Saying ‘blacklisted’ is racist, US intelligence officers told

US SPIES, including members of the CIA, have been told the term “blacklisted” is racist in an internal newsletter that also offered advice from a crossdresser.

The guidance features in The Dive, a newsletter circulated by the equity, inclusion and accessibility office of the US Intelligence Community (IC) .

According to Fox News Digital, which has analysed the document, it is packed with guidance aimed at improving the accuracy of language used by the IC.

An article that discusses linguistic diversity urges officials to refrain from using the term “blacklisted” because it implies “black is bad and white is good”. The term “sanity check” is discouraged because it disparages people with mental illness. “Cakewalk” and “grandfathered” are similarly rejected because of their association with slavery.

In another article, an anonymous intelligence officer writes that his crossdressing habit has made him more effective in his role. “I am an intelligence officer, and I am a man who likes to wear women’s clothes sometimes,” the author wrote. “I think my experiences as someone who crossdresses have sharpened the skills I use as an intelligence officer, particularly critical thinking and perspective taking.

“It is challenging for some people to understand crossdressing and non-binary or gender-fluid people because gender is a part of overall identity,” he added. “Many of us think of our identities as fixed, and some find this approach to gender threatening to their own identity.”

Crossdressing also enabled him to better understand his female and LGBT colleagues, he said.

In another section, an intelligence officer warns that some training had conflated Islam with terrorism and cautioned that the language alienated spies’ Muslim-american colleagues.

The guidance received a hostile reception from Republicans and on social media, with one user dismissing the Biden administration as a “clown show” and another questioning how it helped intelligence gathering.

Diversity and inclusion have been at the forefront of culture wars in the US and some Republican states are withholding institutions’ grants until they drop the initiatives from their policies.