Chicago City Wire

White Cook County employees will be required to acknowledge they are racist, that they behave in a biased way toward blacks and are responsible for blacks having lower average incomes than whites, according to Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s new mandated “racial equity” curriculum obtained by Chicago City Wire.

“Module 1” assesses which employees have adequate “emotional intelligence… to be able to recognize their invisible biases in personal and professional lives towards people with protected class identities,” a workshop outline explains.

“Outcome: recognize how bias impacts (your) daily behavioral decisions.”

All employees will be required to take “Racial Equity 101” and “Racial Equity 102” and will be instructed in "racial equity basics” by expert trainers, funded by taxpayers.

The curriculum is part of Preckwinkle’s new push for “embedding racial equity into local government,” part of a new policy she announced via executive order on Sept. 7. It took effect on Sept. 13.

The policy requires “mandatory equity and inclusion training” for all Cook County employees, including “equity foundational learning” and “annual learning plans” with a goal of “organizational competency” in “equitable practices.”

“Objectives: build on self-awareness, reflection and identity,” the outline reads. “What is bias? What are the implications of bias? What formed your biases? Which biases are good and which are harmful?”

“An absolute economic imperative” 

Preckwinkle’s policy of “racial equity” calls for favoring black employees and contractors over white ones in pursuit of equality of outcome by racial group.

Critics call the concept "race-based Marxism."

"Equity contradicts and undermines those more traditional understandings of equality because the end--the eradication of group disparities in favor of equal outcomes--requires a profoundly illiberal means: that government and public policy deliberately favor some groups over others," wrote Bradley Gitz, a columnist and University of Illinois political science PhD.

"Some groups are going to have to be given superior status to others, and discrimination is going to have to be practiced by the state. One's status before the law and possession of rights will therefore and inevitably be made contingent upon one's race and ethnicity," he said.

Preckwinkle ordered department heads to develop goals for advancing black employees over white ones by Dec. 13. They will be evaluated by how many more blacks they promote and how many minority contractors they hire.

Preckwinkle argues discrimination against whites is necessary to counter differences in income in Cook County between white and black residents that are “a result of public policies that led to patterns of exclusion” and that have prevented black residents from “full inclusion… in the economic, social and political life of Cook County."

“Racial equity is essential for national, regional and local prosperity,” her policy says. “Equity and inclusion is more than just the right thing to do; it is an absolute economic imperative.”

“Racial equity” is the condition that would be achieved if one’s racial identity no longer predicted, in a statistical sense, how one fares,” according to the policy.

Preckwinkle, 74, grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota and was an honor student at Washington High School there before moving to Chicago for college. She has earned a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from University of Chicago.

She is the niece of University of Minnesota Hall-of-Fame football player Dwight T. Reed, who played for the Gophers’ 1935 and 1936 National Championship teams.