A “social justice” consulting firm that makes money providing “anti-racist” training to corporations and educational facilities is funded solely by taxpayers.
The Washington Free Beacon reported the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium’s tax filings reveal the firm brought in $2 million between mid-2018 and mid-2019 – all from government grants. The firm reported no private donations in the past four years, meaning it has been entirely funded by taxpayers during that time.
As the Free Beacon reported, MAEC “a self-proclaimed ‘social justice’ nonprofit that conducts ‘anti-racist audits’ for corporations and schools, often in partnership with far-left groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center.” The SPLC routinely labels right-leaning organizations as “hate groups” for ideological differences, and has been sued successfully by many people and groups put on their hate lists.
MAEC recently received a $454,680 contract to work with Maryland’s largest school district by conducting one of its “anti-racist audits” of school policies. The firm has similar contracts with educational institutions in 15 states and U.S. territories.
“The MAEC also touts a handful of left-leaning education partners, including the Southern Poverty Law Center’s ‘Teaching Tolerance’ arm, which pushes for students to learn about slavery beginning in kindergarten. The consortium is considered the main equity firm in the Mid-Atlantic region,” the outlet reported.
Christopher Rufo, director of the Center of Wealth & Poverty and contributing editor of City Journal who has exposed numerous instances of racist training sessions disguised as “anti-racism” efforts, told the Free Beacon that the filings showed taxpayers were paying for “divisive pseudosciences.”
“This has become activists’ primary strategy: securing taxpayer funds to push the deeply ideological agenda of critical race theory,” Rufo told the outlet. “This kind of program plays on a double-standard. It would be unimaginable for a taxpayer-funded organization to teach a pro-life or pro-gun message in public school, but it has become commonplace to have taxpayer-funded organizations teaching extreme left-wing doctrine in public schools.”
MAEC has raised $19 million since 2001, with $17 million coming from government grants, including a 2011 equity assistance grant from the U.S. Department of Education in 2011.
Rufo has exposed what “anti-racism” training from groups like MAEC uses those taxpayer dollars for: Telling white people they’re hopelessly racist.
In July, for example, The Daily Wire reported on Rufo’s findings of an “anti-racism” training session at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, which told white employees that “virtually all” of them “contribute to racism” and that they cannot object if a person of color “responds to their oppression in a way you don’t like.”
The Treasury training consisted of trainers insisting “white employees must ‘struggle to own their racism’ and accept their ‘unconscious bias, White privilege, and White fragility,” Rufo wrote on Twitter.
“Next, the trainers recommend ‘White managers’ create ‘safe spaces’ for ‘listening sessions,’ where black employees can explain ‘what it means to be Black’ and be ‘seen in their pain.’ White employees must not ‘fill the silence with [their] own thoughts and feelings,’” Rufo tweeted.
The City of Seattle held a similar training session that month, though neither appear to be conducted by MAEC.