https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/11/08/donald-trump-diversity-executive-order-joe-biden/6180668002/
A Joe Biden administration would likely scrap an executive order from the Trump administration that restricts the federal government and its contractors from offering diversity training that President Donald Trump labeled "divisive" and "un-American."
“I think it’s highly probable that this executive order will be rescinded in fairly short order,” Franklin Turner, a partner with law firm McCarter & English who represents multinational contractors and small and medium-sized companies, told USA TODAY.
https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/what-a-biden-presidency-will-mean-for-your-workplace.html
While Trump never mentioned the term "critical race theory" in his recent executive order regarding diversity training for federal employees and contractors, it was a clear removal of this controversial method of talking about diversity, in which existing institutions are racist and White people maintain power at the expense of people of color. This will probably be one of the first things undone by Biden when he takes office in January. But expect to see lawsuits as many people, including U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow, say that critical race theory training violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Code.
Get ready for this folks the ride is going to be good.
25 comments:
If CRT returns I have a question. If one can be required to attend an awareness class where you have to confess your crime, can they make the same requirement for those of us who are retired?
Will my social security and medicare be withheld until I admit, that my ability to contribute to my retirement was all a sham, built upon the suffering of people I never met or knew?
Will case law that states when you are vested in a retirement plan, that it can't be taken away - will that view be reversed? After all, that money you earned was dirty, it was invested into a marketplace where the companies may be in existence because they profited from the suffering of people. Why not confiscate these monies and give it to the descendants of those who suffered.
Sounds like it will be headed to the Supreme Court, which won’t allow government sponsored racism to flourish again.
There will be mandatory meeting where those with sin will have to publicly admit to them and ask for forgiveness. Those who do not go along will the dealt with harshly. Soon the lab Directors will be delivering new directives saying one of the most critical missions of the labs are to ensure social justice and eliminate systemic, institutionalized and structural racism, you are on with us are against us.
By the way LANL will be better able to deal with this nonsense because of Pete Nanos. He used the same exact language as used by the CRT adherents, that there are cultural deep rooted but invisible hidden structural issues at LANL and to question it is proof that it exists. Cowboy butheads are like white supremists they are everywhere but you do not see them or know about them but they control the culture. We must radically change the labs in order to change the culture of Cowboys/racists ect ect. Of course some of our colleagues from the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe have also seen this before. They mentioned that Nanos was using the same approach as used in these nations which is the same language being used now. There are non loyal evil cowboys/racists everywhere and they need to be eliminated. Of course LANL and even LLNL in some sense have never really recovered from Nanos and that was only for one year. Imagine what will happen with four or more years of CRT assault. We need to dismantle and de-colinize the labs.
In many ways the labs deserve this. The Manhattan project was probably the least diverse endeavor ever undertaken by any nation. The entire workforce was white, male, Protestant and Anglo-Saxon. No diversity at all. Ever been to a science department at a university, do you see BiPOCS, no this has to change or be eliminated.
It is now time to heal by destroying those we hate. We cannot tolerate intolerance
"The Manhattan project was probably the least diverse endeavor ever undertaken by any nation. The entire workforce was white, male, Protestant and Anglo-Saxon. No diversity at all."
White. Yes. Male. Yup. Protestant - well let's look at the major players: Jeez, a lot of Jews who has escaped Europe so they wouldn't be killed. Now Fermi wasn't jewish, but his wife was. I guess we could have waited until African-Ameicans, Asians, Hispanics, Women, Homosexuals, Lesbians et al had all come up to speed on nuclear physics, nuclear chemistry, high explosives, metallurgy and such, but while we were trying to bring all the minorities and diverse population up to snuff, Hitler would have continued killing and would have happily killed all those minorities, as would have Hirohito, unless the Asians were Japanese.
Do you want someone who is qualified, by merit to be flying your airplane or being the air traffic controller, or do you want someone who is in that position who is not qualified but was place there because of diversity. I want qualified people and I want their access to that position to never be limited by race, creed color etc. But when that person is flying that plane, cutting into me on the operating table or standing between me an an angry mob, their ABILITY, THEIR MERIT - that's what counts.
