Organization alleges structural racism on Capitol Hill and calls for Senate create a ‘Diversity, Equity, Inclusion’ workplace
Joseph Simonson • November 23, 2022 5:00 am
A non-profit bankrolled by some of the nation’s largest companies and left-wing billionaire George Soros is conducting a racial census of House and Senate employees as half of its effort to determine a “Bipartisan Diversity and Inclusion Office,” based on inside emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Senate and House employees obtained emails from a researcher on the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies beginning in July asking them to substantiate their “racial and ethnic identity” as half of an alleged information assortment effort. In not less than two instances, senior congressional staffers who declined to offer their races have been instructed by the researcher that the group’s present information indicated they “may identify as white” and requested the staffers to replace if the information was incorrect.
Information collected by the group can be utilized in its annual report that lobbies for “structural changes on Capitol Hill that would allow for more people of color to be hired in senior positions,” a earlier report from the group states. That report is made attainable partially by hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in donations to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies from Apple, Google, Meta, Pfizer, the Soros-backed Open Society Foundation, amongst dozens of different giant companies and nonprofits.
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ survey is a component of a broader pattern by left-wing organizations to stress workplaces and governments to extend affirmative motion insurance policies. Often couched in selling “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” these insurance policies have obtained criticism for coming on the expense of competence and providing benefits primarily based on race as a substitute of benefit. The Free Beacon beforehand reported on DEI initiatives gaining prominence in medical schools, the Department of Homeland Security, and tech companies equivalent to Google and IBM.
One of the congressional staffers contacted stated she was offended by the inquiry. The racial identification of her workplace’s group, she stated, has no relation to its high quality of work.
“I don’t even read the emails they send,” the senior House staffer stated. “They go straight into my trash folder.”
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies payments itself because the nation’s premier “Black think tank.” According to its mission assertion, the group works on “compelling and actionable policy solutions to eradicate persistent and evolving barriers to the full freedom of Black people in America.”
Its largest company donors embody Amazon, Apple, Comcast NBC Universal, Google, and Meta. Those 4 companies donated not less than $100,000 and as much as $499,999 in 2020 alone.
Amazon faces a racial discrimination lawsuit for providing a $10,000 stipend to “Black, Latinx, and Native American entrepreneurs.” The plaintiff in that case alleges that whites are excluded from this system, a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
The Free Beacon previously reported on a probably illegal Google fellowship which caps the quantity of whites universities can nominate. Google additionally affords workers DEI coaching seminars that declare “colorblindness” is “covert white supremacy.”
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which didn’t reply to a request for remark, seeks to determine a “Bipartisan Diversity and Inclusion Office” on Capitol Hill. That workplace, based on earlier reviews launched by the group, would “be staffed by professionals in expertise in diversity who support … identifying, recruiting, hiring, retaining, and promoting diverse talent.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) created the House Office of Diversity & Inclusion in 2021. The workplace is presently led by Dr. Sesha Joi Moon, who, based on her bio, lives by the “coined philosophical stance [that] ‘diversity is delegating differences and inclusivity is celebrating differences—but equity is elevating differences.’”
In 2021, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, together with greater than 35 different left-wing teams, known as on Senate majority chief Chuck Schumer to kind an equivalent workplace. A letter to Schumer from the teams stated “Diversity must be a priority” on Capitol Hill.
Some Democrats, equivalent to Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii), endorsed the proposal. Schatz said in July that such an workplace “would be tremendously helpful.”