The San Francisco Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector (TTX) released an internal memo in February 2022 announcing its plan to “advance” the agency’s “Racial Equity Initiative,” a document obtained by the Judicial Watch showed.
TTX hired a firm to give “racial equity assessments,” facilitate discussions on “systemic and historical issues of racism” and host class sessions on racism to “ensure” that employees use a “racial equity lens,” the memo said. The department also announced that it would strive to ensure that the agency’s decision-making and hiring processes would become more “equitable.” (RELATED: San Francisco Fires Long-Time Elections Official To Meet Its Racial Equity Goals)
“The sessions should build a foundational understanding and framework for racial equity in the workplace and basic terminology and definitions,” the memo read. “The learning sessions must help the Core Teams to push beyond this shared understanding to address topics such as: the role of team members in leading organizational antiracist changes and make recommendations to transform practices that are heavily influenced by white-supremacist culture and practices.”
Here are fundamental changes to policing in San Francisco that we’re moving forward:
✅ Demilitarizing Police
✅ Ending Police Responses to Non-Criminal Activity
✅ Addressing Bias & Strengthening Accountability
✅ Redirecting Funding for Racial Equity https://t.co/ZOutp6ImmD— London Breed (@LondonBreed) June 11, 2020
The memo detailed how the TTX would ensure that management positions become more “diverse” by identifying “group norms and biases” to combat in the department’s workplace. TTX also mentioned that it would foster “conversations” through “interactive workshops” about systemic and implicit racism to introduce equity in the workplace.
Following the release of the memo, the TTX created a survey in May 2022 to pinpoint where employees needed “training” to improve “racial equity,” according to an announcement of the plan. The TTX found in the survey that while the overall department viewed racial equity “positively,” the agency still needed to improve its “promotive options for people of color” and how it responded to “racial tensions,” the survey’s conclusions recommended.
Many other cities and local government agencies have begun to require equity training, or “Diversity and Equity Initiatives” (DEI), in recent years to combat “implicit bias.” Democratic Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens established a city-wide language standard in September for government employees to use when referring to race, gender and other issues, and the California state legislature has introduced bills to combat racial inequities in the state.
Often, these DEI programs require employees to think about ways to “minimize” their “racism” in everyday interactions, and place heavy emphasis on how white people will always be racist. Some public schools have started requiring students to label their biases in DEI classroom exercises as well.
The TTX did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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