Biden administration expected to scrap Trump curb on diversity training: report
Critics say the president's executive order was an attack on programs used to reverse decades of discrimination
A Joe Biden administration would probably do away with an executive order from President Donald Trump that prohibits the federal government and its contractors from offering diversity training that the outgoing leader sees as “divisive” and “un-American.”
One of the most troubling actions taken by the Trump administration, the president’s executive order affects government agencies, Fortune 500 companies and educational institutions, stifling their efforts to address racial disparities in the workplace after the death of George Floyd, a Black man, who died under the knee of a white police officer in May.
“I think it’s highly probable that this executive order will be rescinded in fairly short order,” Franklin Turner, a partner with law firm McCarter & English who represents multinational contractors and small and mid-size companies, told USA Today.
Critics say the president’s executive order was an attack against diversity and inclusion programs that sought to reverse decades of discrimination and exclusion practices.
Read More: Why Trump really banned diversity training as ‘anti-American’
More than 55 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act, less than 2% of the top executives at the nation’s largest companies are Black, according to an investigation by USA Today.
Late last month, civil rights groups filed a lawsuit alleging that the executive order violates free speech rights in an “extraordinary and unprecedented act by the Trump administration to undermine efforts to foster diversity and inclusion in the workplace.”
“We think this is one of the most troubling actions taken by the Trump administration while in action,” Ajmel Quereshi, senior counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense fund told USA Today. “A new administration would fully have the power to rescind this executive order, and our hope is they would.”
Read More: Trump administration targets diversity hiring by contractors
When asked about his executive order during the first presidential debate, Trump said: “They were teaching people that our country is a horrible place, it’s a racist place. And they were teaching people to hate our country. And I’m not gonna allow that to happen.”
“Nobody’s doing that,” Biden responded. “The fact is that there is racial insensitivity.”
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