Diversity training had infected the State Department to the point that a full day of training for foreign service officers was dedicated to DEI, employees were told to mitigate their “unconscious bias,” and diplomats were urged to discuss DEI and “allyship” as part of their talks with foreign governments, the Trump administration revealed Thursday.
Those training foreign service officers were encouraged to read up on “White Fragility” and “White women tears,” and were subjected to training on “Black Lives Matter” terminology and roleplaying on racism in the U.S. and foreign countries.
Instructors were also trained to use alternate pronouns, such as “Ze” and “Zirs,” in place of he and she or his and hers.
The department said it has now wiped all of that away.
“The U.S. Department of State has put an end to the ideologically extreme and discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda, restoring merit, rigor and accountability to the Foreign Service and refocusing training on practical diplomatic skills that serve the common interests of the American people,” the department said in a statement.
The moves are part of a broader push by the Trump administration to eradicate DEI from the federal bureaucracy.
That includes shutting down diversity offices, ousting or reassigning employees, and rewriting handbooks and training courses, all of which gained steam in the Biden administration.
The State Department said DEI became “embedded in the institutional culture of the Foreign Service” during those four years.
Materials promoted by the department “shamefully denigrated” the U.S., the department said.
Officials said the focus on DEI was demoralizing and became a distraction from the department’s core mission as “the nation’s first line of defense against hostile powers, terrorists, deadly narcotics smuggling, illegal immigration and other threats to the safety, security and prosperity of the American people.”
The new changes resulted from what the department called a full review of its training materials and personnel practices.
The instructors who train foreign service officers seemed to get the brunt of DEI inculcation.
A reading list for instructors included “White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement,” “In Defense of Looting,” “How White Women Tears Oppress People of Color,” “The Case for Reparations,” and “How to be Anti-Racist in Humanitarian Aid.”
A toolkit for instructors included training on “systemic racism” in Urdu, a language spoken in Pakistan and surrounding areas, or integrating Black Lives Matter terminology into Hebrew.
The department said the regular five-week training for foreign service officers had been expanded to include a day and a half of DEI instruction. A separate public diplomacy course had a full day dedicated to DEI.
And employees were told to police their own language, with terms such as “illegal alien” deemed “problematic” when talking about illegal immigration.
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