Admit your White Privilege or be fired. Disavow being Jewish or go to a camp. One can see the parallels. Or maybe not, it depends on who is wearing the boot.
11/13/2020 7:18 PM Dream on!
Please stop talking about Nanos. He’s just a human being and long gone from LANL. I met him years ago and thought he was good guy. Nobody, including him, cared about what happened at LANL. He was head of DTRA at the time. There are people at LLNL I didn’t partially like, some are NNSA administrators now, but I don’t obsess about them.
As for CRT, it’s here to stay at the labs. People at the lab are at a disadvantage because of their clearances and good pay and benefits. They can be easily threatened with clearance revocation if they don’t go along. Also, their skill sets, for many, are not transferable to the private sector. Those who can leave will, I believe. But if you’re a middle aged white plasma physicist you are stuck there and will have to acquiesce to CRT training.
I suspect that CRT is being tried at the labs first because of these reasons.
" Nobody, including him, cared about what happened at LANL. He was head of DTRA at the time."
I knew a few people at DTRA and they hated the guy. He was basically a broken man after LANL and yes everybody cared about what happened at LANL and that was the end of any ambitions for him. He violated the most fundamental rule of any leader...never turn on your own people. He could never be trusted again. There is a reason that lowest rung of hell is reserved for those who have betrayed their own people.
I am not sure who you are or how much experience you really have with the labs but Nanos did a lot of long term damage not just to LANL but also LLNL. Previous to Nanos the labs where considered some of the top science institutes in the US like the top 5. LANL in particular was considered the Crown Jewel of the entire DOE complex which easy to measure by the standard scientific measures. Now no one would ever consider LANL to even close to the Crown Jewel. ORNL, LBNL, and ANL have all surpassed LANL by leaps and bounds. Routinely people turn down LANL for these other places simply on arguments of prestige. A large number of people left LANL right after Nanos and it word got out to every university to avoid LANL if possible. Many years latter it starts to fade but there is still a lingering memory and people will often say that they hear LANL had past issues so think twice about going there. In many ways the lab is very different now. The old timers can tell you the key difference is the lack vibrancy, lack of enthusiasm. On the other hand if you visit LBNL, ORNL, and ANL you seen that scientific vibrancy that LANL used to have. Nanos cannot be blamed for all this as LANS also had big role but the big turning point for LANL was Nanos. My impression is that the decline at LLNL has been coupled with the decline at LANL. And for any of those doubters there has even been some studies ranking the scientific output of the labs compared to other labs and universities and in 2000 LANL was among the top 10 and LLNL top 25. LANL is now like 60 and LLNL 150, a rather steep drop for 20 years.
"But if you’re a middle aged white plasma physicist you are stuck there and will have to acquiesce to CRT training. "
Ok that was pretty funny. You are probably right. If it is only training it is not such a big deal. You go the training play angry birds on you phone like everyone else and it is over. The bigger issue is if it goes beyond that and hiring, promotion, evaluation of work starts to all be based on CRT. You are starting to see some this already at Universities The other issue is as you say that any perceived violation or questing of CRT will result in termination. Other steps will be a social score card in the DOE system so you will barred from employment from a DOE lab. You think this is crazy but in just the past 2 years all sorts of professors have been essentially cancelled. Suppose you are old enough or rich enough to fight back, they will go after your kids, family and friends. Everyone has a weakness and they will find it.
I talked to Nanos and some of his people. Didn’t seem like a broken man. Attributing the decline of the labs to one person who served briefly is a bit of a stretch, One factor is the explosion of the tech industry which has employed millions with technical degrees. That did not really exist at such a scale 20 years ago. I knew an older manager at the lab who graduated from Caltech with a Ph.D. He told me that in the early 70’s there were no jobs and he was lucky to get a job at the lab. Now Caltech graduates are likely to have startups months after leaving. The world has changed. Also, who really cares about the subjects that lab people write about? Another article on the fill tube on NIF? There’s a lot of new fields now that are attracting young people. Maybe the scientific output of the labs isn’t that interesting or relevant.
