City of Seattle held ‘segregated’ training session for white staffers to learn to be an ‘accomplice’ for racial justice

THE City of Seattle held a "segregated" training session for white staffers to learn to be an "accomplice" for racial justice.

The "Interrupting Internalized Racial Superiority and Whiteness" event was held by the Office of Civil Rights on June 12, an editor of City Journal reported.

Christopher Rufo published a screenshot of the email invitation, with the sender's name redacted.

The event was "specifically targeted for White employees" and would "examine our complicity in the system of white supremacy."

In handouts, the diversity trainers encouraged their white employees to begin "practicing self-talk that affirms our complicity in racism," and tells workers that "racism is not our fault but we are responsible."

The document also asked them to "talk through your struggles in the work of undoing your own whiteness."

Trainers then ask employees to "let go" of certain things in order to be "accomplices" - including, "comfort," "guaranteed physical safety" and "relationships with some white people."

Attendees were also handed a flowchart explaining how "white people keep the system going" and how they can "cause harm to POC."

Rufo said there was another handout called "Assimilation into Whiteness" which confirmed that anyone of Arab, Jewish, Finnish, German, Italian, Armenian or Irish descent is defined as white.

Employees will know if they're being accomplices if "other white people may be angry," and "other white people feel that we are genuinely trying to build relationship [sic] with them," according to one of the handouts.

The city did not tell the journalist the names of the trainers or provide video of the session.