GOP senator: Teaching people about racism is 'anti-American propaganda'

GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer on Tuesday said he backs Donald Trump’s decision to end anti-racism training for federal employees, calling the trainings “anti-American propaganda” that have “no place in the federal government.”

“It’s good President Trump and [Office of Management and Budget] Director Russ Vought are putting an end to these divisive, taxpayer-funded trainings,” Cramer said in a Facebook post.

The Trump administration announced on Friday that it will stop holding trainings that they allege teach “critical race theory” or “white privilege” to federal workers, with Trump calling the trainings a “sickness that cannot be allowed to continue.”

“Please report any sightings so we can quickly extinguish!” Trump tweeted.

According to a paper written by Tommy Curry, a philosophy scholar, critical race theory is the “view that the law and legal institutions are inherently racist and that race itself, instead of being biologically grounded and natural, is a socially constructed concept that is used by white people to further their economic and political interests.”

The administration did not provide details as to which agencies were conducting trainings on the theory.

Vought, who announced that the Trump administration is ending the trainings, said in a letter on Friday that federal workers “have been required to attend trainings where they are told that ‘virtually all White people contribute to racism’ or where they are required to say that they ‘benefit from racism.'”

But the administration did not provide details as to which agencies were conducting such trainings.

Outlets including the Washington Post have not been able to confirm what trainings Vought is referring to, though Fox News has recently run segments against “diversity and inclusion” trainings.

The move to end anti-racism trainings comes amid a nationwide reckoning with race in the United States, following a string of incidents in which police officers killed unarmed Black Americans like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Elijah McClain, among others. Tensions once again flared after police officers shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, seven times in the back in front of his children.

Trump has denounced the protests against systemic racism, painting them all as violent. Trump has also refused to say whether systemic racism exists in the United States, and instead attacked the “really bad people” who protest against police brutality.

Experts criticized Trump for ending anti-racism trainings within the federal government.

“Diversity and inclusion programs in the federal government help us understand one another’s perspectives and build a workplace where every employee is treated with dignity, fairness and respect, regardless of their background,” American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley said in a statement to the Federal Times. “As racial injustice continues to rock this nation, we ought to be building more bridges of understanding. But all this president seems to know how to do is build walls of division.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.