After Donald Trump made diversity, equity and inclusion dirty words via an executive order as far as business and government are concerned, Victoria’s Secret, Pepsi, Goldman Sachs, Paramount, Bank of America, Citigroup, Disney, Chipotle, Google, and many other companies and organizations have pared down or changed their language to correspond to the new directive.
Add Genesee County to the list. The federal administration cast a very wide net, apparently, in a search for those words, County Manager Matt Landers says.
"We had one program in particular at Office for the Aging that there was a request for us to change the wording on the program description narrative," Landers said to The Batavian Monday. "This is a program that was already near the end of its three-year cycle of funding, and we were requested to change the wording, and we made the change in the wording because we did not want to lose the funding.
"It didn't change, in our opinion, the content of the program whatsoever. But there was a request made to change the narrative, and it was basically -- we had the option of giving the money back or changing the narrative -- so we changed the narrative," he said. "The program, I believe, was an annual allocation of about $50,000."
The program was in the final year of a three-year agreement, ending March 31. County officials didn’t consider it “a big deal” since the funding had already been received; however, it was a renewable RSVP AmeriCorps senior program on a three-year grant cycle, and they intended to request a renewal, he said.
“We do have upwards of $6 or $7 million, I believe, in federal funding. So that is the only instance that we've been made aware of where they dove deep enough to try to see where there was anything that was DEI-related,” he said. “So I'm glad that's all that they've found — the federal government — but it definitely is eye-opening, and that's something that we'll keep an eye on going forward, and there is real proof, a real example, that they are looking at wording.”
Again, he wanted to emphasize that the wording changes “in no way changed how we run the RSVP program.”
Pamela LaGrou, the county’s compliance officer, provided some of the language that was changed, as per below:
Specific and targeted language pertaining to diversity, equity and inclusion was changed to broader descriptive phrases or simply removed, she said.
For example, “…we recruit members with a wide range of skills and experiences including geography (urban/rural), economic (upper/lower income) and work experience (factory worker/teacher, secretary),” rather than “…we recruit members to ensure diversity of geography (urban/rural), economic (upper/lower income) and work experience (factory worker/teacher), secretary, etc. while also seeking to represent diversity in race, ethnicity, sex and veteran status."
Reference to specific groups was removed: “RSVP has connected with the Pride Center of Buffalo, an LGTBQ advocacy center.” Also, the following was removed “Genesee RSVP in inclusive of older adults, or all races, ethnicities, abilities, sexual orientations, political and religious affiliations and we ensure the same of our stations via conversations at the time the MOU is signed.”
All language changes were made to ensure compliance with the President’s Executive Order, LaGrou said.
