Walt Disney Corporation Is Now Full Woke: Segregates its Employees by Skin Color and Feeds Them “Anti-Racist” Snake Oil

It's 2021, the year that neo-racism and neo-segregation came into full bloom. It doesn't matter that "anti-racism" is "well intended." It is now having the same poisonous effects at Disney that it is having every else that this "training" is being forced upon students and employees. Heightened racial conflict is what a company should expect it whenever it segregates groups of its employees by "race." That's what happens when "white" employees are instructed that "they must “pivot” from “white dominant culture” to “something different.” Disney's training claims that “competition,” “individualism,” “timeliness,” and “comprehensiveness” are “white dominant” values that “perpetuate white supremacy culture.” Participants are also told that prioritizing goals is also a "white" thing. Christopher Rufo has obtained "anti-racism" documents from numerous schools, colleges, government offices and corporations. He has released documents showing the training Disney is inflicting on its employees. This re-education includes racially segregated training groups. The full story can be read at Christopher Rufo's own website (at which you can view the leaked Disney documents). Here is an excerpt from Rufo's article:

In the past year, Disney executives have elevated the ideology of critical race theory into a new corporate dogma—and bombarded employees with trainings on “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” “white fragility,” “white saviors,” and launched racially-segregated “affinity groups” at the company’s headquarters.

I have obtained a trove of whistleblower documents related to Disney’s “diversity and inclusion” program, called “Reimagine Tomorrow,” which paints a disturbing picture of the company’s embrace of racial politics. Although the intention of the program might be noble, multiple Disney employees, who requested anonymity out of fear of reprisals, told me that the Reimagine Tomorrow program has become deeply politicized and engulfed parts of the company in racial conflict.

Rufo has written a companion story at City Journal: "The Wokest Place on Earth: Disney mounts an internal campaign against “white privilege” and organizes racially segregated “affinity groups.”"

Rufo also tweeted some of the lowlights from the Disney newly instituted education camps:

Disney claims that America has a “long history of systemic racism and transphobia” and tells employees they must “take ownership of educating yourself about structural anti-Black racism” and “not rely on your Black colleagues to educate you,” which is “emotionally taxing.”

White employees are told to “work through feelings of guilt, shame, and defensiveness to understand what is beneath them and what needs to be healed.” They must “listen with empathy [to] Black colleagues” and “not question or debate Black colleagues’ lived experience.”

Finally, participants are told they must “pivot” from “white dominant culture” to “something different.” The document claims that “competition,” “individualism,” “timeliness,” and “comprehensiveness” are “white dominant” values that “perpetuate white supremacy culture.”

Disney recommends that employees read a how-to guide called “75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice.” The article tells readers to “defund the police,” “participate in reparations,” “decolonize your bookshelf,” and “find and join a local ‘white space.’”

Finally, Disney has launched racially-segregated “affinity groups” for minority employees, with the goal of achieving “culturally-authentic insights.” The Latino group was named “Hola,” the Asian group was named “Compass,” and the black group was named “Wakanda.”

I agree with Rufo that this training is well-intended, but the effect of the training is poisonous. Dividing people by skin color pits them against each other needlessly, raising suspicions and solving no societal problems in the process. The Woke endgame is Evergreen State College. In other words, they have no end game. No long term plan. No vision for tamping down the hate and suspicion that they are causing with this neo-racism and neo-segregation.

Continue ReadingWalt Disney Corporation Is Now Full Woke: Segregates its Employees by Skin Color and Feeds Them “Anti-Racist” Snake Oil

The Fifth Column Features Math Teacher Paul Rossi and Discussion of the Modern Racial Retrogression

"The Fifth Column" is one of my new favorite podcasts. It features interviews and commentary by hosts Matt Welch, Kmele Foster and Michael Moynihan.

The current episode (#200) does a deep dive into the Woke culture that drove math teacher Paul Rossi from his long-time job at a $57,000/year private school in Manhattan. I recently commented on Rossi's rejection of the school's curriculum because it was harming children.

Highly recommended. Here is a list of all prior episodes.

Continue ReadingThe Fifth Column Features Math Teacher Paul Rossi and Discussion of the Modern Racial Retrogression

Critical Race Theory Successfully Implemented

Gosh, what harm could it possibly do to a reasonably well-functioning society to divide people into colors and to treat them differently based on their looks? Tap on this image and behold. This woman is well educated and drives a very nice car. Presumably, she is a person of significant means, both educationally and materially. Listen to how she addresses this polite police officer in this traffic stop. This appears to be the end game of a society permeated with Critical Race Theory:

Perhaps some people will argue that this woman is an outlier, someone who misunderstood CRT, perhaps as it is taught in the school where she is a "teacher." To that, I would suggest that the doubter should consider what is being taught, coast to coast, as part of Critical Race Theory: Categorize all people into racial silos and obsess about these "identities." See here and here. Also, all police officers are racist and all of them are hunting down "black" people as a matter of doing their job on an every day basis. This motorist exemplifies these CRT teachings perfectly.

