Trump Claims 1964 Civil Rights Act Led To Affirmative Action And Was ‘Unfair’ To White People

In today’s episode of If America Isn’t A Racist Country, Why Is Our President A White Supremacist?, President Donald Trump, the man who got himself reelected almost exclusively by presenting himself as Martin Luther King Jr. for white people, is now out here claiming the Civil Rights Act of 1964 led to anti-white racism.

“White people were very badly treated, where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university to college,” Trump told The New York Times in an apparent reference to affirmative action in college admissions, which he appeared to be conflating with the 1964 act of granting Black people equal rights under the law. “So I would say in that way, I think it was unfair in certain cases.”

“I think it was also, at the same time, it accomplished some very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people — people that deserve to go to a college or deserve to get a job were unable to get a job. So it was, it was a reverse discrimination,” Trump continued.

For the record, there is no direct connection to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and affirmative action in college admissions, which was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023. Trump is basically taking two issues involving Black people — issues involving historical events that are separated by nearly six decades — and smushing them together to create a single talking point aimed at reinforcing the fiction that white people are now or have ever been oppressed in the U.S.

Seriously, how many different ways can Trump make it clear he’s a white supremacist in a suit and red tie before we can conclude that the MAGA hat is the new Klan hood?

After running a campaign on promises to protect the largest and most powerful racial demographic in the Western world from an “anti-white feeling in the country” that “can’t be allowed,” Trump took time during his inauguration to sign sweeping executive orders prohibiting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in both the public and private sectors under the pretense that they were discriminatory against white men. Since then, his Department of Justice has overhauled its civil rights division, which, last year, saw a mass exodus of more than 100 attorneys who up and resigned from the department due to its focus on white grievance and steering away from (or outright gutting) cases involving civil rights protections for Black people.

Just last month, the chair of the Trump administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which enforces civil rights laws against workplace discrimination, issued a PSA to white men, essentially telling them that if their privilege cards are declined, they may be entitled to compensation.

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

Then, of course, there’s the time Vice President J.D. Vance declared to a crowd of poor, persecuted Caucasians: “In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being White anymore.” 

White people feeling like any measure of racial progress for the oppressed will lead to white people themselves being oppressed is nothing new. It’s white supremacist rhetoric that is older than the Ku Klux Klan, going all the way back to when white people were afraid  Abraham Lincoln was going to make white people slaves just by freeing Black people.

Trump is just proof that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

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