US (Washington Insider Magazine) – Diversity, equity, and inclusion have been coming even more to the forefront of business discussions as we enter 2022. Businesses throughout the country are taking a look at their current DEI policies and continuing to diversity their staff at every level: from board to team member. This doesn’t seem to be the case at the U.S. Mint, however, as employees raise awareness for the systemic racism and subsequent consequences that they are facing.
Black employees at the U.S. Mint have been working to raise the curtain and call awareness to the marginalization of minorities over time and historically at the U.S. Mint. This isn’t exclusive to Black culture, as other minority groups have spoken up as well.
Silent but harmful actions that are being taken against minorities throughout the agency have been listed and repeatedly mentioned by the minority groups. Among the grievances include claims of implicit bias, microaggressions, and otherwise hostile and unnecessarily hateful behavior.
Several employees have spoken up about feeling threatened in the workplace, which has been received ironically as racism is against the very core of what the United States stands for: freedom and justice for all.
While changes are on the horizon at the executive and administrative levels, they may simply not be enough. Two weeks ago, Ventris Gibson was nominated by President Biden himself as the first Black director of the U.S. Mint, perhaps in an attempt to enact top-down change.
Around this time, from alternative groups, unsavory videos and imagery of the President had surfaced from his former, pre-presidential years, calling attention to the fact that this action seemed disingenuous and incongruent with his earlier, racist-leaning remarks.
After the appointment of Mr. Gibson, the problems continued to persist and brought attention back to the historically difficult environment the Mint has offered minority employees. As early as 2017, a White employee at the Mint was found using the rope from the bags to create nooses for minority workers to find. This instance only began to scratch the surface of the institutionalized racism present at the Mint, and tensions continued to rise and peak during the 2020 riots incited by the death of George Floyd.
Staff had been documented sending a letter to Steve Mnunchin, prior Treasury Secretary, empowered by the impact that Mr. Floyd had made on the United States and surrounding community. This letter detailed the poor work environment and hostile conditions that they had been faced with on a daily basis. The allegations were then sent by Mr. Mnuchin to an internal investigator. As of 2022, these investigations are still ongoing, and nothing has been released publicly from the Mint or other related governmental or investigative agencies.
After this occurred, there were subsequent reports that mentioned that there was heightened potential for racist and otherwise inappropriate behavior for a variety of reasons, most of which were cited or correlated with outdated, unclear policy and inappropriate practices.
