It may well be, if inflicted on a company’s or government agency’s employees. In July, the City of Seattle required employees to attend training on “Internalized Racial Superiority for White People.” Last week, U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow wrote a letter to Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, which is embedded below. Kirsanow questioned the legality of the City’s “training” program under federal civil rights law:
This training likely violated Title VII’s prohibition against segregating employees by race. As a refresher, Title VII states:
It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer . . . to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
There’s no exception in Title VII that says, “unless you have good intentions.” Rather, it provides that you may not segregate an individual by race in any way which would tend to adversely affect that person’s status as an employee. I know. I had to check twice myself. Segregation is still prohibited in 2020. Amazing.
You should read the whole letter. One gets the impression that Peter has about had it with liberal racism. More:
Let’s take a look at the training materials from this session. One of the first training documents defines “Four Types of Racism”…. One of the four types of racism is “internalized racism,” defined as “The internalization of the racist stereotypes, values, images and ideologies perpetuated by the white dominant society about one’s racial group.” And what qualities constitute “internalized racism”? Well, according to the next slide, here are characteristics of “Internalized Racial Superiority”:
Perfectionism, individualism, imposition, arrogance, paternalism, silence, intellectualization, control, violence, comfort, appropriation, cognitive dissonance, objectivity, anti-blackness, feeling oneself to be the “true” victim, either/or and categorical thinking (separating, seeing distinctions and not connections).
It’s tough to win if you are white. If you are violent, you are racist. On the other hand, if you are comfortable or intellectual, that is racist too. Anti-blackness is racist (fair enough), but so is “appropriation,” which means liking “black” things and making them your own. And there is no escape. If you do nothing–silence–that is also racist. Peter comments:
What is Seattle doing here? Playing Mad-Libs? There is no way that separating white employees from other employees and telling them that this grab-bag of characteristics are inherent to white people and are bad (and therefore, that they have these characteristics and are bad) does not adversely affect their status in the eyes of their coworkers.
There is much more; see the letter embedded below. At last word, Seattle’s Mayor had not responded. Don’t hold your breath.
Anti-white “training” is all the rage in corporate America as well as in government. This image, as James Lindsay says, aptly sums up Critical Race Theory:
This is Critical Race Theory in a single image. pic.twitter.com/8ZhljbXlvp
— James Lindsay, relevant white dude (@ConceptualJames) September 6, 2020
I love how this particular scammer denounces “capitalism,” alleges that “all white people are racist,” and immediately moves on to “PayPal me.” Apparently there are people in the world dumb enough to fall for this bulls**t.
PAUL ADDS: The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, under Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband, has sent a letter to the Seattle City Attorney inquiring about the training program for white employees that Kirsanow describes, as well as a parallel program for black employees. The letter states:
[Seattle’s training] may be in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race.
We have not reached any conclusions. However, there is certain information [note: nine categories of it] that we request in order to determine whether the City has violated Title VII by conducting separate training based on race that may affect the terms and conditions of employment for both white employees and employees who identify as black or ‘persons of color.’
