President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered federal agencies to immediately start the process of defunding training seminars which use taxpayer money to teach government employees that the country is racist.
Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, released a memo late Friday which explains why the president is cutting funding for such training programs.
“It has come to the President’s attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date ‘training’ government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda,” Vought wrote in the document, which was sent to the heads of executive departments and agencies, and shared online by the White House.
“For example, according to press reports, employees across the Executive Branch have been required to attend trainings where they are told that ‘virtually all White people contribute to racism’ or where they are required to say that they ‘benefit from racism.’
“According to press reports, in some cases these training[s] have further claimed that there is racism embedded in the belief that America is the land of opportunity or the belief that the most qualified person should receive a job,” added the memo, which was issued at Trump’s direction.
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Vought said that such training seminars “not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our Nation has stood since its inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce.
“We can be proud that as an employer, the Federal government has employees of all races, ethnicities, and religions. We can be proud that Americans from all over the country seek to join our workforce and dedicate themselves to public service. We can be proud of our continued efforts to welcome all individuals who seek to serve their fellow Americans as Federal employees,” Vought continued.
“However, we cannot accept our employees receiving training that seeks to undercut our core values as Americans and drive division within our workforce,” he said.
Describing such training seminars as “divisive” and “un-American propaganda training sessions,” Vought added that at the direction of the president, all agencies must immediately identify — with the goal of cutting as soon as legally possible — any spending related to training on radical theories regarding race and sociology.
Do you agree with President Trump’s decision to cut funding for critical race theory training?
These include “‘critical race theory,’ ‘white privilege,’ or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil,” the memo said.
“In addition, all agencies should begin to identify all available avenues within the law to cancel any such contracts and/or to divert Federal dollars away from these un- American propaganda training sessions,” it added.
Vought said the Trump administration is fully committed to equality in the workplace, but concluded that “the divisive, false, and demeaning propaganda of the critical race theory movement is contrary to all we stand for as Americans and should have no place in the Federal government.”
The move to end funding for such training within the agencies was immediately criticized by a number of establishment media outlets.
The Guardian misrepresented the contents of the memo in a story headlined, “Trump orders crackdown on federal antiracism training, calling it ‘anti-American.’”
Forbes also inaccurately portrayed the move. The outlet headlined its story on the matter, “Trump Bans Diversity Training, Claiming It’s Divisive, Anti-American Propaganda.”
Other critics chimed in online with similar sentiments:
As every organization in America works to improve racial understanding and overcome implicit bias, Trump is banning training on these topics in government. This isn’t just implicit bias, this is racism. https://t.co/gCnlpYD425
— Barb McQuade (@BarbMcQuade) September 5, 2020
Friday night news…it never ends: Trump is moving to cancel federal agencies’ racial sensitivity trainings, casting some of them “divisive” and “un-American,” according to a memo by the White House Office of Management and Budget. https://t.co/dxkWfzmKgO
— Vanita Gupta (@vanitaguptaCR) September 5, 2020
Critical race theory helps contextualize how systemic racism affects us. Trump and his party perpetuate systemic racism, but pretend that it doesn’t exist. Of course he wants “sightings” of CRT reported. This is white supremacy trying to cover its tracks. https://t.co/3rYsjb1xAM
— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) September 5, 2020
According to Purdue University, critical race theory is “a theoretical and interpretive mode that examines the appearance of race and racism across dominant cultural modes of expression.”
Training on the subject outlined by the school has students focus on terms such as “white privilege,” “microaggressions” and “institutionalized racism.”
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