The South Shall Rise Again – The Trump Administration Diversity Training Hotline
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
—George Santayana
The Department of Labor has set up a hotline so whistle blowers can report non-compliance by federal contractors with the Trump Administration's Executive Order (“EO”) prohibiting certain kinds of diversity training. https://www.awrcounsel.com/blog/2020/9/28/the-silly-season-in-government-contracting-arrives-earlythe-rush-is-on-to-issue-executive-orders-new-rules-and-to-bring-judicial-challenges.The EO ostensibly goes after training which is “rooted in the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country.” The EO specified that Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (“OFCCP”) had to launch a hotline for complaints where people can inform upon on contractors not following the order.
The new hotline number is 202-343-2008 or you can email OFCCPComplaintHotline@dol.gov. The hotline is supposed to be open for business 24/7.
Accordingly, the nanny state in the guise of the limited government party now wants you to inform upon your employer and you can do so anytime, even outside of normal business hours. Professor Steve Schooner said it better than me:
“This isn't procurement policy, it's base hate-mongering and political pandering,” Steve Schooner, procurement law professor at The George Washington University and former Office of Federal Procurement Policy official, previously told Government Executive. “Moreover, it does exactly the opposite of its purported policy goals: it's inefficient, divisive, offensive and, frankly, beneath the dignity of the White House.”
And so it goes. Don’t get caught teaching the fact that the U.S. Constitution set the value of some men as 2/3rds the value of others, or that people could be held as property, or that fugitive slaves could be seized and returned to their “owners” by use of the federal Marshall Service, or that 100 years of separate and unequal was constitutional and not a deprivation of equal protection. Fake news, folks. Nothing to look at here. And now you can call the new Federal thought police at OFCCP and inform on anyone who thinks differently.
Don’t get me wrong -- there is extremism on both sides here. We shouldn’t have to choose between White nationalism and the People’s Revolutionary Party movement. That is a false policy dichotomy. There is a middle ground of progress, justice and reform. As Abraham Lincoln said, we need to appeal to our “better angels.” That has been the nation’s historical path since the start of the civil rights era. And Government contractors have led the way towards the “shining city on the hill” that President Reagan spoke about so often. But now, instead, we are becoming two warring tribes. Where will this end?