"... Some diversity initiatives might actually worsen the D.E.I. climates of the organizations that pay for them. That’s partly because any psychological intervention may turn out to do more harm than good. The late psychologist Scott Lilienfeld made this point in an influential 2007 article where he argued that certain interventions — including ones geared at fighting youth substance use, youth delinquency and PTSD — likely fell into that category. In the case of D.E.I., Dr. Dobbin and Dr. Kalev warn that diversity trainings that are mandatory, or that threaten dominant groups’ sense of belonging or make them feel blamed, may elicit negative backlash or exacerbate pre-existing biases.... The history of diversity trainings is, in a sense, a history of fads. Maybe the current crop will wither over time, new ones will sprout that are stunted by the same lack of evidence, and a decade from now someone else will write a version of this article. But it’s also possible that organizations will grow tired of throwing time and money at trainings where the upside is mostly theoretical...."
Writes Jesse Singal in "What if Diversity Trainings Are Doing More Harm Than Good?" (NYT).
No comments section over there. I'll just imagine the evisceration that would have taken place. Singal complains about the lack of science but offers no competing science other than the non-news that hearing about white supremacy hurts white people's feelings and might lead to more white supremacy. Every fix might backfire, so why try to fix anything? But how do you know that's not white supremacy talking?
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123 comments:
There was never even an attempt to base diversity training on evidence of need or efficacy.
Diversity training exists for 2 reasons: a PR stunt for the company ("We're not racist!! Or sexist!!") and a payday for people whose only skill is public speaking. The backlash is due to the waste of time and resources, as well as the insult that these nonsense sessions subject people to. Few will say so publicly for fear of jeopardizing their position, but privately most people know it's hokum.
I laughed at our DEI training that said mispronouncing someone’s name is a micro aggression. I work for an international company with routine calls to people around the world with different languages and dialects. Names are going to be mispronounced. However, the trainers world view was narrow and lacked that perspective.
mandatory WHITE MALES SUCK meetings, don't work to improve the situation?
WHO would have thought that? I mean, other than Anyone that EVER was forced to sit through one?
Is “white supremacy” a woke way to mispronounce “hard work ethic”? Retired people like me get to ask the tough questions.
I think it's a fair question to ask: "How has the DEI office improved the climate over the past 5 years? 10 years? 20 years?" There should be a metric in place that judges "success". I wonder how often that is the case.
The white experience is that they spent years giving blacks every chance and hoping they do well and suddenly wind up being blamed everywhere for discriminating unintentionally against blacks.
The average white, after a few decades of this, says "Maybe the problem is on your end," and stops caring what blacks think until such time as they figure it out. The "it" being that good character is what gets you ahead, and resentment, no matter easily sold to blacks by the black lobby, leads to poverty.
I myself was banned from mandatory annual consciousness raising sessions, but they eventually got around that by putting it all on automated video and having a quiz that you had to pass. The only satisfaction was guessing the answers they wanted without watching the video.
100% of the benefit of DEI training is narrative. Like Hiring Blacks for the public face of a company. Totems to the woke.
I cant get past the wise counsel from our current Vice President. Must. Identify. Causes. Conditions.
Want to lift up minorities, of all stripes?
Go to School EVERYDAY
Learn a trade, or get a degree.
Do not create a baby until you are married.
Go to Work EVERYDAY
Life is simple.
Hard, but simple.
Telling me that, because I'm white I'm a racist is going to annoy me. Telling me that just a shade less directly is going to annoy me. Telling me what I have to do on account of that will, therefore, not be accepted.
When equity means withholding news of Merit Scholar awards from the awardees...forget it.
Inclusion means everybody but me.....
Says parent to toddler; What do you say when you want something. Expecting the answer to be "Please". Kid says, "I'm offended."
As regards micro aggressions: We're H. Sap. Spent a million years coming up the hard way. The great predators who tormented us are either extinct or on the endangered species list. So don't be telling me that a micro-aggression's micro impact is about to make you fall into a pile of angsty glop if I don't do what you want.
The DEI folks haven't figured this out, or is it installed to require another gig and the associated paycheck?
It's a joke.
Race relations are being destroyed by the corrupt left.
They lost their minds when they realized some black folks voted for Trump.
Keeping everyone angry and separated = more power for the corrupt left.
"Every fix might backfire, so why try to fix anything?"
First you have to determine that White Supremacy is a "problem" that needs fixing. As of now it is presented as a fact but it really is just a conclusion, presented as if supporting evidence doesn't matter.
DEI is a scam like CAGW is a scam, but on a smaller scale.
The University of Nebraska employs about two dozen people in its DEI department. It’s a jobs program for Blacks. That’s it.
When I got hired in 85 it was not yet a thing. Sometime in the early 90s that changed. So, groups of employees were summoned to the big conference room and lecture to about diversity by an outside company whose job it was to do that kind of thing for a fee.
Everything we did had to be charged to a job number. So word came back the training was overhead. Overhead had a number, the number we were told to avoid using.
DEI / Antiracism: Use immutable characteristics to single out a group of people that are bad and need to change themselves.
I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that?
Compare with, say ‘ideal’ Christianity: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” “And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
THAT is inusion.
Don't you occasionally say: "Better than nothing is a high standard"? There might be "fixes" that don't backfire. But before you implement a fix, you ought to gather evidence that it really is better than doing nothing. Here's an article purporting to assemble evidence that it's worse (I haven't gone and checked any of these cites, by the way).
