Walmart has put more than 1,000 employees through a critical race theory training that teaches that the U.S. is a “white supremacy system” and that white trainees are guilty of “white supremacy thinking” and “internalized racial superiority,” according to a new report.
The City Journal_’s Christopher Rufo obtained whistleblower documents that reveal that Walmart launched the program in 2018 in partnership with Racial Equity Institute.
While the company made it mandatory for its executives, it recommends that hourly-wage workers also participate in the program. Rufo criticizes Walmart’s hypocrisy by pointing out that all nine members of its top executive leadership, except Suresh Kumar, the technology chief, are white.
Rufo received confirmation from Walmart that it had “engaged REI for several training sessions starting in 2018” and found these sessions “thought-provoking and constructive.”
According to the report, the training asserts that the U.S. has a “white supremacy” system created by white Europeans “for assigning and maintaining white skin access power and privilege.”
The program claims that white people are guilty of “white privilege” as well as “internalized race superiority,” which refers to the belief, “one’s success, wealth, privilege and comfort have been earned through merits, hard work” rather than through the benefits of systemic racism. According to the report, the “white superiority culture” is defined as “individualism,” objectivity,” paternalism,” defensiveness, power hoarding, and worship of the written word.
It also notes that “discussions regarding racist conditioning” should take place in racially segregated groups since “people of all races have their own work to do in understanding racism and addressing it.”
According to the training program, employees who are racial or ethnic minorities experience “constructed racist oppression” a “internalized feeling racial inferiority”, and struggle internally with messaging such as: “We believe there is anything wrong with being someone of color,” “we have low self-esteem,” “we expect less,” and “we have limited options.”
This negative internal thinking forces them to buy into the “myths promoted by the racist system,” according to the training, and to develop feelings of “self-hate,” “anger,” “rage,” and “ethnocentrism,” and they are forced to “forget,” “lie,” and “stop feeling” to survive.
According to the program, the solution is for white people’s “white anti-racist” development and to admit their “guilt and shame”, and work towards “collective actions” where “white can do good.”
