Some critics claim that requiring New York City’s 325,000 government employees to attend racial “equity” training contradicts the concept of racial “equality.”
Bureaucrats and their subordinates were expected to complete the training by March 6, Fox News Digital reported on Monday.
Critical race theory is a decades-old academic concept that asserts race is a social construct and racism is embedded in post-slavery institutional institutions in the United States for the benefit of white people. The philosophy has recently become a political football as state legislators across the country debate its place in educational curricula.
The new city training “provides all New York City employees with a framework for understanding the significance of racial equity in the workplace,” according to a message from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration.
“Race has no genetic or scientific basis,” concluded the rumored document. “It is a social construct used to categorize people arbitrarily based on skin tone and other physical characteristics. Despite this, race has a significant impact on the lives of individuals. Our civilization has exploited race to build and legitimize systems of privilege, exclusion, and injustice.
According to reports, the training instructed the city to maintain a “equity lens” by implementing “antiracism training” in the workplace and by creating “safe spaces” where race and “unconscious bias” can be discussed.
According to the report, it also defined “institutional racism” as “policies, practices, patterns, and structures within public and private institutions that impose oppressive or otherwise negative conditions on identifiable groups based on race or ethnicity.”
According to one definition, “structural” or “systematic” racism is “racism that occurs across multiple institutions and is integrated into politics, culture, and other aspects of life.” Developing a system that harms communities of color relative to White communities.”
A city employee told the news organization, “We do not agree with what they want us to do as city employees.”
“The [training on racial equity] leads me to believe that they want the city’s contracts and hiring decisions to be viewed through this lens. And I believe that is extremely unjust. It contradicts their [claimed position] that everyone should be treated equally.
Representatives from Adams’s office stated that the Fox article was “inaccurate” and that they will provide additional details. A member of the NYPD confirmed to The Post that they were forced to complete the online course, although a teacher with the Department of Education stated that they were not.
Officials in the New York Department of Education have stated that critical race theory is not taught in the state’s schools and that critics have confused its “culturally responsive and sustainable” curriculum with CRT.
The quest for racial equality in the city predates the Adams administration, but city officials have recently claimed progress on its fairness plan.
According to census data and literature from the Mayor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, around 41% of New York City’s population is white and “almost two out of three [city] employees are people of color.”
However, “the City has gaps in representation at the leadership level, especially for Black and Latina/o/x employees,” according to a report assessing equality in government in 2021.
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