It's credible to me that people would be designing training without thinking about whether it works. We have this issue with a lot of education fads, not just corporate DEI nonsense. And frankly, I think a lot of corporate training falls into this category. I don't work with diversity or discrimination cases, but in other contexts, companies are often required as part of a settlement with the government to implement some form of remediation, usually including a couple hours of mandatory training, maybe some revision to policies and procedures, etc. Does the training actually do much? I am dubious.
The way companies typically assess the effectiveness of training is with a little quiz, administered shortly after the training when everything is fresh in the mind. But I frequently encounter a disconnect between what people supposedly learned in training and what they recall months later when they're sitting in a conference room being interviewed by a bunch of lawyers about how their procedures work. I think there are training mechanisms that can be effective when reinforced by robust monitoring and discipline; I just don't think the typical approach -- sit employees in a conference room for a powerpoint presentation, or have employees join a webinar and take a quiz afterwards -- is particularly effective for anything. On the other hand, most training is just neutral, as opposed to actively making things worse.
All that said, like a lot of corporate training, companies aren't blowing this money on DEI training because they think it works. I mean, maybe managers do, but they've sat through mandatory training themselves -- they know how ineffective it is. They're doing it to insulate themselves, maybe from legal risk, but mostly from PR risk.
A person, organization or country has some principles that aren't subject to scientific verification. The Civil War wasn't fought because several studies showed that slavery wasn't economically viable. Another principle might be that sexism or racism can't be countered by more sexism or racism.
No one should be surprised that diversity training is harmful. Imagine working for a company where everyone is acting in good faith, or at least conduct themselves so it appears that way. Diversity training explains that isn't the case and that marginalized groups are being covertly targeted with micro-aggressions. HR gives marginalized groups a trump card and everyone knows it. How could that not foster resentment?
Then in 2005, when another bigger company bought our little company, guess what happened. We had to go for another round of diversity training. This time it was all digital, over an internet instruct and multiple choice quiz, rinse, repeat. It took several hours.
In the new regime, diversity training was overhead also, but they had multiple categories of overhead. They had a specific number for diversity training.
Paywalls are white supremacy
Personally, I reject any assertion that I am to blame for someone else’s shitty life.
- Krumhorn
You should file this under ‘N’, for “No shit, Sherlock”.
I have been retired for nine years, so I haven't gotten the full effect if DEI training, but we used to get diversity training that attempted to head off potentially embarrassing situations, usually involving assumptions about individuals' roles in the organization. OK, it essentially involved good manners in the workplace. Got it.
Near the end of my career, we got visits from the legal staffs of our Fortune 50 clients telling us that their outside counsel legal service teams must contain at least certain percentages of minority attorneys pursuant to initiatives of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association. Well, what Meghan wants, Meghan gets, so to speak, but it was not a good look. It was a long way from judging people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. You may recall the General Counsel at Coca Cola got sacked for pushing this concept too hard.
I would imagine that DEI training in the workplace has pushed racial divisions at work to a place where they have never been before. There is no virtue and no vice in anyone's skin tone. Try saying that in a training session devoted to sussing out the sins of Whitey.
The Stalin-era show trials come to mind.
I think the implicit assumption is that if white men are left to their own devices they naturally evolve into Nazis and rapists....Here's the dirty secret about Hitler. He wasn't a white supremacist. His ultimate goal was to exterminate all non-Germanic people living west of the Urals. These people were literally Caucasians. Those people living along the Black Sea coast were littorally Caucasian. I don't even think you can claim Hitler was universally pro-German. He did kill a fair number of non Nazi Germans. I think Hitler was a Nazi supremacist......I think Hitler ultimately gained his power and support from those German who had an exaggerated sense of grievance about the way Germany had been treated during the Armistice and after. The roots of Nazism weren't white supremacy but rather racial grievance. DEI should institute training sessions to teach employees how an exaggerated sense of grievance leads to injustice and ultimately genocide. Useful examples can be gleaned from the history not just of the Nazis but also from the Bolsheviks. Some attention should be paid to the Black Panthers in this context.
I mispronounced a "Latinex" woman's name at a work-required DEI. She hectored me repeatedly before all the other cowering attendees. Then they halted the rest of the session; divided it by race; reconvened and put me in a chair in the center of the rest of the participants as the women of color read degrading poems they had written about me and my sins before a black woman who had known me and my social work in Atlanta for years shut the Whole evil shitshow down.
I have a speech impediment.
Fuck these Nazis. That's being polite. I wish them the same abuse, grotesquely magnified. These were my colleagues. Only one had the integrity to stop them. The rest were terrified or agreed with them. Or worse, both. When I call these people Maoists, I am not exaggerating. This is how it always begins. If you don't know how it ends, good luck at the reeducation camp.
If the question is whether the billions spent on DIE are wasted, the burden of proof is on the diversity trainers.
Now that I think about it, Whitey controls the bigger scam. I've never seen a minority involved and making money off of the CAGW scam. I suppose some rich Black people buy federal tax credits related to wind and solar, but the entire CAGW universe is composed of White people.
Example, with the $100m Saunders County, Nebraska solar project and the proposed $500m solar project in Cass County all the proponents are White. The lawyers and engineers are White. The lessors are White. NextEra, the project owner, is run by White people.
So, as between the two scams the White people are making the most money. Unfair! White supremacy.
