Trump to To Federal Agencies: Cancel All Racial Sensitivity Training

In a continuing effort to rally his racist base, Donald Trump has demanded that all federal agencies cancel all racial/diversity sensitivity training. While initially aimed at training that focuses on racial minorities, the LGBT community should brace itself to be targeted as well given Trump's relentless efforts to roll back Obama administration policies that benefited gays and his efforts to allow health care workers to discriminate against LGBT individuals. Both the Washington Post and Forbes look at this blatant effort to win support of white supremacists and white evangelicals, the vast majority of whom, in my view are racists. I truly believe Trump would bring back the Jim Crow laws if he could. The man is pure evil.  Forbes said the following about this development:

What is deeply problematic about this new ban is that the U.S. has a habit of avoiding the country’s dark and racist past. Evading the issue will not make it go away. It will grow more insidious and resilient as each year passes. In June of 2020, America was finally willing to look in the mirror, acknowledge the past and start the long process to make amends in order to move to a point of racial reconciliation and healing. The momentum was building and setting the stage for progress to be made. But with the Trump administration’s recent announcement, the racial equity that the country has been striving for will be stalled.

Here's more from the Post:

President Trump is moving to revamp federal agencies’ racial sensitivity trainings, casting some of them as “divisive” and “un-American,” according to a memo by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

In the two-page memo, OMB Director Russell Vought says Trump has asked him to prevent federal agencies from spending millions in taxpayer dollars on these training sessions. Vought says OMB will instruct federal agencies to come up with a list of all contracts related to training sessions involving “white privilege” or “critical race theory,” and do everything possible within the law to cancel those contracts, the memo states.

“The President has directed me to ensure that federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions,” the memo states.

Trump responded “Not any more!” to one person’s tweet, which read “critical race theory is the greatest threat to western civilization and it’s made its way into the US federal government, the military, and the justice system.”

Recent Fox News segments have heavily criticized “diversity and inclusion” efforts in the federal government started under the Obama administration.

[E]xperts say racial and diversity awareness trainings are essential steps in helping rectify the pervasive racial inequities in American society, including those perpetuated by the federal government. Several studies have found federal contracts are disproportionately awarded to white-owned businesses. In 2017, a study by the Minority Business Development Agency found a dwindling over two decades in contracts for minority-owned businesses, according to NPR.

An administration official said the order has already gone into effect: Such a training on “class biases” scheduled for Friday was postponed. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details about a postponed session.

Racial awareness trainings can help officials realize unconscious bias in the awarding of contracts from the federal government, the country’s largest employer, said M.E. Hart, an attorney who has given hundreds of diversity training sessions for businesses and the federal government for more than 20 years.

The racial sensitivity trainings can improve morale and cooperation in the workplace, and by increasing the diversity of perspectives, ultimately improve overall efficiency, Hart said.

“If we are going to live up to this nation’s promise — ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’ — we have to see each other as human beings, and we have to do whatever it takes, including taking whatever classes make that possible,” Hart said. “These classes have been very powerful in allowing people to do that, and we need them more than ever. There’s danger here.”

The memo comes after Trump has put himself at the center of intense national debates about race, police tactics, the Civil War and the Confederate flag. Democrats have long taken aim at Trump’s comments about race, including his false assertion that former president Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

And this year, as numerous Black Lives Matter protests occurred around the country after police officers killed or shot Black Americans, Trump has sharply criticized social justice protesters and called for law enforcement to crack down.