|
 |
PN is supported by paid subscribers. Become one ⬇️
Working in the Trump administration these days is no doubt a dream come true for Stephen Miller. He gets to oversee President Trump’s war on immigrants, but as a Renaissance Man of Racism, he has other irons in the fire too.
During the time Trump was out of office, Miller didn’t sit on his hands. He founded America First Legal, a law firm deeply committed to white supremacy. If there’s a shred of diversity left anywhere, AFL will find it and file a splashy and vicious lawsuit.
Theoretically, Miller is no longer part of AFL, having left when he joined the administration last year. But whether he’s puppet-mastering AFL’s ceaseless batch of lawsuits is beside the point, because now, he’s part of an entire administration as dedicated to white supremacy as he is. So while AFL is out there humming along in the private sector, government agencies are working hand in glove with it.
In Trump’s world — and Miller’s too, of course — the only civil rights worth protecting are those of aggrieved white men. The problem for the administration is that while there is no shortage of angry white guys, there’s nothing to investigate unless they have suffered some sort of harm. But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission chair, Andrea Lucas, is aiming to fix that.
While EEOC commissioners have the power to bring a “commissioner’s charge” to investigate discrimination claims, that generally occurs only when there’s widespread systemic discrimination, and those cases represent a vanishingly small number of those investigated by the agency — well under one percent. The vast majority of the EEOC’s work comes from individual people filing charges, especially because you have to do that before you can bring a discrimination lawsuit.
This has led to the grimly comic scenario of administration officials begging white men to file discrimination claims. Late last year, Lucas made a videotaped plea to get sad whites in the door: “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.”