Almost all public school teachers are required to do 3-5 days of "professional development" every year. Most all teachers think that less than half of it is useful. But the chances of it being "reformed" or scaled back are as close to zero as it is possible to be.
If I am told I am irredeemable and inherently racist, how do you expect me to behave otherwise?
What if instead of engaging these people every time they tried to legalese their way into undermining us, we just said:
No, we don't have to give any justification or defend our innate right to rule ourselves, in a manner that is advantageous to us and our posterity, within our own homeland.
The beatings will continue, no matter how much you argue against them or point out their logical, moral, economic flaws, until you simply stop arguing and give them the boot.
I suspect (hope) that your last paragraph is tongue in cheek.
Or perhaps you have never been subjected to "Diversity Training."
“Every fix might backfire, so why try to fix anything?”
I’m glad the author of the sentence is not practicing surgery. While every fix might backfire, fixes that are facially offensive to people and logic are almost certain to backfire. Also, I don’t think that in most cases the need for a fix has even been demonstrated. What problems are they fixing, other than the problem that gender studies graduates don’t have enough job opportunities and so they need to become a DEI trainers.
I suspect DEI training affects different industries very differently. Latinx construction workers would titter and rest up to go back to working hard. Army recruitment and training would be, "You're a racist, your country is racist, now go out and die for your racist country, racist". I suspect thats not a good thing to do.
So only now does the NYT discover this? Go back to the Carter administration and review the reaction to school bussing programs. Review the reaction to his appointment of local Hispanic elected officials to federal agencies. These did not go well.
The backlash against diversity programs will likely be as severe as the harshest woke efforts of the last 5 years or even worse, as the recent woke execution plans were proven failures. The woke were warned then but they didn't listen and killed the messengers...every generation must try and fail to understand what failing means.
I had to take DEI training while contracting recently with a large pharma co. Lots of testing and the right answer was ALWAYS to report the person you thought had made an insensitive remark to mgmnt. Also, lots of encouragement to "bring your whole self to work." But what if your whole self includes being an abusive parent or spouse? Or, a child porn aficionado? I could go on, but the sooner this scam goes away, the better.
Deny your dignity, deny your conscience, deny your value, and you will no longer be human.
Diversity [dogma] is a color judgment, class-based bigotry, including: racism, sexism, ageism, etc.
Diversity, Inequity, Exclusion (DIE) understandably, predictably breeds adversity.
That said, lose your ethical religion, your class-disordered ideologies, your politically congruent ("=") constructs, your wicked solutions.
Diversity of individuals, minority of one.
While bias is intrinsic, prejudice is progressive. DIE doctrine breeds adversity by virtue of exploiting the former to evolve the latter for leverage. This is the same handmade tale brayed to socially justify other wicked and bad solutions.
That said, men, women, and "our Posterity" are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Maculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus. #HateLovesAbortion
Some years back I was among those required to take DEI training pursuant to a California state law. The instructors made it clear that you and the company were at risk of a lawsuit if you did nothing wrong but someone you interacted with believed you did something wrong. My takeaway was to limit interactions with likely accusers. From that point forward I never met alone with a female employee, and certainly never behind closed doors. I also never commented on what women wore and never asked a woman to join me for lunch. I always up-rated minority employees in performance reviews and avoided any criticism of their work. Etc. Much has been written about the lack of male mentors for women and white mentors for minorities. DEI made this a high risk activity.
I disagree about the burden of proof here. Diversity training is expensive, both in out of pockets costs and opportunity costs. Those who want firms to spend that money need to show that it’s money well spent. They haven’t done so.
"Singal complains about the lack of science but offers no competing science other than the non-news that hearing about white supremacy hurts white people's feelings and might lead to more white supremacy."
It won't lead to more white supremacy. You don't get more of something that didn't exist in the first place. What you do get- and this doesn't take a brilliant psychologist or physicist, or any other 'ist' to figure out- is a pushback. People don't like being preached at unless they specifically request that sermon. And they don't like being threatened by an antagonistic preacher with a vile sermon, accusing them of being less than they are, and demanding submissive acquiescence.
The didn't like that in ancient times, and they continue to dislike it today. The only people who don't get it, are people so full of themselves that they demand everyone around them think just like they do.
Rh said “The only satisfaction was guessing the answers they wanted without watching the video.
By the time our second round came about (2005) they were wise to that trick and the running program wouldn’t let you go to the quiz part without having to sit through the lecture.
All anyone needs to know: Don’t be an asshole.
I suppose it depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
It's undoubtedly true that when most people are singled out for blame for something they didn't do (or at least that they believe they didn't do), they're going to feel resentment, which will manifest as - depending on the person - shutting down or snapping back. It's also undoubtedly true that when you tell most people the hardships they've faced have absolutely nothing to do with their own decisions and everything to do with what some other people have done to them (or, better case, external circumstances entirely out of their control), they're eventually going to believe what they're told - it's easier and less painful.
So - is the intent of DEI training to chip away at the vestiges of the racism that - also undoubtedly - ruled the day for so long? Or is the intent to inflame the feelings of both "sides"?
