NCUA Refuses to Discuss Whether It Will Follow OMB Diversity Training Order
The OMB calls diversity training "divisive" and the NCUA cancelled a training session that was scheduled for earlier this week.
NCUA officials are declining to discuss how — or if — they intend to implement an Executive Order by President Donald Trump that restricts the types of diversity and inclusion training sessions federal agencies may hold.
Because the NCUA is an independent agency, it is not subject to such orders. However, agency officials have said in the past that they try to follow the “spirit” of Executive Orders.
As reported by CU Times this week, Rosa Clemente, an Afro-Latinx activist, said the NCUA had cancelled a presentation, “Unapologetically Black: Afro-Latinx Culture and Identity” that she had been scheduled to give this week. She said she was told that the session was cancelled because of the Executive Order.
An NCUA spokesman declined to discuss that session or the broader issue of agency enforcement of the order, which President Trump defended during Tuesday night’s presidential debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
That Executive Order, issued Sept. 22, stated that agencies may not hold sessions that include information that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
In a Sept. 28 directive, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said that agencies must review training that uses terms such as “critical race theory,” “white privilege,” “intersectionality,” “systemic racism,” “positionality,” “racial humility” and “unconscious bias.”
“These divisive trainings constitute a malign subset of a larger pool of Federal agency trainings held to promote diversity and inclusiveness,” Vought said in his directive.
The directive goes on to state that an employee who schedules such sessions could be disciplined.
And it states that all future diversity training materials must be reviewed by the federal Office of Personnel Management.
During the past year, NCUA Board Chairman Rodney Hood has spoken frequently about diversity, equity and inclusion. The agency held a summit on the issue in November and the chairman has identified inclusion as the civil rights issue of our lifetime.
And some agency materials stressed the need to overcome “unconscious bias,” a term that is included in Vought’s directive about prohibited training topics.
Meanwhile, several Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee have demanded that the OMB provide detailed information about how it plans to implement the Executive Order.
“OMB’s memorandum and President Trump’s Executive Order exhibited a level of ignorance rarely seen at executive levels in government or the private sector,” the Democrats, led by committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), wrote in a letter to Vought.
They continued, “These trainings help Americans to understand the history of race and racism in the United States, how that legacy affects government policy, and how they can identify and correct unconscious biases that affect important policy and personnel decisions.”