Isn't DEI training just about inclusion?
Example #1: Supposed systemic white supremacy
A common misconception about DEI training is that it is simply about including everybody and about how to get along with people from different backgrounds in a diverse workplace. Perhaps some DEI training is about that. But ASU’s DEI training is not. The Goldwater Institute provided 173 pages of material documenting the content of ASU’s DEI (don’t forget the B for “belonging”) training. I am going to begin posting examples from that content to debunk this common misconception. I will also put the link below for all of the material so people can see it for themselves and make up their own minds. ASU’s required training teaches race blame, which violates state law.
Here is a segment from content about how people with white skin dominate society and cause problems for others. This example lays the foundation for many other examples to come because it shows what specific words mean, such as “systemic bias” and the “unconscious.” White people do not need to consciously know that they are the problem because their white supremacy, according to this teaching in ASU’s training module, is unconscious. “White supremacy” applies to the entire system (systemic bias). Thus, ASU’s content teaches race blame based on skin color in violation of state law.
“The term white supremacy has been defined as this belief that white people constitute a superior race and therefore should dominate society, which typically is at the exclusion or detriment to people's and ethnic groups in particular, Black, Indigenous or Jewish people. More recently, the term has been used to describe efforts of individual actions, certain xenophobic or racist groups, but white supremacy has also been used as a descriptor for a framework, and that encompasses policies, laws, and practices that result from systemic bias.”
and:
“if we start thinking about it in terms of whiteness as something that is culturally neutral and we're moving it from that neutral space into a critical space. I think it's really important to move in that way, because I think that if we are trying to be in community and conversation with another, we also have to open the space to critique whiteness.”
ASU DEI training teaches that white supremacy is written into the foundation of the United States, and therefore, the process of decolonizing must take place here. ASU professors must agree with this reading of American history or fail this required DEI training. They must agree that people with white skin have the power and privilege in the country and need to be critiqued. Dividing people based on race and then engaging in race blame based on skin color is the essence of racism.
“And so the way that I think about white supremacy in my own work is rooted
in the colonial period, and that is the foundational function of the United States. And so what I'm referring to here is the period between the 1500's and the 1800's that encompasses both Spanish colonization and Euro American colonization. And what colonization did, was it really created this system of binary thinking. There were folks that were inherently good and folks that were inherently bad, and that led to the systems of superiority that were then written into the foundational documents of our Nation.”
This content both violates state law and is clearly ideological (I also think it is demonstrably false). No one should be required to take such training modules or be compelled to agree with that content through quizzes at a state university using taxpayer money.
https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Complaint-Final-with-exhibits.pdf