A Washington Times op-ed from Kerry Picket attacks the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department for not enforcing an anti-bullying law on behalf of a hypothetical "overweight straight white male who is verbally and/or physically harassed because of his size."
Here is the catch. DOJ will only investigate bullying cases if the victim is considered protected under the 1964 Civil Rights legislation. In essence, only discrimination against a victim's race, sex, national origin, disability, or religion will be considered by DOJ. The overweight straight white male who is verbally and/or physically harassed because of his size can consider himself invisible to the Justice Department.
Picket is co-signed by Steven Hayward over at National Review who concludes that this is "yet another frontier where the Obama Justice Department thinks civil-rights laws apply only to minorities of color." This is obviously flat wrong to anyone capable of reading the statement from DoJ that Picket cited.
In case it's not clear, Picket seems to think that this means the DoJ won't intervene on behalf of white people because it "will only investigate bullying cases if the victim is considered protected under the 1964 Civil Rights legislation." As Adam Shah points out, what that actually means is that, if you're bullied because you're white, the DoJ can intervene. Picket seems to be under the impression that "discrimination against a victim’s race, sex, national origin, disability, or religion," doesn't include discrimination against white people or even a "heterosexual white male student," maybe because she believes straight white people are "normal" and therefore not included under "race" or "sexual orientation."
David Bernstein points out that it doesn't actually have the authority under the law to defend fat people from bullying under anti-discrimination laws:
This op-ed seems like a cheap rhetorical trick–trying to insinuate that the administration has something against “straight white males” when the administration is simply staying within the limits of its legal authority (and not to mention that discrimination based on being white or male would, in fact, be subject to DOJ investigation–and discrimination based on sexual orientation is not, regardless of whether the subject is gay or straight).
What's even worse, coming from a purportedly conservative newspaper, is the suggestion that somehow it should be a federal responsibility to deal with bullies in school. If ever there was a local issue that is best left to state and local government, and indeed is constitutionally delegated to them, this is is.
By equating anti-fat bias with racism, this is one of those bizarre moments where someone on the right has taken a commitment to political correctness so seriously that they've actually ended up to the left of most liberals. I doubt that Picket has really thought through the implications of her argument, that discrimination against fat people should be treated the same way as discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or gender. "White" and "straight" are the really important parts of the phrase, "overweight straight white male."
As a criticism, though, this a reminder of the sheer depth of the cynicism of the conservative critiques of the Justice Department that have emerged recently. In the past, as Bernstein suggests, conservatives have viewed federal civil-rights enforcement as an unjustified use of federal power or as infringing on the rights of the states. Now, the criticism is rooted entirely in racial resentment. The real problem is not that the federal government is too powerful; it's that it doesn't use that power on behalf of white people enough.
The former critique was consistent and principled, if in my view, wrong. The latter is actually a narrative in search of an argument. Picket was trying to frame the bullying issue in a way that fit the pre-established political narrative that the first black president and attorney general hate white people, as evidenced by the decision of the Justice Department to narrow the injunction sought in the New Black Panther case.
That isn't all that principled or consistent, but I think on some level the objective is the same, to undermine the Justice Department's authority to enforce civil-rights protections on behalf of groups that have historically faced discrimination. Rather than do it through argument, they'll settle for convincing their audience that civil-rights laws don't actually protect white people.
