The phrase gained ground in the 1970s with legal challenges to affirmative action. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978, a white applicant argued that a medical school's set-aside seats for minority students discriminated against him. The Supreme Court struck down quotas but allowed race as one factor. Similar arguments led to Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard in 2023, which ended race-conscious admissions.
Civil rights law protects everyone. The Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that Title VII covers white workers, and in 2025 it ruled unanimously in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services that majority-group plaintiffs face no extra burden to bring a claim. So individual discrimination against white people is real and can be illegal.
ARD distinguishes that from racism as a system. White Americans still hold far more wealth, political power and institutional control. A 2011 study by psychologists Michael Norton and Samuel Sommers found white respondents believed anti-white bias had become a bigger problem than anti-Black bias. Data on wealth, health and policing does not support that belief.