Trump is helping to push a diverging definition of racism that reflects deep national divisions about what, if anything, can be done to produce a more equitable country.
A racist by any other name
Or, indeed, whether “a more equitable America” is a goal we should even pursue. The cultural factions in the US have sharply divergent views of what politics is for.
But it’s not surprising that we’re getting this sort of complaint. If you’ve got a college degree, things have been good for the past few decades and you don’t have much reason to fret about “affirmative action”. (Both my father and I have Ph.D.s and the number of blacks with Ph.D.s to offer us competition is so thin that giving them preference really wouldn’t affect our prostpects.) But if you’re white and don’t have a college degree, you’ve noticed that the politics and economics have been moving severely against you. (Consider the admission of China into the WTO and its effect on the US labor market.) And affirmative action really does affect the very limited paths for them to move up.