NAACP says Trump being deceptive about history after reverse discrimination remark
By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, Jan 13 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump was deceptive in his comments about “reverse discrimination” and claims that civil rights harm white people, the largest U.S. civil rights group said on Tuesday. The NAACP added that such statements are “intended to deceive” to set the stage for rolling back social progress.
In an interview published by the New York Times last week, Trump said he believed civil rights-era protections resulted in unfair treatment of white people.
“White people were treated so badly, they performed extremely well, and they were not invited to go to college,” Trump said, an apparent reference to affirmative action in college admissions, the paper said.
These comments came after Trump was asked whether protections that began with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s had resulted in discrimination against white men, according to the newspaper.
“He accomplished some very great things, but he also hurt a lot of people; people who deserved to go to college or people who deserved to get a job couldn’t get a job,” Trump was quoted as saying. “This was reverse discrimination.”
NAACP President Derrick Johnson condemned the comments.
Johnson said in a statement: “Donald Trump knows through his teeth that he is lying. The issue is not that he is ignorant of history or uneducated, the issue is deception.” he said. “There is zero evidence that the civil rights movement harmed white people in any way, none,” Johnson added.
“Trump does this all the time. He deliberately invents a false reality to lay the groundwork for policies that will further benefit the top one percent by privatizing government services and diverting resources from underserved communities.”
Trump has been criticized by human rights groups for his crackdown on immigrants, attacks on diversity initiatives, freezing funding for universities due to pro-Palestinian protests, and attacks on cultural institutions for their focus on issues such as slavery.
Trump has cited security reasons for his crackdown on immigrants and says he is fighting against what he calls “un-American views.”
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington. Editing by Bill Berkrot)