The DEI (or the more appropriate acronym DIE) people say that white people are inherently racist with some even saying white babies are born racist. The DIE “training” is meant to “fix” this situation by employers and it is mandatory, especially for white people. Yet, even after going through the “training”, the DIE people will still say that “trained” white people will always be racist, so what good does this “training” and policies do? This is a scam meant to separate companies’ from their money to go to “consultants” and to put it mildly, create patronage jobs for DIE employees within the company for people who aren’t qualified for jobs in the company that actually help the company earn money (and if the “training” creates tension within the company, chances are the company’s earnings will fall as employees’ production will fall). And for DIE employees in public service jobs, just more taxpayer money flushed down the toilet in their salaries and benefits plus whatever they pay out for “consultants”.
What Tim M said: "a PR stunt for the company ("We're not racist!! Or sexist!!") and a payday for people whose only skill is public speaking." DIE training is a CYA protection racket.
As others have said, since it is training, it is likely not to have any effects, or to have unintended side effects that cancel out any intended effects. Most training is not about the thing being trained. The goal is rarely the goal.
But that doesn't mean training is pointless. Besides the crass calculations of cowardly organizations, the point is ideological: this is the party line, you sheep. Obey. As long as they don't affect prog hegemony, resentment and division are desirable indicators of ideological success.
Comedians and sitcoms have been saying this for years.
One would have to have blinders on or be very stupid to have missed it.
Leftists fix nothing. They simply are creating division to perpetuity. Manipulate the language, control the narrative. See also "Gift That Keeps Giving".
The affair is an exercise in counter-intuition. Your awareness is raised about something you have been told, for as long as you can remember, that it is not important. There’s even a National holiday named after the man who said it’s unimportant.
I wish I could say more on the subject, but the part of me that tells me it’s not important wins out and tells me to shut the fuck up about it. It’s just not that important.
I love how California is thinking of paying reparations to blacks who weren't slaves when California wasn't a slave state. On top of that money, they want to pay off their mortgages and all personal debt and pay them $90,000 a year...all for being born black. Blacks who are happy with this, will NOT be happy with the backlash from taxpayers who have to pay them to be black. This country is a joke and the laughingstock of the world because of what Progressives have done to us.
Racism and sexism still exist. It was worse in the past and back then it might have been good to help nudge the DEI agenda a little bit, but like most problems that are mostly already solved, people have to invent new forms of racism and sexism to combat. We are really more at the stage of "just be respectful", but there is no "industry" you can build around that.
Is there any evidence to support the notion that "white supremacy" even exists, in the way it is constantly referred to by the left (including the media)?
Diversity training is a grift. That is its purpose.
I always thought diversity training existed merely to provide the employer with a defense in the event of a frivolous hostile workplace lawsuit.
Lower your albinophobic banner, black and brown excluded. Colored supremacism, indeed. Civil unions for all consenting adults.
The big conformity experiments of the 50s were part of the reaction against Mccarthyism, linking it to fascism, etc. Then there was performing brainwashing on citizens to see how it worked. Studies have been discredited, papers have been retracted. Now the woke want to bring about conformity. Maybe the appearance of virtue will be enough, like being polite on a date.
Sebastian said:
As others have said, since it is training, it is likely not to have any effects, or to have unintended side effects that cancel out any intended effects. Most training is not about the thing being trained. The goal is rarely the goal.
********************
But it's not "training", since it trains for nothing useful, only aquiescence to perverse claims that whites are inherently racist, while every "minority" (except for Asians) out there is deserving of your respect, deference and your money.
This is political indocrrination. pure and simple. Everyone should RESIST being subjected to it.
Eventually this racist bullshit will reach the Supremes, where it will be struck down as violative of "Equal Protection" and the Civil Rights Acts. ESPECIALLY so when the government forces its employees to adopt political views.
California recently required lawyers to take an hour of implicit bias CLE training every three years and i satisfied my requirement last week. Biggest waste of an hour (45 minute hour).
My experience with these kinds of trainings is that they hurt the confidence and otherwise damage the morale of black colleagues more than anyone else. One of the trainings said that being on time, meeting deadlines, working hard, and "valuing excellence" was "white supremacist values." A colleague I was mentoring at the time was pretty devastated by all that, as he had been doing all those things. Later, when he easily got tenure, he thanks me for encouraging him to do the "old fashioned" approach of "as the new guy, you are the first one in, the last one to go home, and the most willing to help others." But I wonder how long the self-doubt triggered by that "training" stuck with him. Anecdotally, the people who push for and seem to like these kinds of trainings are not African-American (and definitely not African or Afro-Caribbean), but people who, demographically, haven't suffered much discrimination in the context of contemporary academia: South Asians, particularly those who are 2nd generation from India or Pakistan and come from economically upper-middle-class backgrounds and have no detectable accents, and self-described "Latinx" who don't speak Spanish, have only one ethnically "Latin" parent, and could just as easily be taken for Italian, Greek, Portuguese, Armenian, Lebanese, etc. (A related issue: the reasoning as to why a Spaniard FROM SPAIN counts as "BIPOC," but someone from Portugal, Italy, Lebanon, Greece, etc. counts as "white" is equivalent in tortuousness to any 'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin' argument from medieval religion).
wendybar said...
love how California is thinking of paying reparations to blacks who weren't slaves when California wasn't a slave state
No Kidding. IF (capital I F, IF) California was going to pay reparations..
seems like they would go to, Indians.. As if there were any survivors
William said...
[Hitler's] ultimate goal was to exterminate all non-Germanic people living west of the Urals. These people were literally Caucasians. Those people living along the Black Sea coast were littorally Caucasian.
This pun was well done. I tip my cap to you, sir.
Temujin said...
