President Joe Biden's discriminatory first year

Last January, newly elected President Joe Biden pledged to fight racism and unify the nation. Instead, during his first year he's imposed a harsh agenda of racism in everything from distributing pandemic-relief aid to allocating scarce medicines for COVID patients. Racial favoritism is affecting every way Americans are treated by this administration.

New guidance from Biden's Food and Drug Administration instructs states to reserve monoclonal antibody drugs for patients with medical risk factors such as obesity and kidney disease. But here's the catch: The FDA is also urging race and ethnicity to be considered risk factors, apart from medical condition. So a Black patient with no health problems automatically will be put ahead of a white patient in the same situation.

Biden's Treasury Department is rolling out a $10 billion program to aid small-business owners with loans and grants. Businesses owned by minorities, women, non-English speakers and ex-cons go to the front of line.

Biden administration regulators use weasel words to obscure the truth about who will benefit from this State Small Business Credit Initiative. Regulators say "disadvantaged" groups, but that's defined by race and ethnicity, not actual hardship.

Eligibility also includes anyone who has had "long-term residence in an environment isolated from the mainstream of American society." Translation: ex-cons. White male business owners who obey the law and have never been incarcerated are out of luck.

It's more of the same. Biden's American Rescue Act, passed in March, is riddled with discrimination. That law divvied up taxpayer dollars to benefit minorities and shortchange white people in the name of equity. Minority farmers were offered no-strings loan forgiveness by Biden's Agriculture Department, but white farmers were ineligible.

Biden's Restaurant Revitalization Fund pushed minority and female restaurant owners to the front of the line for whopping giveaways -- up to $10 million per business owner. Sorry, white men.

Federal judges have suspended these programs until white challengers get their day in court. But Biden persists, pandering to his political supporters. Equal rights be damned.

The infrastructure bill passed in November is chock-full of anti-white racism. It includes grants to install solar and wind technologies in depressed areas. But when contractors bid, minority-owned businesses will get selected first.

The bill also allocates money to improve urban traffic patterns. Contractors and subcontractors get priority only if they're owned by minorities or women. White male business owners can take a hike.

So can Asians, in Biden's view. On Dec. 13, Biden's Justice Department urged the Supreme Court not to hear a challenge to Harvard University's admissions policies, which challengers say deny admissions to Asians who have grades and test scores far higher than Black and white applicants.

The Trump Justice Department was committed to challenging these racial preferences, and the American public agrees. Nearly three-quarters of Americans oppose considering race and ethnicity in admissions decisions, and that includes 65% of Hispanics and 62% of Blacks, according to Pew Research. In November, California, the most left-wing and racially diverse state in the country, voted against reinstating affirmative action in state hiring and admissions to public universities.

Biden's Education Department is dangling federal grants to encourage state education bureaucrats to adopt critical race theory and the factually challenged New York Times "1619 Project."

The indoctrination and racism continue in the workplace. Is this what Americans want? Absolutely not. Three-quarters of Americans oppose using race to decide who's hired and promoted, Pew found.

Biden is ignoring that. He's cynically giving his political backers what they want and, in the process, ripping deep wounds into the nation.

When Black and Hispanic people are ushered to the front of the line for medical treatments, get first dibs on pandemic relief funds or get hired faster or admitted to college more easily, other people suffer. Lives and livelihoods are affected.

Americans want to be treated as individuals and to treat others that way.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.