Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has appointed as the acting head of the department’s Office for Civil Rights a woman who once complained of discrimination for being white.
The appointment has civil rights advocates leery of the choice. Attorney Candice Jackson, who was announced as the deputy assistant secretary in the Office for Civil Rights on Wednesday, spoke out about being discriminated against for being white as a college student, according to a report by ProPublica. During her time at Stanford University in the mid-1990s, Jackson “gravitated towards a section of the class that provided students with extra help on challenging problems.” After finding out it was for minority students, according to ProPublica, she wrote in the Stanford Review, “I am especially disappointed that the University encourages these and other discriminatory programs.” She added, “We need to allow each person to define his or her own achievements instead of assuming competence or incompetence based on race.”
Jackson also penned an op-ed blasting affirmative action saying it “promotes racial discrimination,” according to to the report. “As with most liberal solutions to a problem, giving special assistance to minority students is a band-aid solution to a deep problem,” she wrote. “No one, least of all the minority student, is well served by receiving special treatment based on race or ethnicity.”
Jackson also has written extensively in favor of an economist, Murray N. Rothbard, who called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “monstrous” and “the source of all the rest of the ills,” as well as denounced compulsory education, according to the report.
