6 ms·

A look behind the “White Men as Full Diversity Partners” re-education program

24 points by Red_Tarsius 5y ago

toiletfuneral 5y ago
It’s revealing that at the end of the expose he begs for money. This guy is just an outrage grifter
thefourthchime 5y ago
How long until this post is taken down?
jrm4 5y ago
I appreciate the internal look at the whole thing. It's heavy-handed, it's ham-fisted. And it's definitely the sort of thing that needs to be examined and reexamined. But at the end of the day, I'm VERY glad to see it. This is new territory and people are going to make mistakes, but as long as we ensure that it's a conversation, we need more of this sort of thing, not less.
- Sholmesy 5y ago
  Did you read the documents from the post? Being forced to chant/repeat/internalize anything isn't a conversation.
  - jrm4 5y ago
    "Forced." Sigh, come on. Corny team-building things in big corporate spaces happen all the time. It's part of the whole deal. Most of these dudes are going to laugh over the corny thing they had to do at work today like happens all the time. I'm fine if people don't think it's effective, but what's going to happen is a bunch of people are going to get triggered and then entirely overestimate the possibility that this will be dangerous. It's not, no more than any of the other corporate team stuff that people do.
    - 1shooner 5y ago
      >Corny team-building things I would not characterize mandatory redefinition of employees' personal identity based on their racial group as corny team-building.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Sholmesy 5y ago
      Fair enough, I agree w/ most of that. > I'm fine if people don't think it's effective, but what's going to happen is a bunch of people are going to get triggered and then entirely overestimate the possibility that this will be dangerous. This will definitely happen, more divisiveness = more clicks.
    - telendram 5y ago
      You obviously haven't lived a single of these "trainings". Once they are in place, it's part of a broader culture. People receiving these mandatory trainings are afraid. During the training, they comply, and look at each other. After the training, they are still afraid. They know it's part of a general strategy to prey on the scape goats, so if any of them "laugh" about the "training", he risks being reported or complained about by another employee, even outside of working place and working hours, because mandatory Reporting of any Deviance under penalty of job termination is also Part of the Training ! But hey, I get it, as long as "others" have to suffer it, you don't care.
  - blacksqr 5y ago
    It's funny that you treat the tweet author as a reliable source of information about how the program was conducted.
hirundo 5y ago
If it's wrong to support this kind of training for <random-race> <random-gender> then it's wrong to support it for white men. If it isn't wrong then everyone should be trained, or not, equally. Collective guilt is one of the most evil ideas in the meme pool. No <random-race> <random-gender> is more racist because other members of that group are racist, and it is racist/sexist/prejudiced/bigoted to assume so.
- orn688 5y ago
  There isn't an assumption that all white men are racist here. Instead, I think the reasoning is that the vast majority of white men have benefited (probably unknowingly) from structural racism to the detriment of other groups. The training is intended to make these men aware of that in an effort to chip away at structural racism and its harmful effects.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    >The training is intended to make these men aware of that in an effort to chip away at structural racism and its harmful effects. I can't speak for anyone else, but as a middle-aged white man, I am well aware (and have been for decades) that I've been the beneficiary of white male privilege. But aside from treating all humans equally, I'm not sure what else I can really do. Should I interrogate potential employers as to their hiring practices and turn down job offers if the employer hasn't sufficiently included non-white, non-male candidates? What does "sufficiently" mean in the context of the above sentence? And how should I interrogate potential employers about this? What if I really need the job to pay my bills? Should I refuse to work at all and end up on the street so I can ensure that I don't receive any special privilege/treatment? Should I give $20 to every non-white, non-male person I see to "pay them back" for the preferential treatment I (never wanted or asked for) received? I'm not claiming that institutional and individual racism and sexism don't exist. Quite the opposite, in fact. And I believe that folks should be (if they aren't already) made aware that these issues are real and negatively affect many people. That said, unless I'm an employer/hiring manager, all I can do is treat all the humans around me with simple respect and judge people based on their actions, rather than their melanin content or type of genitalia -- traits which are irrelevant to the value of a person. Edit -- I guess this isn't going to happen. More's the pity: Perhaps I'm missing something in this discussion. If so, I hope someone will enlighten me as to what that might be. Additional Edit: Apparently, I was wrong. Thank you to those who chose to respond positively rather than just rejecting my point of view out of hand. It's appreciated.
mabub24 5y ago
I find it more surprising that there is a consulting group with that name, and that big name companies and executives would sit through what looks like grade-school level exercises for this superficial amount of understanding. Why don't these companies just contact major professors who work on this topic, legal scholars, african-american and black history scholars, American-history scholars, etc., and just run a "workshop" in the form of a university class discussion group? Get someone in the room who is an expert and have a conversation as adults, instead of a bizarro "re-education program".
- sk5t 5y ago
  Perhaps this program is actually part of a scheme to divert the company's money to an unqualified friend or relative. Or, perhaps it is the result of a superficial HR-driven attempt to be seen to be doing something. Indeed the content of the course looks feeble-minded at best, and not grounded in any sort of study or academic basis.
underseacables 5y ago
Anything that singles out a single race for “education” or instruction is prejudice and wrong.
Zababa 5y ago
I find it baffling to group white and heterosexual together when the minorities are often the most homophobic and LGBT-unfriendly. Here's an article for America https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2974805/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2974805/. It's hard to find hard data for France since we don't do (or at least publish to the public) racial statistics, but I've got plenty of anecdotal data on that (and some hard data but it's about muslims https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/116079_Ifop_FJR_2019.06.24.pdf https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/116079_Ifop_...).
- jrm4 5y ago
  No, they're REALLY not, and this trope needs to go. All of these things confuse the visibility of the conversation with the actual underlying harmful tendencies; people with power are more effectively able to hide their problems. Moreover, when you hear about this supposed homophobia et al, what you're watching is a community working through it.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    You're free to show me data that substantiate your claim. If you read my comment as "white men are not homophobic at all and minorities are all homophobic", that's not what I meant. What I meant is that on average minorities are more homophobic than whites. I also gave data to support my claim. For example, in France, the difference of homophobia between catholics and muslims is really really big. That's not a "trope". That's something that I live daily. Edit: I'll add to that that examples of overt racism that I've seen are extremly rare compared to examples of overt homophobia. I'm honestly fed up that people like you give a free pass to minorities to not work on themselves because "they're oppressed too". Since they have the right to be homophobes since they're racial minorities, do I have to be racist because I'm gay? Is that how you think? That's not how I think at all. We both have to work on ourselves to respect others more.
    - jrm4 5y ago
      "Data" is but so useful here. I'll tone down my claim and say that, from my lived experience, it is generally untrue of Blacks in the United States, though to the casual observer it may feel this way because we're just constantly under the microscope, and our discussions/internal fights on this are just more visible. So yes, if you rewind two decades or so, you'll see a lot of homophobia et al in our culture -- but what you'll ALSO see is that the huge majority of the same people who were pushing it before have mostly all changed for the better -- and in fact, I'll make the claim that a lot of those jokes and tropes within our community that from today's POV aged poorly, were actually really helpful steps in having people come around (I'm thinking of stand-up comedians and the like.)

