Something has gone sideways when the Chair of the EEOC is publicly urging white men to file discrimination charges.
Yes, I said it that bluntly, because sometimes clarity matters more than politeness.
Let's start with the part Andrea Lucas and her supporters rush to say first: Title VII protects all employees. Race is race. Sex is sex. Discrimination is discrimination. That has always been true.
But that's not the real question. And pretending it is avoids the harder, more important one.
The real question is why Congress passed Title VII in the first place. It wasn't because lawmakers worried white men might someday struggle for professional opportunity. It was passed because entire groups of people, especially Blacks and women, were systematically locked out of jobs, promotions, and whole industries. Not subtly. Not accidentally. By design.
Title VII was a civil rights law aimed at expanding opportunity for the historically marginalized and dismantling a labor market built on exclusion. That context matters. A lot.
So, when the head of the nation's civil rights enforcement agency makes public pleas for white men to file discrimination charges, she isn't just reciting a legal truism. She's making a strategic and moral choice about the purpose of civil-rights enforcement.
That choice is backwards.
This isn't about whether white men can be discriminated against. They can. The law already covers them. Courts already hear their cases. No special encouragement campaign is required.
What's troubling is the suggestion that "anti-white" or "anti-male" discrimination deserves priority attention, at a time when discrimination against marginalized groups is more subtle, more coded, and harder to prove than ever. Bias today rarely announces itself. It shows up as "not a fit," "not leadership material," "not polished," or "lacking presence." The people most insulated from those vague, subjective assessments remain the people most likely to be presumed competent and neutral on arrival.
The EEOC Chair's solicitation of white men isn't a message of neutrality. It's a reframing of civil rights enforcement.
Her shift has consequences. Employers don't become fairer in response to this rhetoric; they become more cautious and more defensive. As a result, they make "safe" hiring choices. Historically, those choices are familiar ones, which is how old inequities quietly reassert themselves.
If an employer excludes someone because they're white or male, enforce the law. Period. But publicly encouraging white men to file charges misreads purpose, history, and present reality.
The EEOC was created to open doors that had been nailed shut for generations. It was not created to reassure the historically powerful that losing exclusive access feels unfair.
Civil rights enforcement should be about expanding opportunity—not manufacturing grievance.
And the moment we forget that is the moment we stop protecting civil rights at all.
Here's what I read this week that you should read, too.
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