The Walt Disney Company’s mission to “entertain, inform, and inspire people” will now include lectures about race and white privilege, according to newly leaked employee training materials.
According to the “Reimagine Tomorrow” materials, described as a “diversity and inclusion program,” the Walt Disney Company is teaching its employees that America was founded on “systemic racism” and encourages a new employee to “take ownership of educating yourself about structural anti-Black racism.”
The new training materials also include concepts such as “white privilege,” “white fragility,” “white saviors,” “microaggressions,” and “antiracism.”
Additionally, the entertainment conglomerate urges its white employees to complete a “white privilege checklist” during their employment.
The United States has a “long history of systemic racism and transphobia,” the leaked documents claim, telling new employees that they should “not rely on your Black colleagues to educate you [about race],” which is “emotionally taxing.”
White employees should, per the documents, “work through feelings of guilt, shame, and defensiveness to understand what is beneath them and what needs to be healed.”
They should also not defend themselves but “listen with empathy [to] Black colleagues” and “not question or debate Black colleagues’ lived experience.”
White employees should also not seek or advocate for “equality” but only support measures that result in “equity” or “equality of outcome,” per one section of the training.
“Equal is a noble goal. Equal treatment and access to opportunities help each of us perform our best within a shared set of parameters. But we really need to be striving for equity, where we focus on the equality of the outcome, not the equality of the experience by taking individual needs and skills into account,” the document reads.
The training also includes a “21-Day Racial Equity and Social Justice Challenge” in which white employees are encouraged, though not required, to complete a “white privilege checklist.”
The self-assessment checklist has about 100 items that employees can read through to determine their level of privilege. These include: “I am white,” I am heterosexual,” “I am a man,” “I still identify as the gender I was born in,” “I have never been raped,” “I don’t rely on public transportation,” and “I have never been called a terrorist.”
“These internal documents are being deliberately distorted as reflective of company policy, when in fact their purpose was to allow diversity of thought and discussion on the incredibly complex and challenging issues of race and discrimination that we as a society and companies nationwide are facing,” Disney said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “The Disney brand has a long history of inclusivity, with stories that reflect acceptance and tolerance and celebrate people’s differences, as we have consistently demonstrated in such popular films as Moana, Coco, Black Panther, Soul and Raya and the Last Dragon, and as a global entertainment company we are committed to continuing to tell stories that reflect the rich diversity of the human experience.”
