President Donald Trump’s second term may go down in history as the moment Washington decided that white people have civil rights under the same laws designed to protect racial minorities. It’s been clear for at least a decade that whites often face discrimination in hiring—sometimes barely concealed, sometimes openly celebrated. Investment banks announce plans to divide up job offers by race and gender, and tech companies issue updates on how much they increased minority leadership.
The Trump administration is addressing the most egregious instances of this trend, taking up discrimination cases on behalf of white workers and applicants the same way the government has done for other groups for the past 60 years. They are also ensuring that white and Asian applicants aren’t illegally penalized in college admissions. And so far, they’re doing it in a way that seeks to apply the law impartially rather than stoke further racial tensions.
This week has featured two major actions in this federal campaign. The Justice Department announced Wednesday that it had determined that the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), is discriminating against white and Asian medical school applicants by deliberately admitting less-qualified blacks and Hispanics.