What you do get- and this doesn't take a brilliant psychologist or physicist, or any other 'ist' to figure out- is a pushback. People don't like being preached at unless they specifically request that sermon. And they don't like being threatened by an antagonistic preacher with a vile sermon, accusing them of being less than they are, and demanding submissive acquiescence.
The didn't like that in ancient times, and they continue to dislike it today. The only people who don't get it, are people so full of themselves that they demand everyone around them think just like they do.
Amen. bolded.
Prof. Althouse is obviously a devotee of the syllogism:
We must do something.
This is something.
Therefore, we must do this.
This (DEI/CRT) is going to be here forever. There are bureaus in every institution in the US that will not disappear of their own accord. There are so many POC careerists employed by these institutions that it will take a real counterrevolution to eliminate them. I don't see any appetite for this. It's a metastasizing 'growth' industry reaping lots of profit for a segment of the population that is deemed beyond criticism.
This (DEI/CRT) is going to be here forever. There are bureaus in every institution in the US that will not disappear of their own accord. There are so many POC careerists employed by these institutions that it will take a real counterrevolution to eliminate them. I don't see any appetite for this. It's a metastasizing 'growth' industry reaping lots of profit for a segment of the population that is deemed beyond criticism.
The big conformity experiments of the 50s were part of the reaction against Mccarthyism
Before McCarthyism, there was Palmerism.
Is there any evidence to support the notion that "white supremacy" even exists
Yes, in the model of Hutu vs Tutsi, Xhosa vs Zulu, Kenyan elite vs deplorables, etc... feminist/masculinist vs baby. While bias is intrinsic, prejudice is progressive for leverage.
I just want to post a big “ditto” to what everybody has been saying so eloquently on this thread. Many posts are in the form of personal observations —actual data of a quality and specificity that Singal could only dream of getting. (Extra props to Tina Trent @ 8:50. What a s***show, but at least one of your “colleagues” had backbone.)
My only addition to the debate is to wonder how “systemic racism” differs from “original sin” in a religious context. It creates in the accused a sense of inescapable doom —lakes of fire— but then offers redemption by thought, word and deed. DIE grifters stand in the role of medieval peddlers of indulgences.
But what if I’m skeptical of this hand waving theology? Or what if I’m fatalistic: resigned to my corrupt condition? This hard sell demands my money regardless. No wonder I get resentful.
Blogger rhhardin said...
The white experience is that they spent years giving blacks every chance and hoping they do well and suddenly wind up being blamed everywhere for discriminating unintentionally against blacks.
This. All this "white supremacy" is about blacks being inferior. They don't seem to be able to see how this message is paradoxical. Can't they see how immigrant groups, like Asians and even Africans, are quickly reaching income levels well above the white average ? I've talked to black African immigrants. They have contempt for American blacks.
I don't think corporate leadership really believes in all this DEI nonsense, they go along with it for a couple of reasons:
1. Legal liability: Hey, Joe took the course on how to obey such and such laws, so we aren't liable for when Joe broke those laws.
2. They may believe it's all BS, but it's safer to pretend that it's all good and necessary, so just do the training. It's like paying protection money--distasteful but cheaper than the possible downside.
The closest analog to Diversity Training is converting someone to a new religion -- not something done in a two hour class (with coffee and cookies) run by the HR department.
I am glad I retired when I did. These days HR departments - at least some of them - seem to think their mission is to ensure the failure of the corporations they “serve”.
I don’t know about you, but I sure miss all the racial healing of the 0bama administration… 👎
. Some diversity initiatives might actually worsen the D.E.I. climates of the organizations that pay for them.
Might? Every study has shown that they do.
Want to get a whole bunch of different people to work together without rancor? Send them through pre-1970 boot camp. Maybe not AF, but any of the others.
The military has been testing people for generations. The ASVAB and it predecessor tests do one thing- and do it well. Measure aptitude. Sorts you into career fields based on scores. Not a lot of blacks in engineering fields in the USN. Test scored separate s lot of them out from guaranteed "A" schools. And among strikers, people who enter the fleet without a guuanteed job, but have to work their way into it, self selection weeds out even a larger proportion. Best way to ensure people are successful isn't to put them into the best jobs, it's to put them into jobs they can do. 5,000 people on a carrier. Everyone knows which ratings require the highest ASVAB scores, and nobody cares or looks down upon others excepr good natured ribbing. The pilots can't launch unless the ship is moving. THe ship is moving because the engineers are doing their job. The engineers can get parts because the supply dept is keepong them organized and can find them. The navigation department makes sure the carrier doesn't manuever into shallow water and go aground. And- the cooks keep eveyone else going. Eveyone has a jb essential to keeping the whole ship going.
EO, or I guess they're now DIE specialists- contribute nothing. Completely unneeded to the operation of any operation. If you get rid of them, the organization continues to function.
sean,
I think the "Politicians' Syllogism" belongs to "Yes, Prime Minister." Amazing how that show (fifty years old, or so) seems not in the least dated. Every last thing you can see in current politics you can see in there. Even though theirs is a Parliamentary system and ours is not.
Readering--I took that California CLE "inherent bias" video as a free option to get one of my necessary 12 CLE credits. Presented common sense as "bias" (Such as making the assumption that a well-spoken, white-haired judge wearing a robe might be more trustworthy than a tattood long-haired biker, or that well-dressed, wellspoken POC's might be more trustworthy than the aforementioned biker). Of course the way people present themselves to other people is a reflection of who they are. And presented that Minnesota (I think) "inherent bias" test as conclusive, without any support, when I couldn't even understand the instructions, and it seemed designed more to distinguish between reaction to the written word as opposed to the color of the word, and the speed at which one processed cues into digital responses-proving nothing.
