Trump ends anti-racism training for govt staff
WASHINGTON: The White House has ordered federal agencies to end taxpayer-funded diversity training for employees about “critical race theory” or “white privilege”, calling them “divisive, un-American propaganda sessions”.
“It has come to the president’s attention that executive branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date training government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda,” Russell Vought, director of the White House’s office of management and budget (OMB), wrote in a memo.
He went on to direct agencies to “begin 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 that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil”.
The memo comes amid a raging debate about racism triggered by the killing of George Floyd, an African-American man, by a white policeman in Minneapolis in May.
While US President Donald Trump has condemned the incident, he has denied there is systemic racism in the US, opposed the Black Lives Matter movement and defended the police.
He has used anti-racism protests and unrest to stoke fears of lawlessness, seeking to tie it to Democrats and Joe Biden, their presidential candidate.
Blake pleads not guilty to previous charges
Jacob Blake, the Black man whose shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, added another flashpoint to the unrest, pleaded not guilty on Friday in a virtual appearance in a court hearing charges of sexual assault and disorderly conduct stemming from a complaint filed by an ex-girlfriend before the shooting. Blake survived the shooting, but is paralysed waist down.
George Washington University said on Friday it will investigate the case of a white professor who says she faked multiple Black identities that were central to her writings and research.
The matter came to light after the publication of a blog post attributed to Jessica Krug, in which the author confesses to falsely claiming Black Caribbean heritage.
“For the better part of my adult life, every move I’ve made, every relationship I’ve formed, has been rooted in the napalm toxic soil of lies,” the blog post read. “I have built my life on a violent anti-Black lie, and I have lied in every breath I have taken.”