24 points by Red_Tarsius 5y ago

toiletfuneral 5y ago

It’s revealing that at the end of the expose he begs for money. This guy is just an outrage grifter

thefourthchime 5y ago

How long until this post is taken down?

jrm4 5y ago

I appreciate the internal look at the whole thing. It's heavy-handed, it's ham-fisted. And it's definitely the sort of thing that needs to be examined and reexamined. But at the end of the day, I'm VERY glad to see it. This is new territory and people are going to make mistakes, but as long as we ensure that it's a conversation, we need more of this sort of thing, not less.

Sholmesy 5y ago
Did you read the documents from the post? Being forced to chant/repeat/internalize anything isn't a conversation.
- jrm4 5y ago
  "Forced." Sigh, come on. Corny team-building things in big corporate spaces happen all the time. It's part of the whole deal. Most of these dudes are going to laugh over the corny thing they had to do at work today like happens all the time. I'm fine if people don't think it's effective, but what's going to happen is a bunch of people are going to get triggered and then entirely overestimate the possibility that this will be dangerous. It's not, no more than any of the other corporate team stuff that people do.
  - 1shooner 5y ago
    >Corny team-building things I would not characterize mandatory redefinition of employees' personal identity based on their racial group as corny team-building.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Sholmesy 5y ago
    Fair enough, I agree w/ most of that. > I'm fine if people don't think it's effective, but what's going to happen is a bunch of people are going to get triggered and then entirely overestimate the possibility that this will be dangerous. This will definitely happen, more divisiveness = more clicks.
  - telendram 5y ago
    You obviously haven't lived a single of these "trainings". Once they are in place, it's part of a broader culture. People receiving these mandatory trainings are afraid. During the training, they comply, and look at each other. After the training, they are still afraid. They know it's part of a general strategy to prey on the scape goats, so if any of them "laugh" about the "training", he risks being reported or complained about by another employee, even outside of working place and working hours, because mandatory Reporting of any Deviance under penalty of job termination is also Part of the Training ! But hey, I get it, as long as "others" have to suffer it, you don't care.
- blacksqr 5y ago
  It's funny that you treat the tweet author as a reliable source of information about how the program was conducted.

