Bad-faith reverse-discrimination claims hurt America’s economic future and global standing

Confronted with these ugly truths, our country has an opportunity to repair generations of harm.  Instead, I fear we are headed down a more destructive path–not only denying our history but doubling down on the discrimination that has for so long denied Black Americans their share of the American dream. In doing so, we are crippling our economy with our own hypocrisy–and tarnishing America’s international standing as others reckon more honestly with their past.

From slavery to the Jim Crow South, redlining to the destruction of Black Wall Street, America has spent centuries profiting from Black labor while denying and destroying Black prosperity. The inevitable result: staggering financial inequality, with the average white family accruing 10 times more wealth than Black families, and Black people holding just 2% of national wealth and controlling less than half of one percent of capital in America.

This is no mere echo of historical transgressions–it is a reflection of ongoing barriers to success, including a criminal justice system that incarcerates Black Americans at five times the rate of whites and societal bias that has reduced them to a negligible presence in corporate C-suites. Presidents Johnson and Nixon started down the path to righting some of these wrongs with the U.S. government’s Black Capitalism program, but that ended almost as swiftly as the false promises to address race-based wealth and social inequality that came after George Floyd’s murder.

It is against this backdrop that a vocal faction of Americans has the audacity to cry “reverse discrimination,” so threatened by the country’s meager efforts to atone for its sins that they seek to hide its history of oppression. Their…