These “bias” trainings have not been shown to be effective, in fact there is a great deal of evidence that they cause and perpetuate the problems they intend to address. They are not based in a well-grounded or coherent system of psychological thought or ethical thought. They are very fashionable and bring a glamor of religious do-goodery, but as a news organization you should be ashamed for pursuing such baubles when you have such an important role already.

Moral and political re-education has traditionally been the role of the media in tyrannical states where it serves as the arm of political power. As a local news organization, you have hardly earned the right to play such an ecclesiastical role in the lives of your viewers. But I perceive that media outlets such as yourselves and our educational institutions are currently in a race to become the new first estate in America. “Diversity and inclusion” are perfectly pleasant sounding words that carry much currency in the new race for moral capital and authority, but play a deceptive cover for their underlying meaning of “morally pre-determined acceptable outcomes”, which is a category you cannot delineate, especially along racial divides, without participating in the fundamental essence of racism and tyranny itself.

It is not the job of your station to act as thought police or as my parent or my religious authority, policing my soul and telling me about my hidden sins and how to make the proper sacrifices before the gods to be pleasing before them. The amount of moral and religious power that must be granted to an institution in order for them to tell me what I can or cannot think or feel inside my own head, or be told what I secretly do think and feel even if I don’t appear to, is far, far to much power for any organization to wield, much less a local news station and college.

I appreciate that there is a need to seek to heal racial divides and address racial issues. That is a good ambition. This simply isn’t the way, makes the problem worse, and is a blight on the legacy of great leaders like MLK. Good intentions are not a sufficient cover for such misguided activities. They set a dangerous precedent for news and educational institutions as they attempt to exert religious authority. And they do a great disservice and disrespect to the people they claim to honor, the black community, who are no less human or less capable than anyone. Malcom X and MLK would be humiliated to be patronized and fetishized in this way, made into idols of sacrifice and obesience so religiously ambitious white people can raise an incense to make themselves smell sweeter at the expense of actual black development.

No people in history has ever been raised out of poverty or won themselves honor by such means. But if you’re looking for the fastest way possible to make everything in life about race and make all decisions racially arbitrated, the opposite of MLK’s dream, for the sake of a new priestly class of professors and media pundits, then you have got it.

Sincerely hoping you find a better path,