Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) this week revealed several instances where service members were forced to classify themselves by race and socio-economic status during diversity and inclusion training.
In one instance, Crenshaw said soldiers were forced to wear personal identification badges that listed their race, ethnicity, social class, and other things, during at training at Fort Bliss in Texas.
Crenshaw said the badges reduced soldiers to a list of characteristics that have “nothing to do with their service or their training or the content of their character.” He added:
Most soldiers do not believe that they are the sum of identity groups and it’s absurd that our military is instructing people to view themselves and others that way. In the SEAL teams, our bond is forged in large part by our common history, our ethos and our trial by fire training. We never asked each other for our social class or other identity groups, because that would be ridiculous.
The only thing that should be on a soldier’s uniform is their name, their rank and most importantly, the American flag. Yes, we are all individuals and we’re all different. The military requires us to put aside those differences and focus on one mission as one team, not highlight differences, this type of woke training doesn’t help strengthen a unit and weakens it severely and it must stop.
Crenshaw revealed the instance in a video posted to his Instagram account:
Breitbart News contacted the Fort Bliss public affairs office on Friday, but did not receive a response by deadline.
Crenshaw and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) — both veterans — last month set up a whistleblower page for service members to submit examples of critical race theory and woke training spreading in the military. They said they have received more than 400 credible submissions. Crenshaw plans to highlight some of these submissions through videos on Instagram.
The Texas Republican also shared that, at a Defense Department-wide training school at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, service members had to “experience and share a significant emotional event” in which they had to essentially admit their “privilege” and their “racism.”
“According to the report, this was explicitly targeted towards white students and particularly white males. It was an assumption in the class that white people were racist and white males were racist and sexist. This assumes that you possess these character flaws and you are forced to confront your privilege and bias, again in front of your fellow classmates,” he said.
He added:
This places a huge amount of pressure to say something that you don’t believe at all. Did you have the audacity to claim that you’re not a racist, not a privileged bigot, well the instructor could fail you according to this report and instructor is judging you, and if they don’t like what you have to say, or don’t think it’s sincere, you risk damage to your career.
This isn’t only insane, it’s actually a type of compelled speech, and certainly raises free speech concerns. And this training is clearly shaped by critical race theory in the sense that it’s designed to force participants to believe that any of their behaviors is just a product of their inherent racism and the dynamics of power associated with that.
In another video, Crenshaw said members of an Air Force squadron at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia were forced do a “privilege walk.” He said airmen were told, “If you are white, take a step forward. If you are a male, take a step forward. And so on through every possible point of privilege one might have, according to their intersectional hierarchy.”
“So let’s just point out the obvious. This is meant to shame people and shame people for something they have no control over. It also literally creates manufactured divisions in an environment that requires comradery and puts down certain service members over others, not on merit, but on skin color or gender,” he said.
“We cannot let the armed forces become some sort of massive social justice experiment — which is clearly what some want,” he said. “We’re going to keep exposing this because there are too many senior officers in the military that are pushing for this.”
Crenshaw said in a video on Friday that special operators at U.S. Special Operations Command were being encouraged to read a book from 1989 called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.”
“The military is still the strongest in the world, but wokeism, identity politics, critical race theory and blatant political activism have indeed seeped into this critical institution,” he said.
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