(I did a quick google search on the test. The designer has admitted that it doesn't detect "bias," and there was a piece by a Vox writer who said he took it three times, and the outcome-very biased, a little biased, and not biased--came out differently each time).
What crap! And if you disagree, it just proves that you are not aware of what a racist you are.
Readering--I took that California CLE "inherent bias" video as a free option to get one of my necessary 12 CLE credits. Presented common sense as "bias" (Such as making the assumption that a well-spoken, white-haired judge wearing a robe might be more trustworthy than a tattood long-haired biker, or that well-dressed, wellspoken POC's might be more trustworthy than the aforementioned biker). Of course the way people present themselves to other people is a reflection of who they are. And presented that Minnesota (I think) "inherent bias" test as conclusive, without any support, when I couldn't even understand the instructions, and it seemed designed more to distinguish between reaction to the written word as opposed to the color of the word, and the speed at which one processed cues into digital responses-proving nothing.
(I did a quick google search on the test. The designer has admitted that it doesn't detect "bias," and there was a piece by a Vox writer who said he took it three times, and the outcome-very biased, a little biased, and not biased--came out differently each time).
What crap! And if you disagree, it just proves that you are not aware of what a racist you are.
What if/
Sorry, What if?
California law requires all managers of a business over a certain size to take non-discrimination training every couple of years.
Good business for lawyer-trainers.
Re: Readering:
California recently required lawyers to take an hour of implicit bias CLE training every three years and i satisfied my requirement last week. Biggest waste of an hour (45 minute hour).
I don't think this is new -- I think I've been taking the implicit bias or elimination of bias or whatever training since I first became a member of the California bar, or at least since my first CLE reporting date. Maybe second? At least, I've now gone through several cycles of picking up those hours at the last minute. They might've changed the name once or twice, but it's always the same sort of thing.
In the not-for-profit world, an organization's ability to wangle grant money from the Woke Foundation will depend on its being sufficiently Woke itself: the rainbow board, the right PC mission statement, lots of feel-good PR pieces and, you bet, lots of training for staff. See also ESG for corporate America generally.
I wish I'd seen this coming, I could have written a scolding best-seller like Robin DiAngelo and run a consulting business. Ka-ching.
In the NYT's emailed Opinion Today intro, written by young white female Michal Leibowitz, she summarizes this piece. From that summary:
Instead of trying to spark “a revolutionary re-understanding of race relations,” as he puts it, or trying to change hearts and minds, organizations should focus their efforts on the work of diagnosing their specific D.E.I. [sic] problems and working toward concrete solutions, he writes.
“The legwork it takes to actually understand and solve these problems isn’t necessarily glamorous,” Jesse warns. Taking real steps to solve common problems like, for example, the underrepresentation of people of color in management positions in an organization could take “hundreds of hours of labor.”
Hundreds of hours of labor doing what, for Pete's sake?
About two minutes of grasping the glaringly apparent would ditch DIE's murderous collectivism and, instead, treat people as individuals.
I know, dumb. There's no grift in that.
We had to pass an annual online inquisition at the U.
Now they are requiring the board members of our local-regional history society to do the same in order to ask for the small publication grant we have depended on since the 1960s.
After keeping the society alive through the COVID years practically by myself, I've informed the state wankers and the other board members that I've jumped my last hoop when it comes to that crap.
typingtalker is correct: it is a religious movement in the guise of fairness and equity.
Retail lawyer,
Stop being racist. Stop using that l****x word. It is incredibly bigoted racist and genocidal.
An, you rightly ban the use of the n word. Why do you permit this?
John Henry
n.n said...
Is there any evidence to support the notion that "white supremacy" even exists
Yes, in the model of Hutu vs Tutsi, Xhosa vs Zulu, Kenyan elite vs deplorables, etc... feminist/masculinist vs baby. While bias is intrinsic, prejudice is progressive for leverage.
**********
It's really out in the open in Rwanda, where the national anthem begins:
"Tu Tu Tutsi, Good-Bye.."
Lars Porsena said...
This (DEI/CRT) is going to be here forever. There are bureaus in every institution in the US that will not disappear of their own accord.
*******************
We can still hope the Supremes whack the bureaucrats' pee-pees real hard to make them stop.
If “Diversity” is the universal good that the DEI crowd claims it is, wouldn’t we all be predisposed to it in the first place? Or at least latch onto it the moment it’s presented to us?
I just call BS.
Its like “Climate Change” I just say “doesn’t exist” and most people leave me the hell alone. I don’t care if they think I’m an irredeemable deplorable whatever supremicist. Lemme drink my beer in peace.
I worked on several major financings for public sector projects. There was always a white shoe law firm doing the heavy lifting and a black firm making coffee and copies and lending out their fabulous conference rooms.
My experience, at a large tech company, has been that when the economy was booming, so was "Diversity". The company newsletter was full of articles by "diverse" individuals, telling those of us who did not have the good fortune to be "diverse" how we might comport ourselves so as to be "allies" to the "diverse". Now that the company is losing its shirt, not so much. There seems to be this belated recognition that the company is in business to make money, and that will require hard work by competent people. Which has been in short supply lately, for some reason.
