UK Civil Servants Advised to Read 'Anti-Racist' Books by Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo to Fight 'White Privilege'

Kurt ZindulkaNovember 2, 2021

Employees of Britain’s Civil Service, the supposedly politically neutral state bureaucracy, have been sent woke reading lists including works by prominent figures in the Critical Race Theory (CRT) movement, to foster an “anti-racist” environment.

Civil servants, who remain in place regardless of which political party holds power, have been advised to read CRT staples by far-left American activists such as White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo and How to Be an Anti Racist by Ibram X. Kendi.

The list, which was compiled by the Civil Service Race Forum, was leaked by a whistleblower in the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which is responsible for Britain’s notoriously unreliable immigration estimates, to the Mail on Sunday.

Guidance issued alongside the suggested books stated: “This list of resources is intended to help white people gain a deeper understanding of racism and the anti-racist work that needs to be done. To be anti-racist is to be actively opposed to racism. It means confronting our white privilege and admitting our place in a system of oppression.

“We are all (un)learning at our own pace. But when the consequences of our ignorance are bound up in the continued discrimination, violence, and murders of Black people, we must work harder.”

The reading list also includes works by leftist British academics, including Paul Gilroy’s There Ain’t No Black In The Union Jack and Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats by Dr Maya Goodfellow.

Books and articles calling for the abolition of police and prisons were also included on the list, as well as works defending looting.

An ONS spokesman claimed that the reading list did not represent “official guidance” from the government but added that “as an inclusive employer, we encourage the sharing of ideas and respectful open discussion but will take action should concerns be raised.”

“I’ve been told off in the [Westminster] tea room for referring to ‘my wife’ because that’s ‘possessive’. By a Conservative MP, actually. But that’s the state of the world.” https://t.co/dssrO5Hite

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 26, 2020

While the Conservative Party-led government supposedly banned unconscious bias training for civil servants last year, the practice has seemingly continued, with the Cabinet Office conducting classes for civil servants on the ills of microaggressions and politically correct language codes.

Powerpoint slides and handouts shared with The Telegraph show that the ideological courses were still being conducted in October.

The classes were reportedly being led by the so-called Race Lead at the Cabinet Office, Muz Ali, alongside alleged experts from outside government. Civil servants were instructed to avoid terms such as “lynch mob / black mark / sold down the river” due to their supposed connections to slavery.

However, the term ‘black mark’, meaning a strike against someone for having done something wrong, seemingly has no connection to the slave trade.

In the workshop, bureaucrats are also told not to use stereotypes of “laid-back Jamaicans”, BAME or BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) as a noun, or the word Oriental, as they generalise about minority groups.

Commenting on the spread of woke ideology throughout the civil service, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, Toby Young, said: “The Government has been quite good at curbing some of the most egregious woke gobbledegook in Whitehall, but in these quangos and arms-length bodies it’s completely out of control.

“If you push back in any way against the cult of equity, diversity and inclusion, you can expect to be disciplined or fired – and joking about it is the gravest sin of all in the eyes of the humourless enforcers of woke dogma.”

Report: Britain’s ‘Neutral’ Civil Service Infested with Radical Ideas on ‘Tackling Whiteness’ https://t.co/UDJXCZRHrt

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 7, 2020