching that white men are victims of reverse racism and attempting to add validity to such dubious claims. Contrary to the current spin on the language, the Fourteenth Amendment is meant to create a process to address historic barriers to opportunity for Black and brown people and to ensure that we all, as humans, are treated with the same decency and humanity.
Unfortunately, agencies like the one I used to work at, which investigate and address discrimination, are less and less able to fulfill that duty. For example, Texas Republican lawmakers are advancing legislation to eliminate the state’s Civil Rights Division—the only agency in the state charged with investigating discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations under state law. This is not an isolated event, as other states have attempted to shutter or weaken similar agencies. It’s no accident that state-level civil rights dismantling is converging with federal shifts: Both reduce accountability for discrimination and entrench inequity as a matter of public policy. So while the president is bemoaning civil rights and how it has been “hurtful for white people,” the truth of this moment couldn’t be further from the story his administration is peddling.
Reflecting on the unqualified white man who filed a discrimination complaint after not getting a job, it is worth considering just how many other instances of purported reverse discrimination are simply that: a white man who wasn’t qualified, angry that someone who was qualified got the role they sought. Too bad the current administration is telling him, and those like him, “Keep it up—we got you.”