"But there's a darker possibility ..."
You mean, that hate training might train people to hate?
Diversity training is essentially a Miranda warning to white men not to interact with women or minorities: “Anything you say can and will be used against you.” I’m sure that does wonders for employee teamwork and morale.
If you accuse nice people who do not discriminate of being racists, you will get backlash and resentment. The implication of these courses is that systemic racism exists even though they provide no evidence of it, and that all white people are guilty. That other factors (welfare, broken homes, the drug war, terrible urban schools) could explain much of the achievement gap is never allowed.
In the old religion, there was redemption. You were saved or confessed to your priest. In the new racism, there is no forgiveness. If white you are guilty of the sins of your ancestors (that is, all whites in the past) AND guilty of systemic racism no matter what you do. Not a real appealing religion. The white woke thus get louder and louder proclaiming their sin and apology, but there is no one to grant grace.
Without question, the young indulge in far more racist humor, in their circles of trust, than my generation ever did. Turns out, that if you talk about something all the time, that thing is going to be what the irreverent want to skewer.
One of my sons, an engineer, works with an extremely ethnically diverse group. A veritable mini-UN. With no Africa. Guess who gets riffed on?
The negative effects of the diversity doctrine are not only among Caucasians. Not only do we get light skinned people thinking "Why do I want to risk that sort of prickly entitlement?", you also get darker skinned people thinking "Why would I want to endanger myself around those racists?"
I have seen both reactions. Yes, it is anecdote. Yet I think the stimulation of mutual fear and distrust is more common now.
The negative effects of the diversity doctrine are not only among Caucasians. Not only do we get light skinned people thinking "Why do I want to risk that sort of prickly entitlement?", you also get darker skinned people thinking "Why would I want to endanger myself around those racists?"
I have seen both reactions. Yes, it is anecdote. Yet I think the stimulation of mutual fear and distrust is more common now.
I have a longtime friend in his mid-60s who had an unusual experience at work a couple of years ago. Upon his return to the office after the turn of the year, he turned his office computer on and upon logging on was greeted with a screen that had big block, colorful letters that spelled “RETIRE!” accompanied by simulated confetti and noisemakers… stayed on his screen for approximately 10 seconds and then disappeared. He figured it was a crude attempt at a subliminal message. He retired later that same year.
Stop using that l****x word. It is incredibly bigoted racist and genocidal.
MutantX
The need for scientific evidence to support DIE initiatives is rooted in white supremacy. I think that's how it works.
It's not hard to imagine that if you tell someone that they are racist merely because of belonging to a group, not for any specifically, traditionally racist thing they have done, they will start to resent the person telling them so.
They might also start making category judgements, because that's what your training is telling them --- that all people in the group are guilty, because of group identity, not because of any particular thing they've done.
The truth is, there is something to be said for being aware of groups we are a part of have benefitted from injustice in the past. But beyond a general awareness, anything specific done to correct it is swinging the pendulum too far.
As university undergrad population seems to be 60% women, 40% men, the MRS degree is going to be harder to achieve. It's actually going to be worse than that as expanded T9 convinces guys to date off campus.
Be interesting to see what consultants come up with to address that.
The burden of proof for the imposition of mandatory racial ideological counseling (MRIC) should be on those seeking to impose it on employees who, out of concerns for job security, lack the power to resist. If there is evidence of efficacy, let's see it.
The message of MRIC is that, since we in positions of power are so insecure and afraid of being accused of racism that we will impose pointless wasteful trainings, you had better understand that we are ready to act in other pointless and wasteful ways, no matter that they will inflict harms upon innocent bystanders. The primary directive is that we must keep power. After us, the deluge.
The idea that 13% of the population can bully 50% + of the population with out significant pushback was never a good idea.
The Division, Exclusion, and Indoctrination movement will rue the day they decided there was a specific white identity. They will have done what people like David Duke could not.
I remember when they started all this bullshit. It was immediately after the Clarence Thomas hearings and the 'sin' of the moment was all this non-stop 'sexual harassment' going on in the workplace.
As I sat there amongst other men in the room, the female speaker was so bad and so sexist against men, it almost seemed to be a parody. She's listing all these bad words and thoughts men were supposedly doing to women ... while doing the exact, same thing to every man in that room.
I said fuck these people 30 years ago and I'm still saying it ... semi-retired working from home. They can all go to hell.
Balfegor: bias longtime mandatory CLE component. And maybe you learned implicit bias as part of it. As it's own requirement, implicit bias new. If you are active CA bar member, look it up!
Regression to the mean rules all.
Original sin without redemption. Farrrrrrrrrrrrrrr OUT!
I fondly remember a mandatory diversity training at GE in the early 00s.
The instructor noted that something like 1 in 10 people are gay. I got yelled at for visibly counting off people to 10 and pointing at number 10.
My (late lamented) friend Jeanni, a pretty little Chinese-Amermican woman with a Brooklyn accent, started talking in a sing-song voice. Very cute, but got her the hairy eyeball.
Instructor complained to everyone's boss after class. No biggie, since that was me.
"I worked on several major financings for public sector projects. There was always a white shoe law firm doing the heavy lifting and a black firm making coffee and copies and lending out their fabulous conference rooms."
Yeah, that is the way those things work. At my white shoe law firm, the minority lawyers were great, and I was proud to be associated with them. At the political "diversity" law firms that were along for the ride, not so much.
