Raytheon, one of the nation’s largest defense contractors, has purportedly been promoting and implementing critical race theory (CRT) to its current workforce since at least 2020, as revealed by various internal documents.
Greg Hayes, the CEO of Raytheon, initiated the “Stronger Together” campaign during Summer 2020. The campaign was inspired by the corporation’s effort to become “an Anti-Racist today,” as detailed by the aforementioned documents.
This campaign boasts many goals, and among the most prominent goals includes the vow for the company’s 180,000 employees to initiate “complex,” “meaningful,” and “sometimes difficult” discussions with various colleagues and friends about racism. Another goal includes having employees “check [their] own biases,” as well as “take meaningful action” to mitigate and understand their biases.
In other elements of the course, employees are also encouraged to self-identify their apparent privilege, which can include gender and sexual orientation in addition to ethnicity. Moreover, employees are also tasked with learning about other individuals’ disadvantages. They are also expected to recognize their privilege as well as “amplify others instead of attempting to speak for them.”
In addition, employees who are not black were provided explicit instructions for what they should say and not say to various black colleagues.
For instance, employees are strongly discouraged from telling black colleagues that they cannot wait “for things to calm down and get back to normal,” as well as, “I’m scared to say the wrong thing to you.”
However, employees are encouraged to inform black colleagues that they are frightened to have conversations about racism with non-black friends and family, as well as other statements, such as “I realize my discomfort is a fraction of what you’re feeling.”
Various critical race theorists have argued that American institutions have been designed to keep white people well ahead of minorities professionally and in other ways. Consequently, per these theorists, the only way to effect true change is to dismantle the entire system.
In the meantime, different opponents to CRT have raised numerous objections during school board meetings across the nation.
Different supporters of the theory have argued that CRT is not being taught in schools, and they also claim that opponents have conflated teaching on racial issues with the teaching of CRT. However, the National Education Association recently voted in favor of teaching critical race theory in public K-12 schools.