For more on the end game of CRT/Wokeness, consider the takeover of Evergreen State College.

Continue ReadingCritical Race Theory Successfully Implemented

Real Life Public Schools That Are Enthusiastically Dividing Students By “Color” and Preaching False Biology

Critical Race Theory is winning the day in many public schools, as described by Erika Sanzi in her article, "The Monster Is in the Classroom Schools indoctrinate children as young as eight in race and gender essentialism."

The problem? Increasing numbers of public grade schools are teaching their students to see each other as color categories and to treat each other differently based on those "colors." In my own mind, I think of these poisonous approaches as neoracism, neosegregationist and racecraft. As I've often written, dividing people into colors is as absurd as believing in astrology, though much more pernicious given our country's long struggle with racism. With regard to sexuality, increasing numbers of schools are preaching to their students that it is bigoted to state that there are only two sexes, even though biologists universally hold that there are only two sexes of every other species of mammal based on the two types of gametes (and the organs that produce those gametes).  Schools are teaching that we should ignore this science when it comes to human animals because it is inconvenient. Schools are teaching that sex is "assigned" at birth by doctors and parents (rather than noticed). Today's institutional leaders of Wokeness, such as Planned Parenthood, falsely advise that 2% of people are intersex, mangling the scientific definition and rate of occurrence of intersex in the process (the actual rate of intersex conditions is about 0.018%).  These falsehoods are rampant among the Woke and these ideologically-laced teachings are now permeating classrooms, including public school classrooms.

[In the current social environment, I feel the need to add this: I'm writing about sex, which has a long stable scientific definition. And see here. And here. Over the past few decades, "gender," a non-scientific concept, has become mostly unhinged from sex. In modern times, "gender" can seemingly can mean anything, e.g., a bio female can "identify" as a woman, a man, something "fluid, or apparently anything at all.  I have no problem with any adult claiming any type of gender, but I also insist that people should get their biology right, especially when teaching grade school students. There are only two sexes and rare biological intersex conditions do not constitute a third type of sex. The elephant in the room is that these bankrupt ideas of sexual Wokeness are being encouraged by profit seekers.]

Here is Sanzi's main concerns:

American schools are teaching young children race essentialism: reducing them to identity groups, putting them in boxes labeled “oppressor” and “oppressed,” and often inflicting emotional and psychological harm. If this sounds extreme, that’s because it is. It is not happening everywhere—but it is happening enough to have juiced a multibillion-dollar, nationwide industry. Sometimes the source is a rogue teacher whom the principal and superintendent admit they are trying to rein in; but increasingly, it is simply public officials implementing approved policies.

She gives several examples of Wokeness in modern day public school classrooms:

Lexington, Massachusetts, where, in October 2019, fourth-graders were taught to “articulate what gender identity is and why it’s important to use nonbinary language in describing people we don’t know yet.” According to photos shared on Twitter by the district’s Director of Equity and Student Supports, students learned about “gender identity,” “gender expression,” “sexual orientation,” and “sex assigned at birth” by examining sticky notes on a “Gender Snowperson” who was drawn in magic marker on a large sheet of paper. The students were also taught that their pronouns had been “assigned at birth.”

.  .   .

This past February, students in Evanston, Illinois, listened to the book Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness. Parents were asked to discuss the book with their children at home. The book says that “whiteness is a bad deal” and “always was,” and that “you can be white without signing on to whiteness.” As Conor Friedersdorf reports in The Atlantic, Evanston schools ask kindergarten parents to quiz their five- and six-year-olds on whiteness and to give them examples of “how whiteness shows up in school or in the community.”

These examples described by Sanzi comprise the tip of the iceberg. I recently commented on Christopher Rufo's report on eleven additional public schools across the U.S., all of them preaching (not teaching) similar divisive poison to young children. In many schools, our children are being similarly indoctrinated, prepared to participate for the rest of their lives in the oppression olympics. We are enthusiastically producing adult-sized toddlers. And see here. We are creating a generation of students who are so emotionally fragile that they cannot bear the thought that other people think differently than they do. This theme was explored at length by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff in their 2017 book, The Coddling of the American Mind. Here is more on the concerns of Haidt and Lukianoff. And see here for the "Three Great Untruths."

Here is yet another recent example of Wokeness in the classroom, Grace Church School. 

With regard to sexuality, we are at a crossroads and the correct road is paved with scientific facts, not ideology.  As Heather Heying writes, we should be teaching biology, not ideology.  With regard to "race," the Woke endgame is Evergreen State College. 

