The New York Times broke the news Tuesday night that the Department of Justice is planning on tackling affirmative action in college admissions.

Naturally, liberals had a fit over it. (RELATED: DOJ Will Sue To Curb Affirmative Action)

“Actually, white people are the real victims of discrimination” was inevitable from this administration. https://t.co/08yt74QZXj

— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) August 2, 2017

Jeff Sessions, noted racist (& appointed by a racist president) wants his Justice Department to be in his image. https://t.co/WXlUeF0kxq

— Amanda Litman (@amandalitman) August 2, 2017

This is a political operation. Nothing whatsoever to do with justice. If justice were involved, they’d fight to increase affirmative action.

— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) August 2, 2017

Trump is exactly the white supremacist he showed himself to be during the campaign. Now our tax dollars will defend white rights. Hideous.

— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) August 2, 2017

The next step in a steady rollback of civil rights efforts across the govt. See this @JessicaHuseman/@AnnieWaldman: https://t.co/QWqSuyEMup

— Jesse Eisinger (@eisingerj) August 2, 2017

The Times helped push the outrage by framing the move as solely designed to target discrimination against whites, as well as featuring a quote from a left-wing activist that the DOJ’s move appeared to be a racist “dog whistle.”

As most education observers should know, affirmative action hurts Asians more than it does whites in many cases.

For instance, Ivy League schools have been accused of effectively implementing “Asian quotas” in their admission practices. Last year, several Asian-American advocacy groups filed a complaint against Yale, Dartmouth and Brown over allegations the schools enforce these discriminatory quotas.

It’s not just whites who are negatively affected by affirmative action, but it makes for better copy to say the Trump administration is only interested in helping white people. Only dummies and racists think whites are discriminated against, you know! (RELATED: DOJ Source Shuts Down NYT Affirmative Action Story)

Anything that comes from the Trump administration is bound to be seen as bigoted and awful, no matter the policy idea. The DOJ tackling affirmative action is no different.

While activists and pundits make racial admissions preferences to be the greatest thing in the world — “they’d need to increase affirmative action” as reporter Jamil Smith argued — most Americans disagree with that notion.

According to a 2016 Gallup poll, 65 percent of Americans disagree with allowing race to be a factor in college admissions. Among African-Americans, the group that is perceived to benefit the most from these policies, there is also majority opposition to racial preferences, with 50 percent opposing and 44 percent supporting.

It seems like it’s not just “racists” who have a problem with affirmative action.

College campuses throughout America are swamped with activism and tension centered on ridiculous accusations of “systemic racism” and other similar charges. One of the root causes for our contemporary spate of campus insanity is higher education’s unwavering commitment to affirmative action.

Racial preferences in the admissions process doles out rewards based on a student’s identity before he or she even steps foot on campus. The message is that universities prize certain racial groups over others in their population. It also teaches students that their inherent characteristics can be used to agitate for more power and privileges while attending a university.

Affirmative action — which the British accurately call “positive discrimination” — encourages students who benefit from the system to embrace a racialized worldview. One where their sense of victimization deserves attention and higher moral status.

But even the minority students who are admitted to elite colleges largely due to their race end up disadvantaged.

Mismatch theory explains how this occurs and even how this problematic situation encourages radical agitation.

Mismatch describes how minority students are admitted into universities above their academic ability and then struggle significantly with the work. The theory states that this leads to alienation among the students accepted due to their race and not their grades, and may explain the recent spate of agitation on campus.

Instead of blaming affirmative action for unintentionally hurting them, the students affected by mismatch blame systemic racism and, in turn, become radical activists.

The majority of Americans oppose affirmative action, probably because it discriminates based on race. The argument that schools need racial preferences to have diversity falls flat when one sees how students with different views are treated on campus.

As a society, we would like to think of ourselves as a meritocracy that judges based on character, not skin color. Affirmative action directly opposes that way of thinking.

Hopefully, the DOJ’s move is the beginning of America eliminating racial preferences in hiring and college admissions.

Follow Scott on Twitter and purchase his new book, “No Campus for White Men.”