Is there anything more poisonous or ridiculous than insisting that corporations and the government treat people fairly regardless of race?

Apparently not. An Axios report on the Trump team’s intention to use civil-rights laws to target diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies discriminating against whites has occasioned sneering and denunciations.

Philip Bump at The Washington Post snarked, as his headline puts it, “Trump aims to be a fearless warrior for White advantage.”

The New Republic commented, sarcastically, “If Donald Trump is elected to a second term in November, his allies plan to end this country’s long-standing oppression of a major marginalized group in America: white people.”

MSNBC warned, “Trumpism is increasingly organized around the reactionary principle that white Americans are not just overlooked, but are victims because of their race. This is a path to unraveling multicultural democracy.”

Much of the commentary reflects the contradictory argument that anti-white racism isn’t really a thing, yet, simultaneously, is absolutely essential to racial progress.

The same twisted reasoning was often used when the critical race theory controversy was at its height; CRT was either a right-wing myth or foundational to the truthful teaching of America’s past, or somehow both.

There should be a long German word for this rhetorical phenomenon.

Regardless, it is axiomatic that in the context of zero-sum hiring, admissions and contracting decisions, favoring one group will disadvantage another.

This has been well established regarding affirmative-action policies at colleges — it’s much harder for white (or Asian) applicants to get into competitive schools than it is for members of favored minority groups with similar credentials.

Progressives might believe that this is cosmic justice, that whites deserve whatever they get. But individuals aren’t racial symbols and shouldn’t be treated as such. A conscientious white college applicant, who has never harmed anyone, shouldn’t be punished for his or her race.

Why are the iniquities of the old Jim Crow regime being taken out on white applicants — who never voted for Lester Maddox and probably never heard of him — for assistant-vice-president jobs at banks and other corporations?

This is unfair, and, more to the point, against the law.

The U.S. Constitution is race neutral, and so are the civil-rights laws enacted after the Civil War and in the 1960s. As such, they are potentially a powerful weapon against the system of racial preferences that has become a pervasive feature of American life.

We saw that in the Supreme Court’s affirmative-action decision last year, and in the ruling last month against the Minority Business Development Agency by U.S. district court judge Mark Pittman in Texas.

Corporations that are setting hiring targets by race and gender face massive exposure. They haven’t had to worry about it much to this point. The plaintiffs’ bar, out of political cowardice, won’t touch this issue. On top of that, it’s hard even to find plaintiffs; becoming known as the white person who was chiseled out of a job and sued over it is not the best career move in corporate America.

This is why an ideologically driven group like former Trump aide Stephen Miller’s America First Legal has had to pick up the baton, with some success.

But if a Trump Justice Department decides to make an example of a couple of high-profile corporations engaged in these discriminatory practices, the regime of preferences may well crumble quickly.

Until recently, the incentives have been all the other way — to adopt the fashionable attitudes, spout the familiar DEI lines, empower the apparatchiks of HR, and not risk the ire of elite opinion by taking a different path.

Now, there are signs that DEI in corporate America is cresting, or at least becoming less blatant, under political and legal pressure.

If a Trump Justice Department (and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) pushes these types of policies in business and government into the dustbin, the Left will firmly plant both feet on one side of its current straddle — and say it’s a travesty that anti-white discrimination no longer exists.

— Rich Lowry is a columnist with King Features Syndicate.