I had to take the state's mandatory discrimination/harassment training right before the end of the year and I really had to work hard not to laugh at every one of the scenario segments since they were all absurd.
[use your Troy McClure voice here] They included selections such as 'c-level executive gets handsy with a pretty underling when working late'; 'chick on a construction site who takes issue with the ribald comments from her co-workers and how she reports them for making her "uncomfortable"', and finally, the 'gay man enduring "embarrassing comments"' from his straight co-workers.
Aside from the chick whose boss makes a pass at her (what is this, 1975?) the others just would not happen. A chick on a construction site would either be ignored or learn to roll with it and tolerated by the guys. And as for the gay man enduring comments, it would likely be the other way around, with the lone straight guy being maneuvered into manufactured conflicts so that he would eventually get written up by HR and tossed. We all know on whose side the pink-haired wackos in HR are.
As university undergrad population seems to be 60% women, 40% men, the MRS degree is going to be harder to achieve. It's actually going to be worse than that as expanded T9 convinces guys to date off campus.
Be interesting to see what consultants come up with to address that.
It is amusing to give it the order of Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, a more logical order and also DIE. I've seen some say the DEI was chosen as that is "god" in Latin, but I doubt that.
Recently, I saw a more appropriate order, in a work of fiction amusingly, IED. And that is on the mark, this "training" is more likely to have scattered many who are now, quietly improvising ways to leave the company in the lurch. Or simply not go the extra 10 minutes needed to avoid expensive recovery. The best revenge, especially for the much hated white man who has no future in the corporation, is to take on the crappy little jobs that oil the works. Do them diligently till no one even knows how critical they are, then when you leave, leave. Whether fired, you change jobs, or retire, just leave, without word or description of where the oil ports are. It won't take that long for the gears to start grinding and the bearings to get spun. What you could you do? Certainly not mansplain.
The left like to manufacture fake White Supremacy - To ensure the white left can reign supreme over everyone.
Is 'white supremacy' a woke way to mispronounce 'hard work ethic?'"
No.
"Dominant group" LOL
The purpose of diversity (etc) training is to enrich those who are doing the training. It is successful at this. Commenters who claim that it is unsuccessful at achieving other goals are simply missing the whole point.
Our hostess asks, "How to fix it?"
I think too many of the fix-it answers above concentrate on cultural changes that would make a difference for underprivileged (that is, poor) blacks. Changes like more marriage, more interest in education, more work.
Lots of blacks favor these changes. Why aren't they happening as fast as everyone would like?
Welfare in America today creates a powerful disincentive to work and to marriage. A mother and children can get along quite well on the free food, free money, free housing. But it is not a life in which she and her children can easily be connected with the work of the married, the educated, and the working. Her children, especially, see nothing before them but a rather empty existence of doing little and simply being "entertained." Gang life or early pregnancy seem the routes to "achievement" that are readily available to them.
The war on poverty has slowed down and in part derailed the economic growth of black Americans, and the extension of a similar attitude in the form of affirmative action and now DEI continues to send the message, "You can't do it on your own."
Diversity Training and cripto currency... where's the beef?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gQYCJIDHGnQ&t=1689s
Mikayla Peterson interviewing her dad about being forced to be re-educated in order to keep his psychology license.
DEI.
"Hundreds of hours of labor doing what, for Pete's sake?
Billing massive amounts of money for 'finding' a problem that doesn't exist.
"About two minutes of grasping the glaringly apparent would ditch DIE's murderous collectivism and, instead, treat people as individuals."
You can't bill when nothing's wrong.
It does make it worse. I suffered through that bullshit until I retired in April. I knew how to give them the answers they wanted & resented the Hell out of its implication.
I kept wondering who were the idiots selling this shit & who was the idiot buying it. Our HR VP, for a $4b public company, was a gorgeous blonde who started putting her pronouns in her email address two years ago. I'm sure she/her had a hand in it.
So glad to be done with that shit.
22 years ago, it wasn't like that. Our General Manager shamed two marketing guys who admitted they were going to vote for Gore by telling them that was good to know because since Gore promised to raise taxes, they obviously didn't need more money & he would remember that in their annual review.
"Every fix might backfire, so why try to fix anything?" Isn't that, like, a judgment call? I get diversity emails from my large hospital employer on a daily or weekly basis. They more-or-less equal all the rest of the emails from my employer put together.
My hospital used to be regularly rated as best or second-best hospital in the country, every year. It's been steadily drifting downward. My very liberal boss told me, "The real best hospital, Mayo Clinic, has a simple mission statement: 'The needs of the patient come first.' No one knows what the primary value of our hospital is any more."
My daughter also worked for my hospital, for a while. She was chosen to be the IT head for a task force to rewrite the Diversity web page. I told her, "Find an excuse to avoid it; these people are scary and dangerous, and have direct access to the heads of the hospital. You do not want them to pay attention to you." She went to one meeting, came back, made an excuse to get out of it. And told me, "These people are really scary and dangerous, and insane."
Maybe the real darker possibility is that these programs are well understood to increase racial and inter-ethnic tensions, and that this is in fact the the deliberate intent of these programs. Haven't Democrats repeatedly shown that they believe that racial and ethnic strife works to their advantage?
What's with the plural, "trainings"?
I read it as singular and fixed the verb and my revisions were fine.
(Spellcheck agrees with me ... there is no such word as "trainings".)
Lawyers love dumb, rich clients.
Paying lawyer-rates for high school labor.
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