The anti-DEI agenda (1 Viewer)

[zztop]

I thought there was already a topic about DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) but I could not find it in search.
Anyway, it seems one of the main goals for republicans is to destroy anything (even if only vaguely) DEI related

The Anti-DEI Agenda Is Reprogramming America

President Trump’s anti-DEI playbook doesn’t just affect the makeup of America’s workplaces. It also impacts cultural production. Just ask Netflix’s former head of diversity.

www.wired.com

Arlington Cemetery website drops links for Black, Hispanic, and women veterans

The cemetery website unpublished links to lists of notable graves, walking tours and other material about Black, Hispanic and women veterans.

taskandpurpose.com

 

[fooferdoggie]

I don’t think a Virginia parents’ group has any business complaining about Chicago public schools. That’s ridiculous.

but thats how it works now.

 

[fooferdoggie]

It’s not stupidity, it’s racism. From the articl, emphasis partly mine.

Although “frustrated” by the unhealthy and inconvenient conditions, Burke said she doesn’t let it get her down. Human wastewater contaminating homes and yards in these rural parts of central Alabama “has become a way of life,” she said. The problem has existed so long and was so pervasive that a 2017 study determined 1 in every 3 adults in the county had the intestinal parasite hookworm.

The Biden administration investigated and allocated nearly $26 million to rebuild Lowndes County’s water infrastructure, with the Department of Justice declaring the majority-Black area was suffering from “environmental racism.”

Yep, DEI is just racism with a nicer name. Tell me how this has anything to do with so-called merit???

 

[Optimus Prime]

A crackdown on diversity programs is reshaping college graduation ceremonies

Some colleges are canceling graduation ceremonies that recognize individual cultures or groups. The affinity commencement events are the latest casualties of state and federal policy rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

apnews.com

 

[MT15]

They’re not just dog whistling now, they’ve put the hoods firmly back on.

 

[Optimus Prime]

The Department of Education is investigating an Illinois school district for allegedly violating federal civil rights law through its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, the Trump administration announced on Thursday, the latest sign of its opposition to such programs.

“After four long years of the Biden Administration’s tolerance for this kind of conduct, the American people returned President Trump to office to end this madness and enforce Title VI,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor wrotein a statement, referring to the law barring discrimination at federally funded institutions.

“This Department of Education will not allow districts that receive federal funding to become safe spaces for racial segregation or any other unlawful discriminatory practices,” he added.

The investigation stems from allegations from Dr. Stacy Deemar, a white drama teacher who filed a complaint with the department’s Office of Civil Rights

Deemar, with support from the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, accuses the Evanston-Skokie School District 65 of a variety of instances of racism across teacher training and student activities.

These include the directing staff and students to engage in “privilege walk” exercises, in which participants step forward if they benefit from certain forms of identity-based privileges, as well as hosting specific discussion groups for staff and students with different racial and ethnic identities.

In an April complaint to the department from the foundation, Deemar said faculty had to undergo trainings when they were told that “white people tend to dominate conversation by setting the tone for how everyone must talk and which words should be used,” and “white educators who actively disengage from conversations about improving the achievement of students of color and indigenous students are racist.”

The teacher also took issue with the district’s Black Lives Matter-inspired curriculum and events, in which teachers were allegedly guided to teach students to “understand that our country has a racist history that is grounded in white privilege,” while others were told to read elementary school students Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness by Anastasia Higginbotham, which features an illustration comparing whiteness to a deal with the devil giving participants “stolen land, stolen riches, [and] special favors.”

The district did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Deemar previously accused the district of misconduct in 2019, prompting the first Trump administration to recognize her claims as valid, findings that were “hastily suspended” under the Biden administration, according to an April complaint from Southeastern Legal Foundation sent to the Department of Education.……….

Trump is probing Illinois school district for discrimination over ‘privilege walks’

Allegations were subject of civil rights complaint from same teacher under first Trump administration

www.independent.co.uk

 

[bird]

The Department of Education is investigating an Illinois school district for allegedly violating federal civil rights law through its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, the Trump administration announced on Thursday, the latest sign of its opposition to such programs.

“After four long years of the Biden Administration’s tolerance for this kind of conduct, the American people returned President Trump to office to end this madness and enforce Title VI,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor wrotein a statement, referring to the law barring discrimination at federally funded institutions.

“This Department of Education will not allow districts that receive federal funding to become safe spaces for racial segregation or any other unlawful discriminatory practices,” he added.

The investigation stems from allegations from Dr. Stacy Deemar, a white drama teacher who filed a complaint with the department’s Office of Civil Rights

Deemar, with support from the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, accuses the Evanston-Skokie School District 65 of a variety of instances of racism across teacher training and student activities.

These include the directing staff and students to engage in “privilege walk” exercises, in which participants step forward if they benefit from certain forms of identity-based privileges, as well as hosting specific discussion groups for staff and students with different racial and ethnic identities.