If only there were healthy ways to teach people how to get along with each other . . . Actually, there are healthy approaches, including Chloe Valdary's "Theory of Enchantment," (urging that we treat people like human beings, not political abstractions). And see Christopher Rufo's advice here.  And here. And here is some advice by forty black intellectuals critical of the Woke permeated environment at Smith College.  Here's yet another alternative approach: Counterweight, which urges us to engage with each other as complex and nuanced human beings, not stereotypes. Consider also this detailed blueprint for reform by the President of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), Greg Lukianoff.  In summary:

10 Principles for Opposing Thought Reform in K-12

  • No compelled speech, thought, or belief.
  • Respect for individuality, dissent, and the sanctity of conscience.
  • K-12 teachers & administrators must demonstrate epistemic humility.
  • Foster the broadest possible curiosity, critical thinking skills, and discomfort with certainty.
  • Foster independence, not moral dependency.
  • Do not teach children to think in cognitive distortions.
  • Do not teach the ‘Three Great Untruths.’
  • Take student mental health more seriously.
  • Resist the temptation to reduce complex students to limiting labels.
  • If it’s broke, fix it. Be willing to form new institutions that empower students and educate them with principles of free, diverse, and pluralistic society.

For many more examples of Wokeness upon which I have commented, consider this DI collection of articles on Wokeness. 

Continue ReadingReal Life Public Schools That Are Enthusiastically Dividing Students By “Color” and Preaching False Biology

Christopher Rufo: What to Do About the Rapid Spread of Critical Race Theory Throughout the United States

Christopher Rufo summarizes the spread of critical race theory, characterizing these stories as the tip of the iceberg. His article: "The Courage of Our Convictions: How to fight critical race theory."

What does critical race theory look like in practice? Last year, I authored a series of reports focused on critical race theory in the federal government. The FBI was holding workshops on intersectionality theory. The Department of Homeland Security was telling white employees that they were committing “microinequities” and had been “socialized into oppressor roles.” The Treasury Department held a training session telling staff members that “virtually all white people contribute to racism” and that they must convert “everyone in the federal government” to the ideology of “antiracism.” And the Sandia National Laboratories, which designs America’s nuclear arsenal, sent white male executives to a three-day reeducation camp, where they were told that “white male culture” was analogous to the “KKK,” “white supremacists,” and “mass killings.” The executives were then forced to renounce their “white male privilege” and to write letters of apology to fictitious women and people of color.

This year, I produced another series of reports focused on critical race theory in education. In Cupertino, California, an elementary school forced first-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities and rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.” In Springfield, Missouri, a middle school forced teachers to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix,” based on the idea that straight, white, English-speaking, Christian males are members of the oppressor class and must atone for their privilege and “covert white supremacy.” In Philadelphia, an elementary school forced fifth-graders to celebrate “Black communism” and simulate a Black Power rally to free 1960s radical Angela Davis from prison, where she had once been held on charges of murder. And in Seattle, the school district told white teachers that they are guilty of “spirit murder” against black children and must “bankrupt [their] privilege in acknowledgement of [their] thieved inheritance.”

I’m just one investigative journalist, but I’ve developed a database of more than 1,000 of these stories. When I say that critical race theory is becoming the operating ideology of our public institutions, I am not exaggerating—from the universities to bureaucracies to K-12 school systems, critical race theory has permeated the collective intelligence and decision-making process of American government, with no sign of slowing down.

The woke-infested media has, for the most part, given CRT advocates a free pass regarding the real-world affects of CRT. Rufo proposes asking that CRT advocates be forced to answer these questions:

Critical race theorists must be confronted with and forced to speak to the facts. Do they support public schools separating first-graders into groups of “oppressors” and “oppressed”? Do they support mandatory curricula teaching that “all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism”? Do they support public schools instructing white parents to become “white traitors” and advocate for “white abolition”? Do they want those who work in government to be required to undergo this kind of reeducation? How about managers and workers in corporate America? How about the men and women in our military? How about every one of us?

Rufo suggests advocating "excellence" rather than "diversity":

In terms of principles, we need to employ our own moral language rather than allow ourselves to be confined by the categories of critical race theory. For example, we often find ourselves debating “diversity.” Diversity as most of us understand it is generally good, all things being equal, but it is of secondary value. We should be talking about and aiming at excellence, a common standard that challenges people of all backgrounds to achieve their potential. On the scale of desirable ends, excellence beats diversity every time.

When we tell the story about the United States, we need to tell the whole story, the moral arc:

[W]e must promote the true story of America—a story that is honest about injustices in American history, but that places them in the context of our nation’s high ideals and the progress we have made toward realizing them.

Fighting back will require that good-hearted thoughtful people stand up to waves of abuse:

Above all, we must have courage, the fundamental virtue required in our time: courage to stand and speak the truth, courage to withstand epithets, courage to face the mob, and courage to shrug off the scorn of elites.

Continue ReadingChristopher Rufo: What to Do About the Rapid Spread of Critical Race Theory Throughout the United States