A whistleblower has come forward to Texas Scorecard with screenshots revealing the Texas Department of Transportation still pushes diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices on their employees.
The TxDOT employee, whose name is being withheld for privacy reasons, came forward after reading Texas Scorecard’s previous reports on TxDOT’s DEI practices.
A previous tip from a whistleblower at TxDOT led to Texas Scorecard launching an investigation into the state agency over DEI-related practices and policies.
This revealed that the agency has been promoting “preferred” pronouns within government email signatures, taxpayer-funded inclusivity training and DEI classes, and segregated employee resource groups.
According to the whistleblower, following the release of DEI-related information on TxDOT, the department temporarily slowed down its push of DEI practices on employees.
Texas Scorecard was told that TxDOT has televisions in each office building where they had been promoting DEI-related videos and information. However, they said this came to a temporary stop, so they believed their employer was slowing down the promotion of DEI.
Ultimately, they said, this was not so.
Instead of promoting DEI on office TVs, the whistleblower said TxDOT administrators moved the DEI content to their employee website.
Included on the screenshots of the employee website—provided to Texas Scorecard by the whistleblower—is the “Right of Way Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Central.”
On this page, employees are provided with a DE&I “Toolkit,” which includes several video and book resources, articles, icebreakers, and presentations.
Some of the book titles provided are “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo, “Courageous Conversations About Race” by Glenn E. Singleton, and “So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo.
The titles of some of the videos include “Inclusion Starts with I,” “Kendi on how to become aware of privilege,” and “TxDOT Executive Director Acknowledges the Incredible Inclusion brown-bag session at Commission meeting.”
Employees are also presented with “ROW Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Priorities.”
- Enhanced outreach efforts related to recruiting and hiring – to include posting available positions on more platforms, increased participation at career fairs, and use of diverse interview panels.
- Implementation of a DE&I moment during routine team meetings – immediately following the safety minute.
- An extended DE&I topic will be presented in at least two ROW Town Hall meetings per year.
- Share resources made available by Human Resources staff, monthly, in an effort to educate staff and advance DE&I best practices.
- Conduct an anonymous survey, once per year, to solicit candid feedback on how Right of Way Leadership is performing in establishing an environment of diversity and inclusiveness.
- Increase the number of templates and informational pamphlets provided in various languages to better serve and communicate with non-English speaking customers and stakeholders.
The whistleblower told Texas Scorecard they, and many other employees, do not want DEI to be pushed on them in their workplace any longer.
As of publication, TxDOT did not respond to Texas Scorecard’s request for comment.
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