Last week, Compact published a widely read article titled The Lost Generation, examining the effects of DEI initiatives on white men over the past decade. The piece was written by an aspiring Hollywood screenwriter who, in 2016, believed he and his writing partner, both of whom were white, were on the brink of a career breakthrough. A showrunner had informed them that their pilot script had been submitted to the network executive in charge — who “loved” it and “wanted to hire us” to join the show’s writers’ room.
Those hopes were soon dashed. The executive, who was white, later apologetically explained, that the writers’ room was small and that the higher-level writers were all white men. An all–white-male room, he said, was not possible. Perhaps, if the show were renewed for another season, they might be considered then.
Last Wednesday, Vice President J.D. Vance shared the article in a post on X, writing, “A lot of people think ‘DEI’ is lame diversity seminars or racial slogans at NFL games. In reality, it was a deliberate program of discrimination primarily against white men. This is an incredible piece that describes the evil of DEI and its consequences.”
Elon Musk weighed in on Vance’s post, calling DEI “a great wrong.”
But it was Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Andrea Lucas’s response to Vance’s post that made liberals’ heads explode: In a brief video, she urged white men who believe they’ve been discriminated against to report their stories to her agency.
Lucas asked, “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. Contact the @USEEOC as soon as possible.” She encouraged them to visit the EEOC website to read “our one-page explainer about DEI-related discrimination.”
Lucas also responded to Vance’s post directly: “Absolutely right @JDVance. And precisely because this widespread, systemic, unlawful discrimination primarily harmed white men, elites didn’t just turn a blind eye; they celebrated it. Absolutely unacceptable; unlawful; immoral. @USEEOC won’t rest until this discrimination is eliminated.”
On Thursday evening, Lucas doubled down on her remarks:
The gaslighting surrounding what DEI initiatives have entailed in practice ends now. We can’t attack and remedy a problem if we refuse to call it out for what it is — race or sex discrimination — or acknowledge who is harmed.The EEOC’s doors are open to all, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects everyone, including white men.
The Associated Press reported:
Since being elevated to acting chair of the EEOC in January, Lucas has been shifting the agency’s focus to prioritize “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination,” aligning with President Donald Trump’s own anti-DEI executive orders. Trump named Lucas as the agency’s chair in November.Earlier this year, the EEOC along with the Department of Justice issued two “technical assistance” documents attempting to clarify what might constitute “DEI-related Discrimination at Work” and providing guidance on how workers can file complaints over such concerns. The documents took broad aim at practices such as training, employee resource groups and fellowship programs, warning such programs — depending on how they’re constructed — could run afoul of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race and gender.Those documents have been criticized by former agency commissioners as misleading for portraying DEI initiatives as legally fraught.
Apparently, it’s never dawned on the Left that discrimination against white people was even possible. Their reactions to Lucas’s public outreach have been highly critical.
The Associated Press reached out to David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at New York University School of Law, who said, “Lucas’s latest social media posts demonstrate a ‘fundamental misunderstanding of what DEI is.'”
He continued, “It’s really much more about creating a culture in which you get the most out of everyone who you’re bringing on board, where everyone experiences fairness and equal opportunity, including white men and members of other groups.”
Naturally, Glasgow said he was unaware of “any kind of systematic evidence that white men are being discriminated against.”
After noting that “Fortune 500 CEOs are overwhelmingly white men, and that relative to their share of the population, the demographic is overrepresented in corporate senior leadership, Congress, and beyond,” he added, “If DEI has been this engine of discrimination against white men, I have to say it hasn’t really been doing a very good job at achieving that.”
The Associated Press also spoke to Jenny Yang, a former EEOC chair who found Lucas’s singling out of one demographic group “unusual” and “problematic.” According to Yang, “It suggests some sort of priority treatment. That’s not something that sounds to me like equal opportunity for all.”
Yang argued that the EEOC “has done the opposite for transgender workers, whose discrimination complaints have been deprioritized or dropped completely.”
She said it worries her that “a message is being sent that the EEOC only cares about some workers and not others.”
What Lucas’s critics ultimately reveal is not a flaw in her argument, but an unwillingness to confront an uncomfortable reality: anti-discrimination law cannot function if certain groups are treated as categorically incapable of being victims.
Title VII does not carve out exceptions based on political fashion, and equal opportunity cannot mean selective enforcement. By insisting that race- and sex-based exclusion is wrong no matter who is targeted, Lucas is not dismantling civil-rights protections — she is reaffirming their original purpose. The backlash she faces only underscores how necessary her clarity has become. If equal protection under the law is to mean anything, it must apply to everyone, even when acknowledging that fact unsettles long-held assumptions on the Left.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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