Internal documents have revealed AT&T’s guidelines for its employees to undergo racial inequality training by confronting “white privilege.”
“AT&T is another Fortune 100 company that has succumbed to the latest fad: corporate ‘diversity and inclusion’ programming that traffics in the ugly concepts of race essentialism and collective guilt,” Rufo wrote on Twitter.
The material found in the documents is based on the “core teachings of critical race theory,” Rufo said.
Critical race theory is a Marxist-based philosophy that suggests that society is a class struggle between oppressors and the oppressed, labeling white people as the oppressors and all other races as the oppressed.
“AT&T Corporation has created a race reeducation program with materials claiming that ‘racism is a uniquely white trait’ and teaching employees: ‘White people, you are the problem,’” Rufo said.
The reeducation program promotes the concept that racism is strictly a white characteristic.
AT&T CEO John Stankey started the program, which he called “Listen. Understand. Act,” in reaction to the death of George Floyd, Stankey wrote in a letter found in the documents.
Stankey said surveys have reported that people “are increasingly looking to companies and CEOs to weigh in on the difficult societal and political issues that divide us as a country.”
He said not only has Dallas-based AT&T been working on police reform, but its employee political action committee has suspended contributions to 147 members of Congress who voted to not certify the Electoral College votes of Arizona and Georgia after what he called the “Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.”
The documents cited concepts that claimed that the pandemic created conditions conducive to people facing racism, paralleling racism to the virus by comparing the vulnerability people feel toward the virus with black people and racism, according to Andrés Tapia, a diversity and inclusion strategist with Korn Ferry, a global organizational consulting firm.
The documents also contain the “21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge,” written by Eddie Moore of the America & Moore diversity education consulting firm.
“Finally, AT&T encourages employees to participate in a 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Challenge, which teaches that ‘Whiteness is one of the biggest and most long-running scams ever perpetrated’ and that the ‘weaponization of whiteness’ is a ’constant barrage of harm' for minorities,” Rufo said.
Moore wrote that the challenge involves taking actions to “further your understanding of power, privilege, supremacy, oppression, and equity,” as well as reading, listening to podcasts, and watching videos that revolve around the subject of race, such as the book “How White People Got Made,” by Quinn Norton, and watching videos such as “How ‘white fragility’ reinforces racism.”
Moore asked that employees make racial observations, such as what the racial composition is of the surrounding people in a particular environment and to consider what portion of one’s day is engaged in discussing racism.
“Engaging in racially mixed settings can trigger age-old power and privilege dynamics,” Moore said. “The goal is to be a learner more than a knower, exactly the opposite of what dominant U.S. culture teaches us to be.”
Some of the music Moore recommended included “Born this Way” by Lady Gaga and “White Privilege” by Macklemore.
AT&T officials didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
