The truth about being a white man in America
In an interview last week with reporters from the New York Times, President Trump claimed that the civil rights movement resulted in discrimination against white men. According to Trump, white men have been “very badly treated,” “not invited” to attend college, and excluded from jobs:
New York Times: So, do you believe, sir, that the civil rights protections that Americans had, starting in the 1960s and so forth, resulted ultimately in the discrimination against white men?
Trump: Well, I think that a lot of people were very badly treated. White people were very badly treated, where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university or a college. 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.
This isn’t just Trump speaking off the top of his head. The idea that white men are the primary victims of discrimination in the United States is driving administration policy.
Last month, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Chair Andrea Lucas posted on X and encouraged white men who have experienced discrimination at work to file a complaint with the agency. Lucas said she was focused on eliminating discrimination “against white male employees and applicants.”
Trump is taking a more aggressive stance on alleged discrimination against white men in his second term. In August 2018, during Trump’s first term, Darren J. Beattie was fired as a White House speech writer after it was revealed “he spoke at a white nationalist conference in 2016.”
In February 2025, Beattie was hired by the new Trump administration as the top public diplomacy official at the State Department. He was brought on a couple of months after posting that “[c]ompetent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.” Beattie, mirroring Trump’s claim, argued that white men were being excluded from positions of power to protect “the feelings of women and minorities.”
America is a big place and there are undoubtedly some instances of “reverse discrimination” against white men in the country. But Trump’s claim that, as a group, white men are discriminated against in higher education and the job market is flatly false.
The myth of anti-white bias in higher education
Trump claimed that white men who “did extremely well” in high school are “not invited to go into a university or a college.” The opposite is true. Being a white man is a significant advantage when applying to colleges.
As a whole, white people are overrepresented among admitted and enrolled students, according to data analyzed by researchers from the Urban Institute and the University of Southern California. In 2024, the data shows, white people represented 40.7% of the applicants but 53% of the enrolled students. In contrast, Black applicants accounted for 8.7% of the applicant pool but just 5.8% of enrolled students. Hispanic applicants accounted for 17.4% of applicants and 17.1% of enrolled students.
Male students receive additional advantages. Most college applicants are female, so many institutions admit a higher percentage of men to ensure their student population is more evenly divided by gender. For example, in 2023, Brown University’s acceptance rate was 6.9% for male applicants and 4.2% for female applicants. That means men were “64% more likely to get into Brown” than women.
White men have an even larger leg up at selective institutions that practice “legacy“ admissions — giving preference to the children of graduates. Between 2014 and 2019 at Harvard, “the acceptance rate for legacy applicants was 33.6 percent, dwarfing the school’s overall acceptance rate of just six percent.” Over this time period, 69.3% of legacy applicants at Harvard were white.
Overall, 43% of white admits to Harvard were athletes, legacies, those on the dean’s interest list, or children of faculty and staff (ALDC) — all groups that get an advantage in the admission process. Among African American, Asian American, and Hispanic Harvard admits, less than 16% are ALDC. A study by three academic researchers found “roughly three-quarters of white ALDC admits would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs.”
The myth of anti-white bias in the workplace
It is easier to get a job in America if the employer thinks you are white. Researchers applied for jobs at 100 of the largest companies using made-up resumes with equivalent qualifications. They changed some of the names, however, to suggest they were white or Black — submitting similar resumes for “Lamar” and “Adam,” for example. The study found that “employers contacted the presumed white applicants 9.5 percent more often than the presumed Black applicants.”
At every education level, white unemployment is significantly lower than Black unemployment. According to 2022 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “the Black rate is twice, or close to two times, the White rate in all cases except for individuals with advanced degrees.”
That same data shows that the “overall Black unemployment rate is regularly higher than the unemployment rate just for White high school dropouts.”
Among Americans who have a job, white men are paid more. In the third quarter of 2025, white men had average weekly earnings of $1,362, dwarfing white women ($1,103), Black men ($1,032), Black women ($927), Latino men ($994), and Latina women ($890).
White men continue to dominate the top of the employment food chain. In companies in the S&P 100, white men constitute about one-third of the workforce. However, they hold 46% of executive positions and 37% of management positions. According to a 2024 McKinsey study of corporate America, it will take 22 years for white women and 48 years for women of color to attain the same level of representation in senior leadership roles as they have in the general population.
Yep, clearly discriminatory - in favor of white men.
(PS. I am one, but not proud of it or the advantages I have clearly had throughout my 80 year lifetime.)
Judd, Never afraid to tackle to tough subjects with honesty and integrity with facts.
Truth is alive and well!
We all trust and thank you!