A Minnesota college scholarship named after George Floyd and only available to black students sparked a complaint with the US Department of Education as one critic called it “racism.”
North Central University’s exclusion of non-black students is “insidious discrimination on the basis of race, color and national original,” according to the complaint from the conservative legal advocacy group the Equal Protection Project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation.
“Discrimination against white applicants is just as unlawful as discrimination against black or other non-white applicants,” foundation President William Jacobson and project member Ameer Benno wrote in the complaint, filed with the DOE Office of Civil Rights.
Jacobson, a Cornell Law School professor and founder of the project, said in a statement The Post that the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police sparked a focus on “alleged systemic racism” on campuses across the US.
“Regardless of whether you believe in the racial narrative of the case, it does society no good to inject more racism into the educational system through discriminatory scholarships,” the statement said.
“Unfortunately, many colleges and universities have bought into the ‘anti-racist’ activism claim that the remedy for past discrimination is current discrimination. Such ‘reverse-racism’ is just racism, and it is not the answer.”
The university declined to comment and the DOE said it wouldn’t confirm the complaint, and would only confirm if it decides to open an official investigation.
The George Floyd scholarship is restricted to a student “who is Black or African American, that is, a person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa,” according to NCU’s website.
The winning applicant is awarded a four-year, full-tuition scholarship, at NCU, a Christian school in Minneapolis.
The complaint argues that the restriction violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
White police officer Derek Chauvin, 44, was convicted of the murder of Floyd, 46, after vidoes showed the cop had pinned him under his knee for over nine minutes on May 25, 2020.
The killing of Floyd, who was black, sparked a firestorm of protests against racial inequality and police brutality.
The challenge to the scholarship comes after the US Supreme Court ruled last June that colleges’ race-conscious or “affirmative action” admissions policies were unconstitutional and had to be scrapped.
EPP/Legal Insurrection has filed claims of discrimination against other race-based exclusionary or preference programs, including at the SUNY Buffalo Law School and Medical School and SUNY Albany.
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