Lockheed Martin, the nation’s largest defense contractor, sent key executives to a three-day white male reeducation camp in order to deconstruct their “white male culture” and atone for their “white male privilege.”

May 27, 2021

The program was led by the consulting firm White Men As Full Diversity Partners, which specializes in helping white males “awaken together.” The participants included a former three-star general and the vice president of production for the $1.7 trillion F-35 fighter jet program.

To begin, the diversity trainers led a “free association” exercise, asking the Lockheed employees to list connotations for the term “white men.” The trainers wrote down “old, racist, privileged, anti-women, angry, Aryan Nation, KKK, Founding fathers, guns, guilty, can’t jump.”

The trainers then asked “what’s in it for white men,” listing responses: “I won’t get replaced by someone who is a better full diversity partner,” “[I will] improve the brand, image, reputation of white men,” and “I [will] have less nagging sense of guilt that I am the problem.”

White Men As Full Diversity Partners argues that the “roots of white male culture” include traits such as “rugged individualism,” “a can-do attitude,” “hard work,” “operating from principles,” and “striving towards success”—which are “devastating” to women and minorities.

Next, participants were asked to repeat and internalize 50 “white privilege statements,” including: “My culture teaches me to minimize the perspectives and powers of people of other races”; “I can commit acts of terrorism, violence or crime and not have it attributed to my race.”

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