New York City’s 325,000 government employees have been mandated to complete racial “equity” training that some critics say flies in the face of racial “equality.”
The training, which was apparently inspired by critical race theory, was to be completed by bureaucrats and their underlings by March 6, Fox News Digital reported Monday.
Critical race theory is a decades-old academic framework that purports that race is a social construct and racism is baked into post-slavery institutional structures in the US, to benefit white people. The philosophy has recently become a political football as its role in educational curriculums is debated by state legislators around the country.
The new city training “provides all NYC employees with a framework to understand… the importance of racial equity… in the workplace,” a memo from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration reportedly said.
“Race has no genetic or scientific basis,” the memo reportedly continued. “It is a social construct created to classify people on the arbitrary basis of skin color and other physical features. Despite this, race has a very real impact on people’s lives. This is because our society has used race to establish and justify systems of power, privilege, exclusion and oppression.”
The training reportedly called for the city to maintain an “equity lens” by implementing “antiracism training” into the workplace, and create “safe spaces” where race and “unconscious bias” can be discussed.
It also reportedly defined “institutional racism” as “policies, practices, patterns and structures within public and private institutions that impose oppressive or otherwise negative conditions on identifiable groups on the basis of race or ethnicity.”
“Structural” or “systematic racism” was reportedly defined as “Racism that occurs across multiple institutions and is integrated into politics, culture and other aspects of life. Creating a system that negatively impacts communities of color compared to White communities.”
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A source on the city’s payroll told the outlet they “do not agree with what they want us to do as city employees.”
“The [racial equity training] leads me to believe that they want the contracts with the city and the hiring from the city being looked at through this lens. And that’s what I think is really unfair. It goes against their [stated claims]… that everybody should be treated equally.”
Representatives from Adams’ office said the Fox report was “not accurate,” and would be providing more information. A member of the NYPD confirmed to The Post that they were required to take the online course but a school teacher with the Department of Education said they were not.
New York education officials have said critical race theory is not taught in schools, and said its “culturally responsive and sustainable” curriculum has been conflated with CRT by critics.
The city’s push for racial equity predates the Adams administration, but city officials have recently touted strides on its equity agenda.
About 41 percent of New York City’s population is white, and “almost 2 of every 3 [city] employees are people of color,” according to census figures and literature from the Mayor’s Office of Economic Opportunity.
However, “the City has gaps in representation at the leadership level, particularly for Black and Latina/o/x employees,” officials noted in a report analyzing equity in government during the 2021.
