US president, Joe Biden, has reversed regulations on diversity training which were created by the Trump administration to ban federal agencies from conducting workshops which explore systematic discrimination. Trump’s order, known as, Executive Order 13950, Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping, enforced regulations in September which prohibit federal contractors from using trainings which engage in “race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating”, saying individuals should not be held accountable “for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.”
The order would have prevented workplaces from discussing concepts such as white privilege, systemic racism, or implicit or unconscious bias, and as a result, was met with lawsuits from several LGBTQ+ organisations, which argued: “Trump wants to suppress this speech, no matter how effective it is, or how crucial it is to protecting vulnerable people from harm, because acknowledging these systemic barriers that threaten the lives of some people can make others uncomfortable.”
Biden repealed the regulations hours after entering the office last week, as part of a string of pro-LGBTQ+ orders he implemented. Although Trump’s order did not become official law, Janai Nelson, associate director-counsel of the NAACP’s (a civil rights group) Legal Defense Fund, told the Chicago Tribune its negative effects need to be addressed immediately: “In the few months of its existence, it negatively impacted the lives and livelihoods of countless Americans and advanced the dangerous cause of white supremacy and disinformation. We will continue to work to ensure that all vestiges of President Trump’s Executive Order are removed from workplaces across the country.”
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