Also, many of the new hires I know are mainly concerned with a paycheck. Sandia changed it GPA requirement so they could get local C students. Don’t expect a lot of scientific output from those people. And lastly, LANL, independent of Nanos, has decided to be a pit manufacturing facility. Do you expect technicians operating lathes and gloveboxes to be pumping out PRLs?
5:58 is wise.
11/15/2020 11:59 AM
I generally agree many of your points on why the decline is occurring, Nanos was just a part of it. I think the decline is not healthy for the labs or the long term mission but no one seems to care. You point about Sandia is particularly harsh.
"That did not really exist at such a scale 20 years ago. I knew an older manager at the lab who graduated from Caltech with a Ph.D. He told me that in the early 70’s there were no jobs and he was lucky to get a job at the lab. Now Caltech graduates are likely to have startups months after leaving. The world has changed"
So would this also apply to other government organizations? In the 70s getting a job with the NSA, CIA, or DOD one could also be considered lucky. Perhaps today the same people would go to startups or other high tech jobs rather than work for the government.
CRT is coming back.
Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.
I have seen some videos describing recent trainings on CRT and diversity. They do stuff like
call out individuals and ask them how being white has given them privilege and unearned rewards. If they decline to talk about this they are accused of white fragility and being part of the problem and this is their chance to atone. Also lots of stuff about how only certain groups can be racist but others cannot. Some of these trainings also go well beyond racial issues but also push stuff like wealth distribution and how capitalism is racists and only benefits white males or something. There is also weird attacks on things like objectivity and perception. They also talk about how is someone does not go along with this or says they do not wish to speak that others will burst out crying and saying how upset that someone like you is in the same workspace. Some women simply said she did wish to speak about all her privilege and this upset many people. The businesses set out an email saying how they understand how everyone feels but because of employment laws we cannot do anything. In other words they cannot fire you but they wish they could. It does make one worried that the next "action items" are going to be to change the employment laws.
I am big proponent of diversity, outreach and opportunity for all. I tend to be more open on this in terms of class rather than race and I have done lots of volunteer work over the years for many different groups with positive results. The sad part is I think that CRT will actually reduce opportunities for the people it is supposed to help. One the big problems with CRT is it does not appear to be about how to open up opportunities or help people but is about attacking and blaming one group. It provides no real solutions to address actual issues and in the end will just alient lots of people or make one group hate other groups more. It will also increase racial tensions since it says one group is responsible for all the problems of another group. I do not know if that is the intent but I can tell you this, CRT started really ramping up 6-8 years ago and racial tensions in this nation are just getting worse. Maybe this is not the correct way to go about improving peoples lives.
“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
Reads like a LLNS Randy Pico example on how to sell out, in order to move up $$$ in a historically white dominated Lab structure. What a false hope and shadow game disaster to Native Americans and other Lab minorities this has been. We are barking up the wrong tree. Take a closer look.
CRT is nothing more than third grade social science garbage and is an insult to all lab employees of all colors, races, and ethnicities. The question is who in management will stand up and say so.
11/16/2020 4:19 PM
I and many others disagree with your point of view.
Randy Pico was a pioneer and a hero. He opened up opportunities for thousands of others to use similar approaches. In time he will known as a great man to many.
Respect is loaded word created by western culture as a form of oppression. So to is the so called "truth" again a concept created by the same people who created slavery. It is pay pack time for millions of years of oppression, time itself is a racist concept of oppression.
"CRT is nothing more than third grade social science garbage and is an insult to all lab employees of all colors, races, and ethnicities. The question is who in management will stand up and say so."
It can be viewed as an insult to the vast majority of employees that believe they may not benefit from CRT, while those that have racial biases that they act on, slip into the crowd with no accountability for their individual actions. "Who in management will stand up and say so"? Very few will. The Contractor charges DOE/NNSA for CRT, it doesn't come out of their award fee.
Without ranking process and career opportunity transparency, diversity or CRT training courses just add another layer of Contractor defense to a managers(s) accused of bias because clearly they are "diversity aware". So why would a Contractor want to push back on CRT if it can serve to protect them?
