Political commentator and communications strategist Avis Jones-DeWeever has forcefully pushed back against President Donald Trump’s recent claim that civil rights-era policies “hurt” White Americans.
The activist is calling the president’s narrative historically false and dangerous as debates over race, education, and voting rights intensify across the United States.
In a video shared on Instagram, Jones-DeWeever criticized what she described as deliberate efforts to erase or distort Black history, particularly the long struggle for civil rights in America. Her remarks came in response to Trump’s assertion in a recent interview that White people were “very badly treated” by civil rights laws designed to address racial discrimination.
“There’s a reason why they want to erase our history,” Jones-DeWeever wrote in her post. “Never forget.”
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During the video, Jones-DeWeever outlined the historical timeline of Black oppression and resistance in the United States, noting that roughly 250 years of enslavement were followed by only brief periods of expanded rights.
She cited Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, and limited windows of civil rights progress before legal and political rollbacks began to take hold.
“If you were to add it all together,” she said, “we have only experienced about 25 years of so-called freedom in this country after being here for 400 years.”
Jones-DeWeever argued that the gains made during the Civil Rights Movement, particularly following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, have been steadily undermined through court rulings and legislative actions, especially in the years following the election of former President Barack Obama.
Her comments directly counter Trump’s recent take on civil rights protections, which he describes as “reverse discrimination.” In his interview with the New York Times, Trump claimed that while the Civil Rights Act achieved “some very wonderful things,” it also prevented some White Americans from accessing jobs or college admissions, describing the outcome as unfair.
Trump has repeatedly leaned on the idea of reverse discrimination throughout his political career, a theme that has shaped his second-term agenda to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across federal agencies and influence similar rollbacks in the private sector.
Jones-DeWeever warned that such rhetoric obscures the reality of systemic inequality and minimizes the sacrifices made to secure basic rights.
“I’m not willing to wait another 80 years for them to get it right,” she said, calling instead for strategic and immediate action to protect and expand civil rights protections.
Her remarks have resonated widely on social media, where supporters say they reflect growing concern that historical revisionism is being used to justify policy decisions that roll back decades of progress on racial equality.
