Disclosed Documents Reveal AT&T’s ‘Racial Equity’ Guidelines for Employees

Internal documents reveal AT&T’s guidelines for its employees to undergo racial inequality training by confronting “white privilege.”

Journalist Christopher Rufo with City Journal magazine obtained the documents from an employee who told him, “If you don’t do it, you’re [considered] a racist,” Rufo said in his report on Thursday.

“AT&T is another Fortune 100 company that has succumbed to the latest fad: corporate ‘diversity and inclusion’ programming that traffics in the ugly concepts of race essentialism and collective guilt,” Rufo said on Twitter.

The material found in the document is based on the “core teachings of critical race theory,” Rufo said.

Critical race theory is a Marxist-based philosophy that suggests society is a class struggle between oppressors and the oppressed, labeling white people as the oppressors and all other races as the oppressed.

“AT&T Corporation has created a race reeducation program with materials claiming that ‘racism is a uniquely white trait’ and teaching employees: ‘White people, you are the problem,” Rufo said.

The reeducation program promotes the concept that racism is strictly a white characteristic.

AT&T CEO John Stankey started the program he called the “Listen. Understand. Act.” in reaction to the death of George Floyd, Stankey said in a letter found in the documents.

Stankey said surveys have reported that people “are increasingly looking to companies and CEOs to weigh in on the difficult societal and political issues that divide us as a country.”

He said not only has AT&T, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, been working in police reform, but also its employee political action committee suspended contributions to 147 members of Congress who voted not to certify the Electoral College votes of Arizona and Georgia after what he called the “Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.”

The documents cited concepts that claimed that the pandemic created conditions conducive to people facing racism, paralleling racism to the virus by comparing the vulnerability people feel toward the virus with black people and racism, according to Andres Tapia, a diversity and inclusion strategist with Korn Ferry, a global organizational consulting firm.

The documents also contain the “21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge” written by Dr. Eddie Moore, with the America & Moore diversity education consulting firm.

“Finally, AT&T encourages employees to participate in a 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Challange, which teaches that ‘Whiteness is one of the biggest and most long-running scams ever perpetrated’ and that the ‘weaponization of whiteness’ is a ‘constant barrage of harm’ for minorities,’” Rufo said.

Moore writes that the challenge involves taking actions to “further your understanding of power, privilege, supremacy, oppression, and equity,” as well as reading, listening to podcasts, and watching videos that revolve around the subject of race, such as the book “How White People Got Made,” by Quinn Norton, and watching videos such as “How ‘white fragility’ reinforces racism.”

Moore asks that employees make racial observations, such as what the racial composition is of the surrounding people in a particular environment and to consider what portion of one’s day is engaged in discussing racism.

“Engaging in racially mixed settings can trigger age-old power and privilege dynamics,” Moore said. “The goal is to be a learner more than a knower, exactly the opposite of what dominant U.S. culture teaches us to be.”

Some of the music Moore recommended was “Born this Way,” by Lady Gaga, and “White Privilege,” by Mackelmore.

AT&T did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on the program and if it’s mandatory.

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Matt McGregor covers news from North and South Carolina for The Epoch Times.

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