hirundo 5y ago

If it's wrong to support this kind of training for <random-race> <random-gender> then it's wrong to support it for white men. If it isn't wrong then everyone should be trained, or not, equally. Collective guilt is one of the most evil ideas in the meme pool. No <random-race> <random-gender> is more racist because other members of that group are racist, and it is racist/sexist/prejudiced/bigoted to assume so.

orn688 5y ago
There isn't an assumption that all white men are racist here. Instead, I think the reasoning is that the vast majority of white men have benefited (probably unknowingly) from structural racism to the detriment of other groups. The training is intended to make these men aware of that in an effort to chip away at structural racism and its harmful effects.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >The training is intended to make these men aware of that in an effort to chip away at structural racism and its harmful effects. I can't speak for anyone else, but as a middle-aged white man, I am well aware (and have been for decades) that I've been the beneficiary of white male privilege. But aside from treating all humans equally, I'm not sure what else I can really do. Should I interrogate potential employers as to their hiring practices and turn down job offers if the employer hasn't sufficiently included non-white, non-male candidates? What does "sufficiently" mean in the context of the above sentence? And how should I interrogate potential employers about this? What if I really need the job to pay my bills? Should I refuse to work at all and end up on the street so I can ensure that I don't receive any special privilege/treatment? Should I give $20 to every non-white, non-male person I see to "pay them back" for the preferential treatment I (never wanted or asked for) received? I'm not claiming that institutional and individual racism and sexism don't exist. Quite the opposite, in fact. And I believe that folks should be (if they aren't already) made aware that these issues are real and negatively affect many people. That said, unless I'm an employer/hiring manager, all I can do is treat all the humans around me with simple respect and judge people based on their actions, rather than their melanin content or type of genitalia -- traits which are irrelevant to the value of a person. Edit -- I guess this isn't going to happen. More's the pity: Perhaps I'm missing something in this discussion. If so, I hope someone will enlighten me as to what that might be. Additional Edit: Apparently, I was wrong. Thank you to those who chose to respond positively rather than just rejecting my point of view out of hand. It's appreciated.

mabub24 5y ago

I find it more surprising that there is a consulting group with that name, and that big name companies and executives would sit through what looks like grade-school level exercises for this superficial amount of understanding. Why don't these companies just contact major professors who work on this topic, legal scholars, african-american and black history scholars, American-history scholars, etc., and just run a "workshop" in the form of a university class discussion group? Get someone in the room who is an expert and have a conversation as adults, instead of a bizarro "re-education program".

sk5t 5y ago
Perhaps this program is actually part of a scheme to divert the company's money to an unqualified friend or relative. Or, perhaps it is the result of a superficial HR-driven attempt to be seen to be doing something. Indeed the content of the course looks feeble-minded at best, and not grounded in any sort of study or academic basis.

underseacables 5y ago

Anything that singles out a single race for “education” or instruction is prejudice and wrong.

Zababa 5y ago

I find it baffling to group white and heterosexual together when the minorities are often the most homophobic and LGBT-unfriendly. Here's an article for America https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2974805/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2974805/. It's hard to find hard data for France since we don't do (or at least publish to the public) racial statistics, but I've got plenty of anecdotal data on that (and some hard data but it's about muslims https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/116079_Ifop_FJR_2019.06.24.pdf https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/116079_Ifop_...).

jrm4 5y ago
No, they're REALLY not, and this trope needs to go. All of these things confuse the visibility of the conversation with the actual underlying harmful tendencies; people with power are more effectively able to hide their problems. Moreover, when you hear about this supposed homophobia et al, what you're watching is a community working through it.
- Zababa 5y ago
  You're free to show me data that substantiate your claim. If you read my comment as "white men are not homophobic at all and minorities are all homophobic", that's not what I meant. What I meant is that on average minorities are more homophobic than whites. I also gave data to support my claim. For example, in France, the difference of homophobia between catholics and muslims is really really big. That's not a "trope". That's something that I live daily. Edit: I'll add to that that examples of overt racism that I've seen are extremly rare compared to examples of overt homophobia. I'm honestly fed up that people like you give a free pass to minorities to not work on themselves because "they're oppressed too". Since they have the right to be homophobes since they're racial minorities, do I have to be racist because I'm gay? Is that how you think? That's not how I think at all. We both have to work on ourselves to respect others more.
  - jrm4 5y ago
    "Data" is but so useful here. I'll tone down my claim and say that, from my lived experience, it is generally untrue of Blacks in the United States, though to the casual observer it may feel this way because we're just constantly under the microscope, and our discussions/internal fights on this are just more visible. So yes, if you rewind two decades or so, you'll see a lot of homophobia et al in our culture -- but what you'll ALSO see is that the huge majority of the same people who were pushing it before have mostly all changed for the better -- and in fact, I'll make the claim that a lot of those jokes and tropes within our community that from today's POV aged poorly, were actually really helpful steps in having people come around (I'm thinking of stand-up comedians and the like.)