The Trump administration is calling on white men who believe they faced discrimination at work to file their complaints to a federal civil rights agency.
The head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission urged white men to formally register their complaints with the government this week in a video posted to X. “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,” EEOC Commission Chair Andrea Lucas said.
Lucas urged white men who qualified to contact the EEOC “as soon as possible” and pointed them to the agency’s website and its explainer on “DEI-related discrimination.” “The EEOC is committed to identifying, attacking, and eliminating ALL race and sex discrimination — including against white male employees and applicants,” Lucas wrote.
The EEOC’s priorities have shifted dramatically during the second Trump administration. The EEOC, born out of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was created to protect Americans from workplace discrimination and harassment. Given its origins, the agency had a historic focus on protecting minority employees from racial discrimination, but in more recent years its mission included investigations into instances of discrimination over gender, disability, age and national origin.
At the same time that the EEOC is collecting complaints from white men, the agency has dropped six of its own cases representing transgender people who alleged workplace discrimination based on their gender identities.
Dismantling diversity
The Trump administration has deployed the EEOC in a very specific way over the course of the year, steering the agency toward its broader goals of dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. In March, the EEOC and the DOJ released a joint press release along with new documentation warning employers against “unlawful DEI-related discrimination” that could be interpreted to violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
“Far too many employers defend certain types of race or sex preferences as good, provided they are motivated by business interests in ‘diversity, equity, or inclusion,’” Lucas said. “But no matter an employer’s motive, there is no ‘good,’ or even acceptable, race or sex discrimination.”
While the subtext was clear from the EEOC’s recent changes, Lucas said the quiet part out loud on X. The Trump administration is keen to highlight perceived examples of anti-white discrimination in the country, and it’s willing to pull all the levers of government in pursuit of that goal.
The White House’s framing of race in America increasingly reflects the language of once-fringe white nationalist theories, including debunked claims about a genocide of white South Africans and recent calls for “remigration” – mass deportation for non-white immigrants. Trump himself has an extensive history of racist ideology, has repeatedly aligned himself with white nationalists and continues to promote a language of grievance around anti-white sentiment while stripping away federal policies designed to promote racial diversity.
The EEOC has an unusual structure, but that hasn’t been enough to block Trump’s efforts to weaponize it during his second term. The agency is a commission made up of five members, with no more than three allowed to be from the same political party. The president can appoint commissioners, who serve a five year term, and can designate a chair to steer the agency, but generally the EEOC is designed to be bipartisan by definition, limiting the potential influence of whoever sits in the White House and keeping the commission independent.
Quickly after taking office in January, Trump fired two of the federal agency’s three Democratic commissioners – an unprecedented departure from the commission’s traditional five year terms. After filling one of the open slots with a lawyer who served in the Department of Education during his first term, two EEOC positions sit vacant, with one Biden appointee remaining in her role and two Trump appointees setting the agenda.