EEOC Makes Direct Appeal To White Males Facing Discrimination

After years of systematic race and sex discrimination against white men, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Chair Andrea Lucas made a direct appeal Wednesday, asking them to file employment discrimination claims.

“Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws,” Lucas said in a video message posted to social media.

She directed Americans to an explainer page on the EEOC website that provides guidance on responding to discrimination based on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology.

In the video, Lucas said that complaints are often time sensitive, and the explainer page makes clear that those who believe they are facing discrimination must first file a complaint with the EEOC before bringing a lawsuit in federal court.

Although DEI is not defined in statute, “Under Title VII, DEI policies, programs, or practices may be unlawful if they involve an employer or other covered entity taking an employment action motivated — in whole or in part — by an employee’s race, sex, or another protected characteristic” (emphasis in original).

Discrimination also means using quotas to “balance” workforces by race, sex, or other traits protected by law, as well as “disparate treatment” related to various employment-related activities, including applications, hiring, promotion, demotion, firing, compensation, selection for interviews, and fringe benefits, the explainer states. Exclusion from training, mentoring, sponsorship programs, and fellowships is also covered.

“Limiting, segregating, and classifying” based on race or sex, for example, by giving individual race or sex groups (often referred to as “affinity groups”) separate DEI training, is a violation of Title VII, as are harassment and retaliation based on those characteristics, according to the explainer.

“The EEOC is committed to identifying, attacking, and eliminating ALL race and sex discrimination — including against white male employees and applicants,” Lucas said in her social media announcement.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon commented on the announcement, adding that “if a PRIVATE employer discriminates on the basis of race/sex, [Andrea Lucas’s] outfit has primary jurisdiction. If a PUBLIC employer does this, her agency can investigate/conciliate, but [the DOJ Civil Rights Division] takes on the litigation. Reach out to either of us — we talk daily!”

David Decosimo, associate professor in the School of Civic Life and Leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, posted a thread on social media back in July, stating in part, “I no longer care about the stigma, nor the views of those who impose it. Nothing will change unless people speak up & say, ‘No, it’s actually not okay to remove people from a search or hold them to a different, higher standard because they’re white or, worse, white & male.’”

“I have seen too many truly outstanding white males in my field denied opportunity after opportunity until they give up, despite being obviously & sometimes massively more learned & accomplished than those who get the job. Sometimes, the gap & the quality of the hire are shocking,” Decosimo added.

He described a “deal struck” among university leadership regarding hiring decisions: “To be allowed to hire a white male, you have to also hire at least one, two, or even three minorities.”

Lucas responded to that post Wednesday, advancing the call to action for white males: “You are 100% right that we need people to speak up. Discrimination against white males is unlawful race and sex discrimination. There’s no ‘permissible’ or ‘good’ form of discrimination. I encourage you to reach out to my office.”

DEI has been raging as a hiring philosophy for decades as an outgrowth of affirmative action, with corporations patting themselves on the back for hiring non-white individuals. At the same time, they invariably post endless press releases talking about how “diverse” they are, while simultaneously bludgeoning “whiteness” as an inherent defect in a person’s character, and even his humanity.

As Vice President J.D. Vance put it Wednesday, “A lot of people think ‘DEI’ is lame diversity seminars or racial slogans at NFL games. In reality, it was a deliberate program of discrimination primarily against white men.”

In his post Vance linked to a piece from Compact Magazine called “The Lost Generation,” which details the decade-plus era of “un-whitening” in various fields, including Hollywood writing, journalism, and universities, and the purposeful derailment of white male Millennials in professional America.

Jacob Savage, the author, points to 2014 as “the year DEI became institutionalized across American life,” and describes his discovery that, as a white male, “the world is not rooting for you — in fact, it’s deliberately rooting against you.”

That discriminatory pattern has also affected Gen Z. While Millennials likely got the brunt of the destruction — since it lasted throughout the time they were starting their careers — many Gen Zers have dealt with the ever-present spectre of DEI ideology while students and when they entered the workforce.

The Trump administration has been working to destroy the DEI framework so many corporate and public sector employers have been immersed in and forced to navigate as they pursue their careers.

If the EEOC can get favorable court rulings on enough white-male discrimination cases, the groundwork will be set to never again allow corporations to purposefully destroy an entire demographic in American society.

Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.