Evergreen Reporter

Pacific County Republican Party Chair Nansen Malin said the city of Seattle’s request for white employees to complete racial sensitivity training to the exclusion of other races smacks of reverse racism.

“I think a business has a right to decide what kind of training they're giving,” Malin told the Evergreen Reporter. “In some cultures, it’s probably necessary just like there needs to be sensitivity training on how they’re handling women. It depends on the culture of the business.”

Malin was responding to a June 17 tweet on Twitter by Karlyn Borysenko stating, “Fun fact: The city of Seattle is asking its white employees to voluntarily spend their day off in a training about their internalized racial superiority. I’ve got the documentation on it.”

“When she says, ‘fun fact,’ she's trying to shed transparency on the fact that this is reverse racism,” Malin said in an interview.

Based on the tweet, Malin added it’s illegal to ask employees to complete training without pay.

“You don't ask employees to come in and do something without reimbursing them,” said Malin. “That's part of the job.”

Borysenko’s tweet comes on the heels of protesters occupying a six-block radius in Seattle called Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) where police officers have not been allowed entry since June 8, according to media reports. 

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan vowed to disband the group after two shootings last week resulted in at least one fatality.

“There's discussion among the center-right of getting groups of people in rural areas to come and dismantle CHOP with brute force – something the Seattle people won't do,” Malin said. 

On June 25, 2020, Fox News reported that CHOP zone businesses and residents filed a lawsuit against the city of Seattle accusing them of allowing the occupation.

“I am absolutely delighted to hear businesses and citizens filed a lawsuit because it's time somebody took a step to getting something going,” said Malin.

The occupation in Seattle emerged after the nation erupted into “Hands Up, Don't Shoot” protests led by Black Lives Matter, an international human rights organization that demanded the arrest of Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer who pinned George Floyd, an unarmed black man to the ground with his knee and strangled him to death May 25. 

Chauvin was ultimately arrested and charged with murder on the third day of rallies, some of which have turned into episodes of looting. President Trump and other government officials said the looting was instigated by Antifa, a far-left, antifascist, network of activists who believe more aggressive resistance to the Nazis in pre-World War II Germany would have kept Adolf Hitler from coming into power, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

On June 1, Business Insider reported that the extreme right-wing group, Identity Evropa, called for violence and looting in white neighborhoods on Twitter under the guise of being Antifa members.