Trump wants to make America majority white forever | Opinion
About the time I was learning that South Carolina civil rights “City Girl” icon Phyllis Hyatt had died, the New York Times was reporting this: “Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People.”
Hyatt isn’t a nationally-known civil rights figure but was prominent in Rock Hill and the fight against Jim Crow. She was 82 years old and emblematic of a great generation of Americans who made racial equality possible for us all.
As they are dying, the Trump administration is trying to undo the kind of equality and chance at opportunity they worked for.
“The proposals, some of which already have gone into effect, would transform a decades-old program aimed at helping the world’s most desperate people into one that conforms to Mr. Trump’s vision of immigration — which is to help mostly white people who say they are being persecuted while keeping the vast majority of other people out,” The Times reported.
It wasn’t the only such headline since President Donald Trump was reelected reflecting that sentiment:
“Trump Fires Black Officials From an Overwhelmingly White Administration.”
“Trump Seeks to Strip Away Legal Tool Key to Civil Rights Enforcement”
The White House has even blasted out a CNN report projecting net negative immigration in 2025 for the first time in half a century. The administration seems to not know the country’s economic growth can’t be sustained without immigration, or just doesn’t care.
Its shift from fighting discrimination against groups that have long been the targets — aside from its politically-motivated, narrow and cynical view of antisemitism — to beating back so-called “anti-white racism” plans seem to be the brainchild of Duke University graduate Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff.
It’s a bald-faced attempt to keep a country in which Black and Hispanic babies outnumber white babies being born in hospitals from reaching its projected “majority-minority” nation status.
Miller and Trump want the U.S. to forever be majority white. They’ve conjured an “anti-white” falsehood to excuse ugly policies such as deploying men in masks to snatch anyone resembling a Latino off our streets and firing highly-qualified Black people and replacing them with less qualified white men. This is happening as the Supreme Court seems poised to undo Voting Rights Act protections and North Carolina Republicans are trying to gerrymander away a House seat held by a Black representative to appease Trump.
This is happening even though the research is clear, that diversity efforts have not been displacing white men en masse, who continue being well or overrepresented in most positions of power. Those “woke” efforts have helped everyone.
How do I share that opinion with students in my Debate & Deliberation course? I don’t. Instead, I’ve tasked them with researching and collaborating to make the best case in favor of the Trump administration’s belief about the “woke” and “anti-white” tide that has supposedly taken hold.
You’ve read that correctly. Two of my liberal and left-leaning students will be arguing why the Trump administration view might have real merit. And they will make that argument publicly.
They will be participating in a debate Oct. 28 against two conservative-libertarian, anti-woke community members who will be arguing against the Trump and conservative position.
It’s not about changing minds but an illustration of our students’ willingness and ability to take seriously every relevant argument, including on politically charged issues for which they may have strongly held positions. It’s the kind of thing I’ve seen students seen do all semester, and for several years — the kind of thing the public keeps being told “woke” students are incapable of or unwilling to do.
If you want to see evidence of why that stereotype of today’s college students is bogus, come out to “Davidson in Reverse: The Anti-White Fight” at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the 900 Room of the student union.
Hyatt and others sacrificed to make nights like Tuesday possible. Our students refuse to squander that gift.
Issac Bailey is a McClatchy opinion writer in North Carolina and South Carolina.
This story was originally published October 28, 2025 at 9:10 AM.