Home Depot document on racial and social privilege isn’t used for required employee training

A photo showing a Home Depot pamphlet about racial and social privilege is circulating on social media with the assumption that it depicts required training for the company’s employees.

The document, called "unpacking privilege," defines social and white privilege and gives examples of what different types of privilege look like, including class privilege, able-bodied privilege and cisgender privilege.

"Home Depot is now #Woke," read a March 22 Facebook post that shared a picture of the pamphlet. 

"Welcome to The Home Depot where you can find guilt on every aisle," read another posted March 23.

The posts were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

The document is real, and while it may have given users the impression that it represented a company-wide program, it doesn’t.  

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"While we fully support diversity across our company, this material was not created or approved by our corporate diversity, equity and inclusion department," Home Depot spokesperson Margaret Smith told PolitiFact in an email. "This was a resource in our Canadian division and not part of any required programming."

When asked how the document is used by Home Depot Canada, Smith said that employees are not required to review the pamphlet or complete any training associated with it. 

The material was made available as a resource in an internal company platform, she said. To access the file, Home Depot employees would have to do so using the company’s intranet.

A Home Depot document about racial and social privilege is being shared online with the interpretation that it represents required training for the company’s employees.

The document is real, but it is not used in any company-wide training and employees are not required to review it. It was created by Home Depot’s Canadian division as an internal resource that could be accessed online and it was not made or approved by the company’s corporate office.

While the pamphlet is legitimate, social media posts about it are leaving out important details about its scope that give a different impression. We rate the claim Half True.