August 18, 2011, was a turning point in the history of the American Republic. That was the date on which Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13583, “Establishing a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce.” This EO resulted in formalized required training throughout the federal government, all of which was derived from academic theories associated with cultural Marxism: critical theory, intersectionality, social justice, and other theories that attack all institutions of Western culture.
On 8/18/2011 President Obama signed the Executive Order 13583, Establishing a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workplace.
One of the first manifestations of that training was targeted at “unconscious bias” (also called “implicit bias”), which can be defined as:
Unconscious forms of discrimination and stereotyping based on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ability, age, and so on.
Instruction on unconscious bias among federal employees has morphed years later into the more radicalized “critical race theory” training, which is aimed at aggressively exacerbating divisiveness among Americans and suppressing white culture:
[T]he insidious ideology is being used to promote estrangement rather than friendship, and hostility rather than goodwill. Indeed, the tactics used by proponents of critical race theory shares many parallels with old tactics used by the Bolsheviks…. [C]ritical race theory’s agitators are committed to tearing down civil society on the pretense that it is an incubator for “systemic racism.”
The key concept behind critical race theory is that every human endeavor should be looked at through the perspective of racism, which gets down to the fact that anyone who uses this method of inquiry will find racism everywhere they look – and that includes throughout all government agencies. This training (brainwashing) is what has been accelerated by the Biden regime after he signed an executive order to advance racial “equity” (another Orwellian Marxist term) on January 20th.
But unconscious bias training is where it all began, and that has been radicalizing the federal workforce for nearly a decade—on purpose! What follows is a window into that training from a retired senior member of the intelligence community, who personally experienced the malarkey a few years ago, which will convey an understanding of just how evil and insidious this brainwashing in the guise of “training” really is.
His commentary begins:
One of the “not mandatory but really mandatory” government training and education classes is Unconscious Bias (UB). For those unfamiliar with the term, a high-level discussion would outline the fact that all human beings’ experiences include interactions with people, places, and things that form impressions that linger. If the emotional response associated with the experience is strong enough, then judgments or prejudices can be formed. These emotions can manifest either consciously or unconsciously. One would think that a class about unconscious bias would be about identifying, recognizing, examining some exemplars in detail, and then offering solutions to deal with such experiences in a manner that mitigates (to some degree) those non-constructive biases that inhibit interaction with others.
It would be reasonable to assume that all humans could have all manner of unconscious biases towards any number of people, places, or things based on experience alone. From some standpoints, bias can be described as a kind of phobia. It is also reasonable to believe that such a course or training effort would be an interesting experience—one that would be well received that would help many who in the strictest sense of the term are blissfully unaware of their bias, the nature of it, and how it manifests itself in behavior, response, and the like. Such a course would be valuable if the aim were to provide a recommendation of sorts to further educate and help the students identify and mitigate their own personal challenges.
It would be reasonable to assume these things, particularly when federal agency leadership touts the training as “one of the most enlightening classes I’ve taken in 30 years in government.” Unfortunately, these assumptions are not reasonable because the premise is all Marxist claptrap. The tenets of UB are published in many federal agencies, but they include things like (quoting from our instructor in the class):
- The problems with race in America have not and cannot go away because America was founded on the basis of white supremacy.
- The only way to make progress on race is for white people to acknowledge the facts about it and take action, but it can never really truly go away because it is something you are born with (the not we but rather you in that last phrase really caught my attention; apparently only white people can be racist?).
- White people have biases against people of color they are born with, and to not acknowledge that fact is proof (of that fact).
- The goal of UB is not to be “color-blind,” i.e., to treat all people the same regardless of color, because that “pisses me off when you don’t see me as a black woman.”
- White power/supremacy was established at our founding is documented in the constitution and has been practiced ever since.
- People who do not think there is a racism problem in this country are speaking from the standpoint of the patriarchy they support.
