The Labor Department is broadening its effort to eliminate diversity training that portrays “virtually all” white people as racists.
In a speech in which he complimented traditional efforts to bring diversity and inclusiveness into the offices of federal employees and contractors, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia said the department is tracking down programs that blame white people and others for racism and discrimination.
“By this, we mean workplace training programs that attribute particular traits or status to someone because of his or her race or sex, as well as training programs that assign blame or bias to someone just because, again, of that person’s race or sex,” he said in a speech Monday night at Ohio’s Franciscan University.
In his address, he held out Columbus Day as the example of “diversity and inclusion” that should be taught in America.
Pushing back against the federal holiday’s critics, Scalia said, “Columbus Day reminds us: Catholics, Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, and others had their own struggles gaining acceptance in American society. Columbus Day is a day about overcoming that; it’s a day that was first set aside to embrace this country’s diversity and welcome all citizens into the American polity regardless of creed or national origin. Our nation did not establish Columbus Day to commemorate oppression or discrimination. We established Columbus Day to overcome it.”
Labor is one of the key agencies set to enforce President Trump’s recent executive order shutting down anti-American diversity training.
He said that the department has set up a hotline for employees of the government and federal contractors to call should they believe they are being forced to undergo that type of training.
Scalia also said that the department will soon demand information on “the types of training and workshops provided to employees of federal contractors.”
He explained to about 100 students and faculty that the government is not opposed to the standard type of diversity training that millions go through every year. “It does not prohibit workplace training about nondiscrimination and equal opportunity. That training is important, the Labor Department encourages it, and, in some instances, we require it,” he said.
But Trump opposes training that places blame for racism and sexism on Americans, and usually on white people.
Scalia said, “Recently, we learned of so-called diversity training given to employees of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, who were taught that ‘virtually all white people, regardless of how woke they are, contribute to racism.’ Workers at one federal laboratory were given materials telling them that racism ‘is interwoven into every fabric of America.’ At another federal lab, workers were told that an emphasis on ‘rationality over emotionality’ is a characteristic of white males. The Smithsonian Institution was shamed into removing from its website a graphic which taught that hard work and believing in one God are ‘aspects and assumptions of whiteness.’’’
In suggesting that not only should Columbus Day be preserved but is the example of inclusiveness, Scalia said that the holiday was created in 1892 to welcome Italians and Catholics into America.
“So, no, harboring racist views is not the shared heritage of white Americans. For many, it’s quite the opposite,” he said.
Scalia concluded, “Columbus Day began as a day to bring us together regardless of religion or ethnicity. The Americans to whom we extend this invitation is broader now than in the 19th century. Some of the late-comers to that invitation — I’m thinking particularly of African Americans — are those who suffered most, by far. But we do not continue on the path the Founding Fathers charted by abandoning Columbus Day. Rather, we become better Americans by using this day to recall the newness, novelty, and promise of this great nation and how welcoming those different from us has not always come easily in America but has been one of our greatest sources of strength.”