If the goal at the Labs is to improve diversity awareness so that employees will be treated fairly in their careers with advances and promotions (walk the talk), CRT and similar courses without material workplace transparency, may take that goal a step backwards.
"Time itself is a racist concept of oppression"
Well, If Albert Einstein had only been able to fold that into his theories, we'd have been able to stop war, famine and the political ads.
"time itself is a racist concept of oppression."
I thought this was a joke but I looked it and up and yes there are concepts of CRT where time can be considered oppressive. The idea is that in Western Culture time is very important and used for schedules and ideas of being on time, and associated with strict hierarchies. Other cultures time is more fluid and and being on time is not a things. The idea that one needs to be at some place at a certain time is called "colonial thinking". It is unfair to many groups of people to impose Western world view on them much less think that it is "better". This has actually been used as argument as to why unemployment rates are higher in certain groups since they do not think of time as the way it is thought of in Western culture. The solution is to abolish the idea of Western culture being the only way or correct way. Also when when starts to use time one wants to be more productive which means one is more likely to say that those that are more productive deserve more and enforce ideas of class and slavery.
“Randy Pico was a pioneer and a hero. “
To whom is this guy a hero? His 2nd wife or to his first? If one threatens the career of subordinates to protect ones infidelity, that is not the making of a hero in my book, or someone that deserves to maintain a security clearance for that matter. You are short on the facts and long on deception or out right denial.
Why is this discussion on a blog regarding a nuclear weapon laboratory doing national security work? What drivel.
Why is this discussion on a blog regarding a nuclear weapon laboratory doing national security work? What drivel.
11/17/2020 5:21 PM
This is rather simple if you recall at Sandia they implemented CRT training which was rather heavy handed and not exactly scientific. This upset a number of people including a few who went to the news or actually did real analysis on the claims of CRT to show that it was bunk. Once it is was in the news it was out that this stuff is being done in all sorts of Federal labs and Trump said to cancel it. Part of the premise of CRT is that America is bad, capitalisim is bad, a large portion of America is racists certain other groups cannot be racists and the system needs to be destroyed. Not exactly things that you want or are relevant in a national security lab. One of the people at Sandia who called this out was put on leave but because of Trumps order all the training has been halted. Biden wants to bring it back. If it comes back in a even more insidious form than yes it will matter to the nuclear weapons work and national security and that is why it is being discussed on this blog. In case you have not noticed in America race and racial issues are the most talked about and the most serious issue the nation faces so yes this stuff is going to seep into the labs one way or another.
We good now.
“In case you have not noticed in America race and racial issues are the most talked about and the most serious issue the nation faces so yes this stuff is going to seep into the labs one way or another. “
I wouldn’t say racial issues are the most “serious” but beyond that, spot on.
"I talked to Nanos and some of his people. Didn’t seem like a broken man"
Odd, I also talked to Nanos after his stint at LANL and yes he was an utterly broken man. Let be clear he was not just silent and downcast but he was clearly trying way to hard. Once he leaned I was from LANL he tried to do the suck up. I am not some jerk but I guess he figured out I was not buying it and became very nervous. I am not some big person just a lab person and felt it was odd. I actually felt sorry for him. It sort of had the sense that if I was Jew with some ancestry in Germany and was visiiting Argentina and ran into some elderly gentleman who said, "oh it is so good to see you I am from Germany, let us talk!" followed by the realization of who that person is and at the same time he realizes who you are. It is a bit uncountable.
I talked to some of the other people and they said that basically it is over for Nanos and no one trusts him and that he was just going through the motions. Look he shut down the lab, said the workers where horrible and then had to leave a year latter, that tells you everything right there. A few years back they invited all the former LANL lab Directors back. Every single one came back except for Nanos and several made very snide/harsh comments about him.
"In case you have not noticed in America race and racial issues are the most talked about and the most serious issue the nation faces..."
Only to people who have nothing else to worry about in their lives, like COVID taking their relatives, or their kids losing their education, or not enough money to live on. It is funny that racial issues only matter to the black elite racialist warriors and the white elite social justice warriors. Regular black and white Americans couldn't care less about that crap.
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