The UB instructor was herself a stereotype or caricature of a leftist militant hypocritical black woman. That last sentence may look terrible in print but consider this incident. During part of the instruction that ran long after the instructor made some outrageous remarks and claims (for which she was then called out), the class would not let her continue until she clarified her racist remarks. She made somewhat of a big show of saying that, as a result of our clarification demands, we would only get an eight-minute break (a power play or punishment for calling her out for her outrageous, inflammatory remarks!).
One of the younger participants from Human Development with a Ph.D. in psychiatry (call her Judy) was one of the lead participants on revamping our agency’s hiring action plans. She came back from the break late by around 30 seconds. The instructor had already been exceptionally rude to her in response to a separate issue that will be elaborated upon below. In this instance, she put the proverbial “hairy eyeball” on Judy, followed her to her seat, and made some comment about tardiness, respect, and patriarchy. Judy replied, “Sorry, I couldn’t get through the Starbucks line in 8 minutes.” The instructor somewhat snorted and said, “Huh, I had no problem.” Judy retorted, “Maybe true, but one of our HD people got your coffee for you.” Not a big deal, right? But that was just a window into how the class went.
One of the first things we teach instructors in the military, intelligence community, federal government in general, and elsewhere is that attitude is everything. The golden rules for instructors are (or used to be):
- Impart instruction clearly and succinctly without emotion.
- There are no bad or dumb questions – only unclear instructors.
- If you show attitude or argue with the class, then you are, by definition, ineffective.
The UB training/brainwashing is billed as provocative and controversial. And it should be since its base premise derived from CRT-based Marxist dogma is to insult ~65% of the population by calling them racist. In some writings on the subject, other groups such as Hispanic and Asian are even classified as white. That is at the very least confusing when you consider that by making the case, they suffer at birth from inheriting the worst elements of the patriarchy that clearly does not apply to them (nobody ever said that Marxist theories made sense).
The exchange that caused the most controversy was when Judy subtly called out the instructor for insinuating that the way we hire and the way we reward is based on criteria that disenfranchise people of color. Now it might have been different if the instructor was in the Human Development department of our agency and therefore actually knew something about our processes and programs, but it was just a silly, gratuitous thing to say. (As an aside, I should point out that there were a lot of references throughout to “people of color,” but any clarification, follow-up, retort, etc., made it clear that the instructor was talking exclusively about black people.)
Judy explained that our agency had made great progress in eliminating somewhat extraneous packet information that is not a criterion to ensure that we do not introduce some type of selection bias and how that had been a huge focal point for years as a priority of the Director of National Intelligence-led community HD council. The instructor interrupted her and snarled, “That pisses me off when you don’t see me as a black woman…”
Well, that took us in a whole new direction. When I had a chance to speak, I said, “For several decades in the military and several more now in civil service, the focus of our Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) policy and diversity actions and instructions has been achieving color blindness—to provide equality or an equal chance to all. It was Martin Luther King’s basic and most fundamental goal. From most viewpoints, we have well-nigh achieved that goal. But you are saying under UB that we are moving that goalpost back to recognizing color or distinct human attributes or to things people have no control over and that you have yet to define. It sounds like favoritism or something akin to it that will reverse the progress made in American society.” Her response again cited nonsense, claiming that my comments were straight from the patriarchy’s playbook. Still, she would not acknowledge changing the goal (color-blindness and equal opportunity for all) nor address what replaces it. And she did not offer any further explanation when pressed on wanting to be recognized as a “black female,” as well as what the ramifications were for other attributes, such as LGBT, disabled, etc., and how and where that would lead.
I could go on with anecdotes here to belabor the point. But a good question is, what did I do about it? Well, I was the Equal Employment Opportunity lead for our business unit for about half of the previous year, and I have a very deep and well-grounded knowledge base on our agency program, including how much time and effort we spend on matters that fall under this topic and diversity in general. I wrote up my observations in an email that quoted the instructor verbatim on about a dozen comments that the class (judging from their reactions) and I found most disturbing. For people in the class from a government organization that comes under the Pentagon, the most egregious comments (to the dozen or so folks I spoke to out of ~42 in the class) had to do with the founding documents and the claim that our nation was founded on the principle of white power or supremacy or slavery. In addition, many in the class did not understand the context of the use of the term “patriarchy.”
