Lockheed Martin Hired Firm to Train Execs to Unlearn ‘White Male Privilege’ and ‘Awaken Together’

If white male privilege is innately embedded, how can it be unlearned? The nation’s largest defense contractor Lockheed Martin thinks it’s possible. National Review reports the company put “top executives through a three-day training to deconstruct their ‘white male culture’ and unlearn their ‘white male privilege’ according to a new report.”

Lockheed Martin hired a consulting firm White Men As Full Diversity Partners to lead thirteen of its employees in a program on Zoom last year. The firm works to help white men “awaken together.” Amongst the employees who attended the program was a former three-star general and the vice president of production for the $1.7 trillion F-35 fighter jet program.

The consulting firm claims in its training 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.”

National Review reports of the training session:

The training began with a “free association” exercise which asked the Lockheed executives to list words associated with “white men.” The trainers listed “old, racist, privileged, anti-women, angry, Aryan Nation, KKK, Founding fathers, guns, guilty, can’t jump,” according to Rufo.

The diversity trainers posed the question, “What’s in it for white men?” A list of responses included, “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.”

The employees were also asked to recite 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.”

After the participants finished their white privilege statements, they were asked to recite and internalize 59 “male privilege statements,” including: “My earning potential is 15-33% higher than a woman’s”; “My reproductive organs are not seen as the property of other men, the government, and/or even strangers because of my gender.”

For the final step, the employees recited and internalized 59 “heterosexual privilege statements,” including: “I am not asked to think about why I am straight”; “I can have friendships with or work around children without being accused of recruiting or molesting them.”

The training concluded by asking the participants to read a list of “I’m tired” statements attributed to fictitious people of color and woman, such as “I’m tired of being Black”; “I’m tired of Black boys/girls being murdered”; “I’m tired of … the concept that we should be ‘colorblind.’”

“This is pure neoracism from a company that receives billions of taxpayer dollars every year,” Rufo said in a tweet thread sharing his reporting. “I call on the United States Senate to launch an immediate inquiry into the racist practices at @LockheedMartin. We must shut this down before it endangers our national security.”