New York City (NYC) Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Parks Department is pushing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) courses despite facing understaffing and a $33 million budget cut, according to a Thursday report.
Documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show that the department’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging offers training to senior staffers regarding “microaggressions” and how to be an “antiracist.” (RELATED: Democrat Gerrymanding Gambit Will Give Huge Middle Finger To Rural Americans, Group Argues)
One guide the DEI office is reportedly offering is titled “What Every Supervisor/Manager Should Know About Race and Racism in the Workplace.”
This guide offers book and documentary recommendations like Nikole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 Project, Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist” and Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, the outlet reported.
One slide in the presentation offers a chart designed to help you “discern where you are on your journey” to becoming an anti-racist, according to a graphic obtained by the outlet.
Senior leaders would be expected to move from the “Fear Zone” — which consists of acknowledgments like “I deny racism is a problem” — to the “Growth Zone,” which demands individuals “yield positions of power to those otherwise marginalized,” according to the Washington Free Beacon.
People sunbathe in Central Park in the Manhattan borough of New York city during Memorial Day weekend on May 26, 2024. (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)
The parks department, responsible for maintaining the city’s 1,000 playgrounds and other facilities, reportedly encourages its leaders to participate in racial “reflections.”
Supervisors should ask themselves questions regarding unconscious biases and opportunities to discuss racism, according to a graphic obtained by the outlet.
The report comes in the wake of a March 2025 testimony from an associate for the Citizens’ Committee for Children to the NYC Council, who suggested the parks department is “chronically underfunded and understaffed.”
She alleged the department does not have sufficient Parks Enforcement Patrol Officers (PEP) and maintenance workers “to keep our parks clean and safe.”
Despite Mamdani’s promise to dedicate 1% of the city budget to the parks department, he now plans to slash the department’s funds by $33 million, the New York Times reported.
Director of the parks department’s DEI office, Iyana Titus, allegedly received a $200,000 salary in 2024, according to the Washington Free Beacon, citing public records.
Although the outlet could not verify when the undated slides regarding “microaggressions” were made, the slides seem to have been updated or used in 2026. The outlet obtained the records through a request dated from when Mamdani became mayor on Jan. 1, 2026.
The NYC Parks Department has not responded to the Daily Caller’s request for comment as of publication.
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