San Diego County Employee Training Declares Racism is a “White Problem”

The County of San Diego faces criticism for offensive and racist content included as part of mandatory training to combat racism

Just days after Democrats won a majority of seats on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, the board immediately deemed racism a “public health crisis.” As part of the regime change county employees were also notified that they all had to attend not one but three separate mandatory classes to combat racism. 

The three classes were titled: “The Basics of Racial Equity,” Structural Racism,” and “Privilege and Power” and are all each 2-hours in length. 

Some county employees are now speaking out to complain that the classes themselves contained racist and offensive content. 

The class titled “Privilege and Power” opened with a quote from White Fragility author, Robin DiAngelo, “Racism is a white problem.” Things got worse throughout the class and at one point instructor Reggie Caldwell explained that “only white people can be racist, no other BIPOC’s (Black, Indian, and people of color) can be racist.”

One of Caldwell class exercises was “What You Say vs What I Hear.” During this module Caldwell went on to explain that when white people say things about protecting themselves and their property during a riot, it would be interpreted as, “fantasizing about killing” people of color.

All three classes support a fringe concept called “The Critical Race Theory” which is the view that the law and legal institutions are inherently racist and that race itself, instead of being biologically grounded and natural, is a socially constructed concept that is used by white people to further their economic and political interests at the expense of people of color. 

Due to concerns about the underlying theme and narrative of the classes, several County employees asked for a copy of instructor Caldwell’s tax-payer funded presentation, but they were informed that he would not be providing any of the material shown because he didn’t want it “taken out of context.”

Fortunately whistleblowers were able to capture screen shots of the content and provided images directly to Carl DeMaio on the DeMaio Report.

“It is outrageous that taxpayer funds are being used to support divisive and offensive training materials like this,” said DeMaio. “By labeling white employees as inherently racist the county is not only supporting offensive content with our tax dollars but it has also created a hostile work environment that could result in costly lawsuits filed by injured employees,” DeMaio concluded.

View the offensive images from the training sessions below.