The Federal Reserve reportedly told employees to cease using gendered pronouns and other “biased terms” — including “Founding Fathers,” “blacklist,” and “manmade.”
According to an internal website obtained by Fox News, the United States’ central banking system informed staff that “bias-free language recognizes diversity and avoids stereotyping, demeaning, or excluding people on the basis of gender, race, ethnic group, religion, age, ability/disability, or sexual orientation.”
“Try to avoid words and phrases that may be considered offensive, pejorative, or prejudiced (whether consciously or unconsciously), as these can distract your audience from the ideas/information you’re trying to convey,” the site adds.
As Fox News reports:
The guidance contains a list of “biased terms” to avoid, including “blacklist,” “grandfathered,” and “Founding Fathers.” Employees are instructed to use terms like “denied,” “legacy,” and “Founders” instead.
The Fed also said the terms “whitelisted, “manpower,” “manmade,” and “singular generic pronouns” — such as “he,” she,” “his,” and “hers” — should be replaced with more “bias-free” alternatives like “allowed,” “artificial,” and pronouns such as “they,” “their” and “theirs.”
Recently, the Fed’s regional banks hosted a joint event entitled “Racism and the Economy” with the mission of “understanding the implications of structural racism in America’s economy and advancing actions to improve economic outcomes for all.”
The Fed’s drift toward left-leaning causes is concerning Republican lawmakers.
Last month, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) — a ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee — announced that he would review regional Federal Reserve Banks’ focus on “politically-charged issues, like global warming and racial justice.”
A letter from Toomey to the Minneapolis, Boston, and Atlanta reserve banks reads:
Of course, racism is abhorrent and has no place in our society… I recognize the interest in studying economic disparities along demographic lines, such as race and gender. However, this subject matter is fraught with ideological assumptions and interpretations, and the work and analysis of the Fed seems heavily laden with political and value judgments.
Whether or not this is your personal view, I would remind you that only Congress has the authority to reform the Federal Reserve or modify its statutory mission. Moreover, I would caution you on the reputational damage being inflicted on the… Federal Reserve as a whole by pursuing a highly politicized social agenda unrelated to monetary policy.
News of the Fed’s guidelines on speech also emerges as inflation reaches its highest levels in over a decade — a phenomenon that recently led Deutsche Bank to break from Wall Street consensus and declare that the United States economy is “sitting on a time bomb.”
“We worry that inflation will make a comeback,” said the investment bank’s top economists. “Few still remember how our societies and economies were threatened by high inflation 50 years ago… It may take a year longer until 2023 but inflation will re-emerge.”