As Americans finish celebrating the most wonderful time of the year, ironically, it brings them to the least wonderful time of the year: tax season. It’s time for us all to tally up how much we are into Uncle Sam for. Ronald Reagan once said, “Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15.” Democrats also believe there is no such thing as “too” woke. So, as Americans get ready to pay up, a new government database has been made public that reveals just how much of their hard-earned tax dollars Americans have had to shell out for Joe Biden and the Democrats’ endless parade of diversity training for federal employees. Get ready to feel like a tax revolt is in order.
The total for federal government employee diversity training for 2023 comes to $16.3 million. While we contemplate that number, let’s think about how many border agents or cops could have been put on the southern border or the streets of a crime-ridden city with that money. Instead, the Biden administration felt that money could be better spent on things like training federal employees that asking an Asian coworker for help with math is racist, that men can get pregnant, and that “social pain,” whatever that is, is the same as physical pain.
The database information only included the work of third-party diversity trainers; any in-house training costs were excluded. But that didn’t stop agencies and departments like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the National Park Service, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Departments of Defense, Education, and Veteran’s Affairs, all of which were recipients of the multi-million dollar diversity palooza. Ivy Planning Group is one of the outside diversity training consultants brought in by the government. While the very idea of diversity training is left-wing enough, Ivy Planning Group makes no bones about its left-leaning agenda. On their website, there is a whole section devoted to explaining “microtriggers.” The best part: Ivy Planning Group sells a “microtriggers” button for about $30 that will bleat out “microtrigger!” to any unfortunate soul that pushes the button. They explain that the idea of the button is “a light-hearted way to spark conversations and to introduce accountability for subtle behaviors.” Yeah, that’s about as subtle as a freight train. Both the NIH and the Department of Education paid around $200,000 collectively to Ivy Planning Group in 2023.
Ivy covers all of the usual diversity hot topics like unconscious bias — you know, you are a racist, but you don’t know you are a racist. But Ivy also introduces us to something new: name privilege. And for those of us who grew up with the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King and his dream that his children would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, well, not so much. Ivy tells us that we shouldn’t be colorblind. A NASA diversity training unit explains that being colorblind “limits us.” Wait what?
Cornell University has also gotten in on government diversity training to the tune of $670,000 from the Department of Labor. Cornell covered the usual, checking your privilege and microaggressions. But they also assign trainees to read a paper on white privilege by a woman named Peggy McIntosh, who claims to be a feminist and “anti-racist scholar.” Here are just a few gems from McIntosh on white privilege.
“white privilege allows white people to ‘talk with [their] mouth full’ without that behavior being attributed to their race, “not have to educate [their] children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection” and not be made “acutely aware” that their body odor by be seen as a reflection of their race.”
McIntosh also says that “white people should ‘shut up’ and listen to people of color.” To quote a local investigative journalist, you paid for it.
It is no secret that the U.S. Military has missed recruiting goals by thousands because their agenda has gone from military preparedness to being woke. The Navy and Air Force together spent $232,300 on diversity training. Even the Air Force Band got diversity training from something called the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra. Their website describes them as having a “visible commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.” Among the many recruitment goals missed by the military, the Air Force will miss 2024 recruiting goals by ten percent. Recruiting goals for 2023 were missed by the Navy by 20 percent.
These examples, sadly, are just the tip of the diversity training tomfoolery iceberg the federal government is spending tax dollars on. In some cases, it is just plain silly. In others, it is just plain dangerous.
