14 Sep 2021 Workforce Called Racist While CEOs Get Richer

Corporations that are using critical race theory (CRT) training programs put themselves at legal and reputational risk.

That’s because, as National Center Free Enterprise Project (FEP) Director Scott Shepard pointed out in a Townhall commentary, “the more American investors, consumers and employees learn about ‘racial equity’ under CRT, the less they like it.”

Not only does it “facially discriminate against white employees,” but Scott wrote that it also “demean[s] and infantilize[s] the black and other ‘people of color’” in the workforce.

When companies such as Bank of America, Verizon and American Express subject their employees to sometimes mandatory CRT exercises, Scott posits they are engaging in “red-hot racism.”

An example of this is a Bank of America program that suggests white employees need to “‘decolonize [their] mind[s]’ and ‘cede power to people of color.’” Within this sort of policy exists the risk and the racism:

This insistence that white employees sit quietly back – at the back of the office, perhaps – while people of color take charge and tell them of their racial guilt, and their duty to subordinate themselves to make amends, so obviously creates a hostile work environment that I’m surprised the lawsuits haven’t started already. (The next round of layoffs should be interesting.)

The whole theory also demeans the “diverse” people it claims to help. There are two categories of people who are absolved from any personal responsibility for their actions and their fate: children and the mentally incompetent. Under the critical-race view of the world, white people – all white people, even toddlers – are superheroes of colossal and earth-shattering power who must meekly abjure their powers for the good of all. Non-white people are mewling and helpless in the face of wicked white domination, not personally responsible for their circumstances and only able to succeed if whites step aside.

One productive application of diversity is a diversity of viewpoints. That, FEP has argued to corporate leaders for years, brings a competition of ideas that can benefit a corporation and bring about better policies. Yet this seems to be the only kind of diversity of which the left cannot accept. That’s why CRT training is often mandatory, and truly diverse boards are going the way of the dodo.

But Scott noted that the companies he chronicled in his commentary are run by whites who are happy to comply with the mob while continuing to enjoy being “incredibly rich and powerful.” That should not be the way:

The best thing that these companies could do for “anti-racism,” under the theories they’ve adopted for their companies, is to fire and replace these CEOs. Now. And the best things that the CEOs themselves could do is to give away their riches to those of other skin colors, and consign their descendants to third-rate jobs and constrained and diminished lives.

“All of these lies and this racism are being foisted on us as a corrupt bargain to let them continue on as masters of the universe,” Scott wrote, “whatever damage this bargain causes to everyone and everything else.”

To read all of Scott’s Townhall commentary – “The New Racism Rampaging Through Top Corporations” – click here.