By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, Jan 13 (Reuters) – The largest U.S. civil rights group on Tuesday said President Donald Trump was being deceptive in his comments about “reverse discrimination” and in his claims that civil rights hurt white people, with the NAACP adding that “deception is the point” of such remarks to lay groundwork for rolling back social progress.
In an interview from last week published by the New York Times, Trump said he believed civil rights-era protections resulted in white people being treated unfairly.
“White people were very badly treated, where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university to college,” the newspaper quoted Trump as saying in an apparent reference to affirmative action in college admissions.
The comments came after Trump was asked whether protections that began in the 1960s with passage of the Civil Rights Act resulted in discrimination against white men, according to the newspaper.
“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,” Trump was quoted as saying. “It was a reverse discrimination.”
NAACP President Derrick Johnson denounced the comments.
“Donald Trump knows he is lying through his teeth. The issue isn’t that he is unaware of the history or lacks education, it’s that deception is the point,” Johnson said in a statement. There is “zero evidence, none, that the civil rights movement harmed white people in any way,” Johnson added.
“Trump does this all the time. He deliberately invents a false reality to lay the groundwork for policies that further benefit the top one percent by privatizing government services and stripping resources away from underserved communities.”
Trump has been criticized by rights groups over his immigration crackdown, assault on diversity initiatives, funding freeze against universities over pro-Palestinian protests and attacks against cultural institutions for focusing on issues like slavery.
Trump cites security reasons for his immigration crackdown and says he is fighting against what he calls “anti-American views.”
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in WashingtonEditing by Bill Berkrot)
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