Noxious diversity training in federal government flourishes under Trump

Christopher Rufo reports that “critical race theory — the far-left academic discourse centered on the concepts of ‘whiteness,’ ‘white fragility’ and ‘white privilege’ — is coursing through the federal government’s veins. Under a GOP ­administration, no less.”

Last month, a private diversity-consulting firm conducted a training titled “Difficult Conversations About Race in Troubling Times” for several federal agencies. The training called on white employees at the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the National Credit Union Administration and the Office of the Comptroller to pledge “allyship [sic] amid the ­George Floyd Tragedy.”

According to a trove of whistleblower documents I’ve reviewed, the training begins with the premise that “virtually all white people contribute to racism” and hold narratives that “don’t support the dismantling of racist institutions.” Therefore, the trainers argue, white federal employees must “struggle to own their racism” and “invest in race-based growth.”

It gets worse:

The trainers then ask “white managers” to create “safe spaces,” where black employees can explain “what it means to be black” and to be “seen in their pain.” White staffers are instructed to keep silent and to “sit in the discomfort” of their racism.

If any conflicts arise, the trainers ­insist that whites “don’t get to decide when someone is being too emotional, too rash [or] too mean.” Whites are told they can’t protest if a person of color “responds to their oppression in a way [they] don’t like.”

Now there’s a recipe for a well-functioning, harmonious work environment.

Would any self-respecting black employee want to be “seen in [his or her] pain” by a manager? Would any white manager not brainwashed by these training sessions ever be able to respect a black employee who emoted about his or her blackness in one of these “safe spaces”?

One might have hoped that under President Trump, this kind of toxic indoctrination would end. It hasn’t. In fact, there seems to be more of it than when Barack Obama was president. According to Rufo, Howard Ross, the white consultant who created this training, has “expanded” his footprint under the Trump administration:

Since President Trump’s inauguration, Ross himself has done at least 17 trainings for federal agencies, including the Justice Department, the National Institutes of Health and the ­Office of the Attorney General.

Rufo adds that “the permanent bureaucracy knows that it can ignore the priorities of any one commander-in-chief — and continue to remake US institutions in its own ideological image.” But the permanent bureaucracy can’t if the president appoints people who understand identity politics and the culture war.

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