US spies, including members of the CIA, have been told the term ‘blacklisted’ is racist and ‘sanity check’ is disparaging to people who suffer from mental health issues in a new internal diversity letter.
The latest guidance, which also included advice from a crossdressing secret agent, was revealed in The Dive – a newsletter issued by the intelligence community’s diversity, equality, inclusion, and accessibility office.
The document is full of diversity guidance aimed at ‘focusing on ways spy agencies can be more inclusive’.
The Dive’s theme revolves around ‘the importance of words’ and is packed with phrases that officials have now been urged to refrain from using.
One of the six articles within the newsletter – about ‘linguistic diversity’ – has highlighted the alleged racist connotations around the term ‘blacklisted’.
This is because it implies ‘black is bad and white is good’.
The term ‘sanity check’ has also been discouraged because it suggests that those who suffer from mental illnesses are inferior.
The terms ‘cakewalk’ and ‘grandfathered’ also made an appearance in the article because of their association with slavery.
In another section of the newsletter, an intelligence office warned that previous training had conflated Islamic beliefs with terrorism and cautioned the language that targeted spies’ Muslim-American colleagues.
The author further detailed an effort to revise intelligence presentations to weed out problematic language.
The Dive’s editor-in-chief, who has been kept anonymous on the online version of the document, also took to writing a section of the 16-page handout.
Hellbound and Down 