Ah, the fruits of prosperity. The federal government is so flush with our money that it not only pays for 800,000 “nonessential” employees; our money sends them to training conferences that are worse than nonessential.
Defying the ideal of a colorblind society — certainly, a colorblind employment venue — conferences that qualify as training for federal workers include:
– Society of American Indian Government Employees Annual Training Conference, Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, Tucson, Ariz.
– League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) National Conference, Hilton, Washington, D.C.
– Federally Employed Women (FEW) National Training Program, Hilton, Anaheim, Calif.
– Blacks in Government (BIG) National Conference, New Orleans
-The Federal Asian Pacific American Council (FAPAC) National Conference, The Marriott at Brooklyn Bridge, New York
– National Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Week Conference, Washington, D.C.
– Hispanics Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) Conference, Hyatt Regency, Denver
– Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Government Employment and Technology Forum, Washington, D.C.
Registration fees can exceed $1,000 — not including the costs of transportation, food and lodging — and what is the benefit to taxpayers? Some of the conferences actually do offer training seminars.
FEW, for instance, will include workshops on Budget and Finance, Computer Software, and Procurement and Contracting at its July gathering. But FAPAC’s seminars include “Retirement Planning and Investment” and “Impact of Climate Change.” How does that improve federal employees’ service to taxpayers?
The Blacks in Government conference held in August will open with an interfaith worship service Sunday night after participants arrive in New Orleans. Keep that in mind the next time someone bans the word “Christmas” from government offices.
While BIG training sessions will include worthwhile topics such as Resource Management and Information Technology, others include Financial Management (“You will receive information and resources in the areas of personal trust, private banking, investment management, and financial planning.”) and Health Awareness (“education lectures designed to increase awareness of various health issues affecting the African-American community”). Certainly, those are subjects in which individuals need to be educated — but they are the sort of courses you take at the YMCA, not on the taxpayers’ nickel.
If the federal government’s position is that it disregards race, gender, ethnicity and disability when hiring employees, why shouldn’t it do so when training employees? When the government is supposed to be colorblind, it makes no sense to sponsor gatherings designed to promote color-consciousness.
The real point of these conferences — and the reason they’re offensive — is that they perpetuate division. The purpose of Asians, Hispanics, blacks and women gathering alone is to devise ways to promote their own interests in the workplace.
It may sound innocuous for LULAC, for instance, to lobby for the hiring of more Hispanics; but an advantage for any one group comes at someone else’s expense. What would be the consequence of more Hispanics in the federal work force? Fewer blacks in government? Fewer Indians hired?
There is nothing at all wrong with people forming clubs and civic organizations on the basis of common bonds and heritage, but that shouldn’t be the taxpayers’ obligation. The Daughters of the American Revolution or the members of Mensa or the Irish American Club don’t expect taxpayers to foot the bill for them to gather at some swank resort and decide how to promote their government careers. Why should taxpayers do so for employees who belong to more politically active groups?
Not only are these conferences expensive and divisive; they are absurdly anachronistic. When either a black man or a woman is going to be the next Democratic nominee for president — and polls show both running ahead of the white male Republican candidate — then, obviously, Americans no longer relegate minorities and women to positions of servitude.
It is simply ridiculous to pretend that a black man can be elected president on his own, but he couldn’t get a job at the Bureau of Land Management without special concessions. Barack Obama says his campaign proves that Americans are tired of being divided by demographics. “Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country,” he said. “Against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity.”
Indeed. And Americans hungry for unity are ill-served by a federal work force trained in the culture of division.
