President Donald Trump has expanded his ban on racial sensitivity training to include federal contractors.
Earlier this month Trump ordered federal agencies to cancel taxpayer-funded seminars on 'critical race theory', calling them 'divisive' and 'anti-American propaganda'.
On Tuesday, the president announced that the ban will now apply not only to federal agencies, but also to contractors doing business with the federal government and the US military, as well as grant recipients.
'Americans should be taught to take PRIDE in our Great Country, and if you don't there's nothing in it for you!' he tweeted in an attack on 'efforts to indoctrinate government employees with divisive and harmful sex and race-based ideologies'.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that he has expanded his ban on racial sensitivity training to include federal contractors along with federal agencies
Trump blasted racial sensitivity training as 'divisive and harmful' in a pair of tweets
Trump orchestrated the expansion by signing an executive order requiring contracts to include a provision that says contractors with the federal government will not have 'workplace training that inculcates in its employees any form of race or sex stereotyping or any form of race or sex scapegoating'.
'Instructors and materials teaching that men and members of certain races, as well as our most venerable institutions, are inherently sexist and racist are appearing in workplace diversity trainings across the country, even in components of the Federal Government and among Federal contractors,' the order states.
Contractors who violate the provision face cancellation of their contracts. .
The order follows a memo released by the White House Office of Management and Budget on September 4 which asked federal agencies to identify training programs centered around critical race theory so they could be purged.
Critical race theory asserts that 'institutions are inherently racist and that race itself... is a socially constructed concept that is used by white people to further their economic and political interests at the expense of people of color', according to Texas A&M University professor Tommy Curry.
The theory is currently in vogue in academia, and private companies and government agencies have hired specialists to teach their employees how to dismantle 'white privilege' and actively become anti-racist.
At the demand of President Trump, the Office of Management and Budget moved to stop such 'experts' from having any influence on those working in federal institutions.
OMB Director Russel Vought wrote in the memo: 'Employees across the Executive Branch have been required to attend training where they are told that "virtually all White people contribute to racism" or where they are required to say that they "benefit from racism."
'These types of "trainings" not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our Nation has stood since its inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce.'
Vought continued: 'The President has directed me to ensure that federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions.'
The memo then asked agencies to 'identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on critical race theory/ "white privilege", or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil. '
It concluded: 'The President has a proven track record of standing for those whose voice has long been ignored and who have failed to benefit from all our country has to offer, and he intends to continue to support all Americans, regardless of race, religion, or creed.'
The White House Office of Management and Budget released a memo (pictured) on September 4 which asked federal agencies to identify training programs centered around critical race theory so they could be purged
The move to cancel racial sensitivity training for federal employees was met with fierce backlash from proponents who said such programs are more important than ever given the heightened unrest plaguing the nation.
'If we are going to live up to this nation's promise - "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" - we have to see each other as human beings, and we have to do whatever it takes, including taking whatever classes make that possible,' M.E. Hart, an attorney who has run hundreds of diversity training sessions for businesses and the federal government, told The Washington Post.
'These classes have been very powerful in allowing people to do that, and we need them more than ever. There's danger here.'
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