Education Department's Civil Rights Office Head Is Dismantling Protections for Students; Said She Faced Discrimination for Being White

Smart Dissent's issues with Betsy DeVos have been documented repeatedly including here, here, here, here, and here.  Let's add another unbelievable one to the list.

The new acting head of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights once complained that she experienced discrimination because she is white.  [In April], DeVos announced [Candice] Jackson’s position as deputy assistant secretary in the Office for Civil Rights, a role that does not require Senate confirmation.... Jackson is in charge of about 550 full-time department staffers, who are responsible for investigating thousands of civil rights complaints each year.

Jackson’s inexperience, along with speculation that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will roll back civil rights enforcement, lead some observers to wonder whether Jackson, like several other Trump administration appointees, lacks sympathy for the traditional mission of the office she’s been chosen to lead.  Jackson’s writings during and after college suggest she’s likely to steer one of the Education Department’s most important branches in a different direction than her predecessors.... she has denounced feminism and race-based preferences.  She’s also written favorably about an economist who decried.... the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Office for Civil Rights within the Department of Education has been an extremely effective agent for positive change for our education system and our young people.  Now that will all change until our next President can re-staff the department with individuals who seek to fulfill the mission of helping our country.

Jackson takes over an office that has been responsible for protecting students from racial, gender, disability and age discrimination for decades.  It emphasized to colleges that they could give preferences to minorities and women to achieve diversity, and advised them to be more aggressive in investigating allegations of rape and sexual harassment on campus.

She got right to work in June, ending investigations into Civil Rights matters:

According to an internal memo issued by Jackson, requirements that investigators... identify systemic issues and whole classes of victims will be scaled back.... regional offices will no longer be required to alert department officials of highly sensitive complaints on issues such as the disproportionate disciplining of minority students and the mishandling of sexual assaults on college campuses.

Jackson believes equality for women and minorities has already been achieved.  While that'd be amazing if true, the office she now leads is supposed to work to actually make that a reality here on earth not in fairy tale land.

“In today’s society, women have the same opportunities as men to advance their careers, raise families, and pursue their personal goals,” Jackson wrote. “College women who insist on banding together by gender to fight for their rights are moving backwards, not forwards.”

“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.”

This position exists to fight for Civil Rights in our education system.  Jackson is the exact OPPOSITE of what Americans need in this role.

Sources:

https://www.propublica.org/article/devos-candice-jackson-civil-rights-office-education-department
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/politics/education-department-civil-rights-betsy-devos.html?_r=0
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2017/06/16/u-s-commission-on-civil-rights-to-investigate-civil-rights-enforc...