Diversity isn’t nonsense. Stop the smears against Tarrant County equal-rights training | Opinion
Diversity Panic has set in across Texas and at the Tarrant County Courthouse.
The very idea of promoting fair treatment and equal representation for women and minorities is now under attack.
Surprise: It’s all about partisan politics.
Southlake lawyer Tim O’Hare blatantly said so last year, before he was elected county judge.
At a Republican club campaign forum Jan. 26, 2022, O’Hare promised to “shine a light” on anyone promoting “diversity inclusion nonsense.”
In the next breath, he said: “We can keep Tarrant County red if we all fight together.”
A little over a year later, he led the discussion Feb. 21 as county commissioners ended required anti-bias and anti-harassment training at the courthouse.
The training is now optional. It teaches county employees how to uphold equal-rights employment law.
During the meeting, O’Hare hid behind the simple and valid argument that commissioners can’t legally tell other elected officials what to do.
But then he wrote a chest-pounding Star-Telegram guest commentary the other day about how anti-bias training is “brow-beating” employees with guilt and “it’s time to push back.”
He called the training “indoctrination.”
He did not say exactly what doctrine he fears.
When the last Republican-led Commissioners’ Court approved the training a little over a year ago, it was meant to encourage employees’ “wellness, diversity and growth” and promote a “safe and healthy” workplace for all.
One after another, Republican county officials said it was needed to prevent equal-rights legal claims that cost taxpayers money.
If a county official or employee were accused of discrimination and had never taken any training, then-County Judge Glen Whitley of Hurst said in support, “then we might as well get the checkbook out.”
Then-District Attorney Sharen Wilson of Fort Worth, a strong advocate for equal-rights hiring and promotions, said her office would work with the county personnel department to ensure training that would protect taxpayers.
The $50,000 cost was far less than the cost of losing federal civil rights cases.
The big winners, as always, would be women.
Women remain the targets of bias, harassment and hiring or salary discrimination at a courthouse still escaping its good-ol’-boy past.
Fairness and equal opportunity for all are Republican values.
But the term “diversity” has become a partisan smear from those concerned that gender, race, culture or sexuality are overemphasized, particularly in schools or colleges.
O’Hare’s commentary mocked “unconscious bias” training from the University of California-San Francisco.
The Tarrant County courthouse is not at risk of becoming California or San Francisco.
When the training requirement was lifted last month, longtime county officials District Clerk Tom Wilder of Bedford and Sheriff Bill Waybourn of Dalworthington Gardens told commissioners they already have good equal-rights training and it shouldn’t be required.
Waybourn, working short-staffed, also said justifiably that he shouldn’t have to send officers for the “active shooter response” section of the training when they’re already trained to respond.
Justice of the Peace Chris Gregory of suburban northwest Tarrant County also told commissioners he is “absolutely appalled” at the training and that it “takes a swing I do not like.”
Gregory said Friday he didn’t like the training about how “everybody is biased and can’t help it — how we are all biased.”
Commissioner Manny Ramirez, a police labor leader from rural northwest Tarrant County, made the motion to change the training from mandatory to optional. He said from his police experience, anti-bias training can be “divisive” and caused “a lot of consternation.”
Look, I’ve moderated anti-bias and anti-discrimination discussions before.
Obviously, they can identify prejudices and make people uncomfortable.
Those were usually the exact people who needed to be made uncomfortable.
This story was originally published March 24, 2023 at 11:56 AM.