In an April complaint to the department from the foundation, Deemar said faculty had to undergo trainings when they were told that “white people tend to dominate conversation by setting the tone for how everyone must talk and which words should be used,” and “white educators who actively disengage from conversations about improving the achievement of students of color and indigenous students are racist.”

The teacher also took issue with the district’s Black Lives Matter-inspired curriculum and events, in which teachers were allegedly guided to teach students to “understand that our country has a racist history that is grounded in white privilege,” while others were told to read elementary school students Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness by Anastasia Higginbotham, which features an illustration comparing whiteness to a deal with the devil giving participants “stolen land, stolen riches, [and] special favors.”

The district did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Deemar previously accused the district of misconduct in 2019, prompting the first Trump administration to recognize her claims as valid, findings that were “hastily suspended” under the Biden administration, according to an April complaint from Southeastern Legal Foundation sent to the Department of Education.……….

Trump is probing Illinois school district for discrimination over ‘privilege walks’

Allegations were subject of civil rights complaint from same teacher under first Trump administration

www.independent.co.uk

How very Orwellian of Trump’s soon to be defunct Department of Education.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Goldman Sachs has reportedly scrubbed mentions of race from a company webpage and tweaked a program founded to invest in Black women, as Wall Street continues to back away from diversity, equity, and inclusion operations amid the Trump administration’s attempts to end such initiatives across the public and private sector.

The Wall Street giant eliminated uses of the word “Black” on a page about its One Million Black Women program, a $10.1 billion commitment to help close the racial wealth gap, and has refocused the program to cover low- and moderate-income populations in general, The Wall Street Journal reports.

As part of the change, lines in company materials about the program have been cut, including a section that once touted $39.4 million in philanthropy that the bank said was “laying the groundwork to impact the lives of over 300,000 Black women.”

Elsewhere, Goldman’s “Black in Business” education program now describes itself as a way to help business founders “stay in the black,” a term for being profitable. Company sites associated with the programs still feature photos of Black women, as well as links to research on subjects like “Black Womenomics.”……..

Goldman removes the word ‘Black’ from diversity programs as Trump seeks to end DEI

Program founded to address Black female wealth gap reportedly now open to wider low-income populations, according to bank insider

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Optimus Prime]

A coalition of civil rights groups have launched a weeklong initiative to condemn Donald Trump’s attacks on Black history, including recent executive orders targeting the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington DC.

The national Freedom to Learn campaign is being led by the African American Policy Forum (AAPF), a social justice thinktank co-founded by the law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw.

Crenshaw is a leading expert on critical race theory (CRT), a framework used to analyze racism’s structural impact.

She has fought against book bans, restraints on racial history teaching and other anti-DEI efforts since the beginning of the Republican-led campaign against CRT in 2020.

“Our goal this week has been to flood the zone, as we call it, with Black history,” Crenshaw said about the campaign.

“We have long understood that the attacks on ideas germinating from racial justice were not about the specific targets of each attack … [but are] an effort to impose a specific narrative about the United States of America, one that marginalizes, and even erases, its more difficult chapters,” she added.

The weeklong campaign will conclude with a demonstration and prayer vigil in front of NMAAHC on 3 May.

Leading up to the protest, AAPF, the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund and six other advocacy groups signed onto a statement criticizing Trump’s “attempted mass erasure of Black history and culture”, according to a press release published 28 April.

In March, Trump ordered an overhaul of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum network, in order to demolish what he described as “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology”. He singled out NAAMHC, a museum that has been lauded since its opening in 2016.

The coalition’s affirmation read, in part: “We affirm that Black history is American history, without which we cannot understand our country’s fight for freedom or secure a more democratic future. We must protect our history not just in books, schools, libraries, and universities, but also in museums, memorials, and remembrances that are sites of our national memory.”

“I wasn’t shocked by it,” said Crenshaw of Trump’s executive order against NAAMHC. “I never did think that these attacks on civil rights, on racial equality, would find a natural limit because there is no limit.”

Within this week’s movement, AAPF has led sessions to educate people on Trump’s dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, an element of the broader campaign.

About 1,500 people attended a virtual event titled Under the Black Light: Beyond the First 100 Days: Centering Racial Justice and Black History in Our Fight for Democracy. There, panelists, including civil rights leaders and academics, discussed how attendees could organize against Trump’s mounting censorship of history.

Coffee meetups and a sign-making session were organized as additional parts of the campaign, providing further conversations between participants and academics about how Trump’s initial executive orders connect to a larger thread of eroding racial justice………

These activists are ‘flooding the zone with Black history’ to protest against Trump’s attacks on DEI

The Freedom to Learn campaign included panels and coffee meetups and will end Saturday with a rally and prayer

www.theguardian.com