Illinois taxpayers are now funding workplace training that compares white people and police officers to mosquitoes — complete with a video ending in a flamethrower attack.
That is not satire. That is an actual course offered through Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s Department of Human Rights.
According to reporting from the Washington Free Beacon, the Illinois Department of Human Rights’ Training Institute hosted a May 15 session centered around so-called “microaggressions,” featuring a presentation titled “How Microaggressions Are Like Mosquito Bites.” The course is not limited to state workers. It is offered to government agencies, private businesses, and public participants across Illinois under a department operating budget that approached $30 million in 2024.
The content speaks for itself.
One training slide reportedly classified the phrase “When I look at you, I don’t see color” as a racial microaggression because it allegedly “denies a person of color’s racial/ethnic experience.” Another example listed “My best friend is Black” as evidence of “denial of individual racism.”
Then came the now-infamous mosquito analogy.
The training video asks participants to imagine microaggressions not as “stupid comments” but as mosquito bites that accumulate over time. In one example, a white woman tells a Black woman she is “so well spoken” before transforming into a mosquito and biting her. Other examples include comments like “Where are you really from?” and “Your English is so good.”
But the video escalates far beyond awkward social interactions.
“Beyond just being annoying, some mosquitoes carry truly threatening diseases that can mess up your life for years,” the narrator says before transitioning into references to policing.
“And other mosquitoes carry strains that can even kill you. He looked like he was up to trouble. Okay, I felt threatened.”
The implication is not subtle. Police officers and racially insensitive individuals are folded into the same metaphorical category as dangerous, disease-carrying insects capable of killing people.
The video concludes with a Black woman using a flamethrower against the mosquitoes.
And yes, state officials defended it.
Michael Patrick, a public service administrator with the Illinois Department of Human Rights who led the session, reportedly told attendees that critics of the flamethrower scene likely failed to understand the experience of being subjected to repeated “mosquito bites.”
“I had somebody in one of my classes that thought the woman with the flamethrower was overreacting,” Patrick said. “And it just kind of shows you that maybe they were not on the receiving end of the mosquito bites.”
Participants who completed the course received certificates signed by IDHR Director James Bennett, a Pritzker appointee whose biography highlights his work promoting DEI and implicit bias initiatives.
The larger controversy here is not merely the content itself, but the fact that this material carries official government backing. This is not an activist seminar held on a college campus or a private consulting workshop. It is taxpayer-funded state programming distributed through a government agency under the authority of one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent governors.
Pritzker has already built a reputation for aggressively advancing DEI policies throughout Illinois government. In 2021, he signed legislation that effectively scored prospective state contractors based partly on their support for DEI-related initiatives and commitments.
Critics argue programs like this cross the line from anti-discrimination training into ideological conditioning wrapped in corporate HR terminology. Supporters insist the goal is increasing awareness about subtle bias and workplace exclusion.
But for many Illinois taxpayers, the immediate question is much simpler: why is the state spending public money on training materials that compare ordinary social interactions — and even police officers — to bloodsucking insects worthy of incineration?
