Last Updated on September 8, 2021
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a set of “guiding principles for inclusive communication” that are filled with woke jargon. “To build a healthier America for all, we must confront the systems and policies that have resulted in the generational injustice that has given rise to health inequities,” begins the guide. “Achieving health equity requires focused and ongoing societal efforts to address historical and contemporary injustices; overcome economic, social, and other obstacles to health and healthcare; and eliminate preventable health disparities.”
The new guide is described as a “living document” which will be amended as “language and cultural norms” change. It is filled with several proposed language changes that health professionals are encouraged to adopt. Some highlights from the lengthy preferred terms section of the document include referring to illegal immigrants as “those with undocumented status” and replacing gendered pronouns with “assigned male/female at birth.”
The Washington Free Beacon reported on the numerous non-profits associated with the CDC’s new guidelines. This includes the activist group GLAAD, whose “media reference guide” calls for the elimination of phrases like “biologically male”, which it considers “reductive” and “problematic”, among other things. GLAAD recently partnered with the Kellogg’s cereal company to celebrate “pride month” this past June. The campaign included a game on the back of cereal boxes that teaches kids to choose new pronouns for themselves.
The new guide’s “health equity lens” borrows from a report by the Racial Equity Institute. “The Groundwater metaphor is designed to help practitioners at all levels internalize the reality that we live in a racially structured society, and that that is what causes racial inequity,” reads the introduction to the report. The organization is focused on CRT-themed “anti-racism” initiatives and trainings. They primarily specialize in rooting out “structural racism” from businesses and organizations through “anti-racism” workshops.
The spirit of the new guidelines are not at all new for the CDC. In April, CDC director Rochelle Walensky declared racism as a public health emergency. “The pandemic illuminated inequities that have existed for generations and revealed for all of America a known, but often unaddressed, epidemic impacting public health: racism,” said Walensky in a statement. The CDC also tried to defy President Trump’s ban on CRT-themed training in the federal government last September.