My email opened by taking our leadership team (Director, Deputy Director, Chief of Staff, Chief Operating Officer, Senior Leader, Human Development Lead, and our diversity/EEO lead) to task for endorsing and promoting such a divisive and militant variant of the UB training with a message and narrative totally at odds with our heretofore published leadership and agency position, as evidenced by our EEO goals and our diversity programs. Such as the notion that the goal of these actions is no longer color-blindness, but some other abstract, yet undefined concept that must be accompanied by guilt or shame if our employee was “born white.” My issue for leadership was that they were opening a can of worms by advocating training and education that undermines our agency’s standing EEO policy and undercuts our agency program, simply for the sake of a nebulous promise of a “dialogue” or engagement that is not going to be well-received by most of our workforce.
So, what happened? Well, I eventually was able to talk to the EEO lead, who was the sponsor/proponent of the UB course. He acknowledged reading my email, understood my concerns, and was looking for inputs from other attendees to ensure that I was not the only one concerned about the class. That somewhat got my attention, given that I had quoted the instructor’s most egregious remarks in my email. I pressed him about his opinion (both of us are retired military:) “Have you taken the class? Do you think it is OK for the UB class to tout the US as being founded on white privilege, accuse people of racism, patriarchy? Does that training support any goals or objectives of our diversity plans?” He gave me the “humma, humma, humma” response and said his admin person would be in touch to discuss my concerns in more detail before I retired (which was scheduled a few months later).
Despite a dozen or more emails in the months before I retired, the meeting didn’t happen. It may be “catty” to observe, but our diversity EEO lead (a minority) had been quietly fired from a leadership position in one of our operations directorates. Despite terrible Employee Climate Survey ratings, poor mission performance, and other problems, he initiated an EEO complaint alleging that he was singled out because of his race. It was adjudicated by giving him the bonus he felt entitled to and shuffling him off to a new position as the EEO lead. Classic government lack of accountability that everyone rants about, but leaders never seem to do anything about.
As my retirement approached, I forwarded my emails to our agency inspector general and the DNI IG, and the DNI and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence (USDI) EEO representatives. I added commentary to the forwards that from a policy standpoint—at a minimum—it makes no sense to advocate and sponsor training that undermines community EEO goals, objectives, and policies. I am reminded of chickens voting for Col Sanders…
That all happens some years ago, and by now, the IC should have evidence via Employee Climate Surveys of just how disruptive and corrosive this type of training and instruction is. That is if anyone in IC leadership is interested in the ramifications of paying for educational training that lies to and insults our workforce to no good end.
End of his commentary.
Conclusion. It could be argued that his agency’s EEO folks were waiting out the clock to his retirement to avoid an uncomfortable conversation about the UB class he attended. While his personal experience may be anecdotal, rest assured that UB training—and now Marxist critical race theory training—has been propagated and conducted throughout the federal bureaucracy. The recent military stand-down ordered by new Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is just the latest evidence of the federal government's ongoing radicalization by Marxists masquerading as Democrats. These ill-thought-through, politically motivated knee-jerk reactions rarely amount to anything but the undercutting of trust. Information leaking out about stand-down results is already downplaying the results to lower expectations.
Critical race theory, intersectionality, and the more watered-down Marxist phrases like unconscious bias, inclusion and diversity are aimed at promoting divisiveness and self-doubt in the federal workforce while destroying team cohesion, personnel readiness, morale, and basic good order and discipline needed to fully execute agency missions. This alien Marxist indoctrination needs to be torn out of the federal government by the roots—and indeed from every institution in America—if our constitutional Republic is to be saved.
