The Department of Justice Plans to Come for Affirmative Action

By Andréa Butler

Yesterday (August 1, 2017), The New York Times broke news that the Department of Justice was planning to launch an attack against affirmative action by suing colleges and universities the DOJ feels are taking part in “intentional race-based discrimination.” Seeing as how the very meaning of “affirmative action” is to defy racism — Merriam Webster defines it as “any active effort to improve the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups and women” and Cornell Law School states that it’s “a set of procedures designed to eliminate unlawful discrimination between applicants, remedy the results of such prior discrimination, and prevent such discrimination in the future” — it’s obvious that 45 and them are implying that white people are being discriminated against when it comes to college acceptances.

“The document does not explicitly identify whom the Justice Department considers at risk of discrimination because of affirmative action admissions policies,” the NYT reports. “But the phrasing it uses, ‘intentional race-based discrimination,’ cuts to the heart of programs designed to bring more minority students to university campuses.”

The article continues, “Supporters and critics of the project said it was clearly targeting admissions programs that can give members of generally disadvantaged groups, like Black and Latino students, an edge over other applicants with comparable or higher test scores.”

Let’s run that back right quick: The Justice Department is actually, seriously trying to act like white people are so oppressed. We already know that reverse racism is not a thing and will never be a thing, since racism itself involves the systematic oppression of a group of people — the same system upon which this nation was founded. (We seem to remember something about European explorers claiming they discovered places where other people had already been living for centuries; stealing the land in those places from the OG residents; traveling across the world to other people’s homes, taking them, stuffing them into horrid conditions, and enslaving them in a strange land that they, again, had stolen from other people; the whole Jim Crow era; and on and on …)

There has never been a time in this country when white people have been subjected to institutionalized racism, discrimination, bigotry, and overall injustice. Remember how SCOTUS had to let Abigail Fisher know what’s really good just last year?

While affirmative action is not some ploy to discriminate against white people getting into college — in fact, white women benefit the most from affirmative action — could it be possible that 45’s administration’s attack on it is an attempt at trying to reduce the number of non-white people in higher education? A new version of a master threatening his slaves if they’re ever caught reading?

Knowledge is power, after all.

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Quarterly print teen magazine for Black girls ages 13 to 19. Covering The Black Girl's Mainstream™

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