Hello and welcome to part 3 of our series on the Trump Administration’s September 22, 2020 Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping. You can find the official White House version of this executive order here. Here we
The Order picks up from where it left off–claiming that acknowledging the existence of racism is racist (see part 2)–by describing this acknowledgement as coercion:
Executive departments and agencies (agencies), our Uniformed Services, Federal contractors, and Federal grant recipients should, of course, continue to foster environments devoid of hostility grounded in race, sex, and other federally protected characteristics. Training employees to create an inclusive workplace is appropriate and beneficial. The Federal Government is, and must always be, committed to the fair and equal treatment of all individuals before the law.
But training like that discussed above perpetuates racial stereotypes and division and can use subtle coercive pressure to ensure conformity of viewpoint. Such ideas may be fashionable in the academy, but they have no place in programs and activities supported by Federal taxpayer dollars. Research also suggests that blame-focused diversity training reinforces biases and decreases opportunities for minorities.
–We can train people to create an inclusive workplace basic on fair and equal treatment of all individual before the law, but we cannot define any group as failing to be inclusive, fair and equal. We must leave that blank. It is racist to openly acknowledge that in the United States, the racism that is sanctioned by generations of institutional discrimination, including laws and mores that approve white racism against black people, Asian people, Latinx people, Native American people, or any other race group.
This would be akin to offering training to prevent homophobic discrimination that refused to say that heterosexual people are the ones allowed, even encouraged, to practice this discrimination, and therefore the source of the problem. We should, apparently, leave the door open to the idea that gay people discriminating against straight people is the longstanding problem.
And isn’t diversity training all about ensuring conformity of action, if not viewpoint? You may not reach everyone who is prejudiced, but you have to ensure that they walk out of the room knowing that prejudice will be punished. And you do hope that you will change minds eventually. Isn’t the goal of the U.S. Constitution to use subtle and not-so-subtle coercive pressure to get millions of people to commit to being one nation, indivisible? Coercive pressure can be exerted for good or for evil. We use coercive pressure to teach children not to touch the hot stove.
Another dog-whistle for conservatives: linking actual diversity training that names names to colleges and universities (“the academy”). Conservatives believe that higher ed is exclusively neo-liberal, so attaching real diversity training to them is effective for that audience.
Finally, there is research that finds that diversity training can be unfortunately counter-productive in that people who complete it feel that they are now racism-proof because of their new knowledge, and therefore anything they do can never be racist, and they never have to think about it again. This does not mean that we cancel diversity training, but that we improve it to address this conundrum.
Our Federal civil service system is based on merit principles. These principles, codified at 5 U.S.C. 2301, call for all employees to “receive fair and equitable treatment in all aspects of personnel management without regard to” race or sex “and with proper regard for their . . . constitutional rights.” Instructing Federal employees that treating individuals on the basis of individual merit is racist or sexist directly undermines our Merit System Principles and impairs the efficiency of the Federal service. Similarly, our Uniformed Services should not teach our heroic men and women in uniform the lie that the country for which they are willing to die is fundamentally racist. Such teachings could directly threaten the cohesion and effectiveness of our Uniformed Services.
–We must begin by asking, what about this Administration’s determined and open effort over the past four years to directly threaten every expression of and mechanism to maintain this nation’s democracy?
But aside from that, here we find once more the argument that the merit system is actually a level playing field. It is not. As we said in Part 2, “That’s why pushing “color blindness” and “meritocracy” are indeed tools of racism: they ask people to assume a level playing field that does not exist. Meritocracy means ‘we all start with the same opportunities, and those who take advantage of them and work hard will succeed.’ But we don’t all start with the same opportunities, the same equality of opportunity, as the Founders put it, and therefore meritocracy is not truly possible.”
And that’s why we must tell people that, unless we are working hard and deliberately and honestly to address racism and sexism, treating individuals on the basis of individual merit really is racist or sexist, because we take a system that ensures the success of whites and men and then say “Well, I guess blacks and women don’t succeed because they just aren’t as talented as white men. They had a fair chance, and they failed.”
Such activities also promote division and inefficiency when carried out by Federal contractors. The Federal Government has long prohibited Federal contractors from engaging in race or sex discrimination and required contractors to take affirmative action to ensure that such discrimination does not occur. The participation of contractors’ employees in training that promotes race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating similarly undermines efficiency in Federal contracting. Such requirements promote divisiveness in the workplace and distract from the pursuit of excellence and collaborative achievements in public administration.
–Yes, there are rules on the books to prevent federal contracts from being granted to contractors that don’t have a fair and equitable workforce or policies. But many studies over many years show that those rules are regularly flouted. Even if they weren’t, and every federal contractor was fully anti-racist and anti-sexist, wouldn’t that be the likely result of decades of diversity training, which is now illegal? How can federal contractors continue that imagined stellar record if they can no longer conduct honest diversity training?
We assume that most people reading this blog–like most people in the world–work in a company or organization. All of these companies experience divisiveness in the workplace. Is the main or only source of this divisiveness diversity training? Probably not. We’d even say definitely not. If we had to make a hypothesis about which causes more divisiveness in the workplace–prejudice or diversity training–we’d say it’s the former.
Therefore, it shall be the policy of the United States not to promote race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating in the Federal workforce or in the Uniformed Services, and not to allow grant funds to be used for these purposes. In addition, Federal contractors will not be permitted to inculcate such views in their employees.
–Here the perverse equation is made baldly clear: honest diversity training that identifies white racism and male sexism is “race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating”. Therefore, there is no more federal funding for any diversity training that identifies white racism or male sexism. Again, while we could see a bad-intentioned person arguing that white people are not the only racists (thus ignoring the specific U.S. context of institutional racism that promotes white people over others), it’s hard to see how they would argue that women are as guilty of sexism as men. Or not; we suppose any group as dedicated to ignoring history and reality as this administration could do it.
The Historic Present 