The US State Department has suspended all training programs for employees related to diversity and inclusion, an internal cable obtained by Reuters showed, after President Donald Trump directed federal agencies in September to end programs deemed divisive by the White House.

Trump Biden Photo: AFP

"Beginning Friday, October 23, 2020, the Department is temporarily pausing all training programs related to diversity and inclusion in accordance with Executive Order... on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping," the cable said.

"The pause will allow time for the Department and Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to review program content," it said.

Trump's September 22 executive order forbids the teaching by federal agencies of "divisive concepts" including that the US is "fundamentally racist or sexist."

The order followed a September 4 memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget that told officials at federal agencies they could not use taxpayer dollars to fund "un-American propaganda sessions" that provided instruction about critical race theory, white privilege or "taught that the United States is an inherently racist or evil" country. 

The move comes less than two weeks before the November 3 US presidential election, in which the debate about racial injustice in the US has been fueled by police killings of black Americans that sparked nationwide protests over the summer.

During the first debate with his Democratic rival Joe Biden, Trump defended his executive order saying the training programs were teaching people "very bad ideas."

"And really, they were teaching people to hate our country and I'm not going to do that," Trump said at the September 29 debate. "They were teaching people that our country is a horrible place."

Biden, who has accused Trump of racism, leads by 8 percentage points nationally, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, with 51 percent of likely voters say they are backing the Democratic challenger while 43 percent are voting for the president.

At the pair's second debate, on Thursday, Trump denied the accusations and said he was least racist person in the room.

With its 76,000 employees globally and representing the face of the US  in the world, the State Department has had a mixed track record on diversity, with racial and ethnic minorities still underrepresented, particularly in senior ranks, according to an independent federal watchdog report released earlier in 2020. 

"Long-standing diversity issues persist," concluded the report from the US Government Accountability Office.
Newspaper headline: Trump defends suspension