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president donald trumpTop workplace civil rights official specifically calls on white people to report racial and gender discrimination against them.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Acting Chair Andrea Lucas Posted a video on social media This month it asks: “Are you a white male who has experienced racial or gender discrimination at work?”
The agency was established under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to enforce federal anti-discrimination laws In recruiting and in the workplace, employers may not discriminate against applicants or employees on the basis of race, religion, sex, color, national origin, age, disability or genetic information.
Lucas is a prominent critic of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and opposes civil rights protections for transgender Americans. He said white people “may have a right to recover money under federal civil rights laws.”
“Contact the EEOC as soon as possible,” she said in a video that has been viewed nearly 6 million times. “The EEOC is identifying, attacking and eliminating all forms of racial and gender discrimination, including discrimination against white male applicants and employees.”
Her posts follow A tumultuous year for federal civil rights protections The Trump administration’s newly appointed Justice Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began his anti-DEI campaign.
Trump signed executive orders aimed at dismantling federal diversity efforts and putting pressure on private companies and schools to do the same or risk criminal prosecution or losing federal funds and contracts.
In January, he appointed Lucas as acting chairman of the agency and fired two Democratic commissioners on the five-member commission, clearing the way for a Republican majority. The EEOC website now includes a page titled “What to Do If You Experience DEI-Related Discrimination at Work.”
Lucas now has “every right” to eliminate “illegal discrimination” stemming from DEI and “anti-American bias” she told Washington Post.
She said her video reflects the agency’s efforts to “correct the underreporting” of what she believes are overlooked forms of discrimination, claiming “for too long, many employees have believed they were not the ‘right’ plaintiffs and that our civil rights laws only protect certain groups, not all Americans.”
A group of former Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Labor Department officials flatly rejected her characterization of civil rights enforcement and accusations of anti-white racism plaguing the workforce.
“Of course, federal law prohibits discrimination against whites and men — and the law protects all employees from job discrimination on the basis of any race or sex. But Chairman Lucas’s video sends the message that white people in particular face severe employment discrimination and that it is an issue of national importance for the EEOC to devote its limited resources to this group,” they wrote in a statement last week.
They added that the chairman’s video “lacks empirical support as a significant and pervasive problem” and that the agency diverts “scarce enforcement resources away from well-documented and pervasive workplace discrimination that harms millions of American workers today.”
Chai Feldblum, a former Equal Employment Opportunity Commission commissioner appointed by Barack Obama, called the video “a sad state of affairs for the American public, employers, employees and job seekers.”
Feldblum said that under a directive from the Trump administration and an agency now aligned with his order, a white person can file a complaint to launch a federal investigation if he feels he has been discriminated against because of a training program he considers offensive or because he hired a non-white person.
She wrote that this could trigger additional legal action, including a federal lawsuit, from someone who “can publicize this widely without any restrictions on confidentiality.”
The Department of Justice is similarly leaning into Trump’s anti-DEI movement. Federal prosecutors are reportedly turning to fraud laws to launch a new investigation into the use of diversity initiatives in hiring and promotions by major U.S. companies.
The civil investigation was reportedly conducted under the False Claims Act, which has traditionally been used against fraudsters who bill the government for work that is never completed or inflate the cost of services provided.
The Justice Department’s civil rights division also urged government prosecutors to focus on eliminating transgender women from participating in sports and other so-called culture war issues that fuel Trump’s anti-DEI agenda.
Former Trump lawyer Harmeet Dhillon was nominated to lead the so-called “crown jewel” of the Justice Department after she filed a series of high-profile lawsuits on behalf of right-wing activists opposing gender-affirming health care and school policies and state and local laws aimed at protecting LGBT+ people across the country.
Dillon also supported efforts to reverse election results in states that Trump lost in 2020.
She has since directed the Civil Rights Division to investigate claims of DEI and “anti-Christian bias.”