The Backfiring Effect Of "Diversity Training"
I've long suspected that putting people who are not racist into "diversity training" may have negative effects, perhaps breeding resentment.
The same goes for constantly grinding on people about their "privilege" -- because of something they have no control over, such as being born white and/or male.
This is basically "original sin," social-justice-style.
Regarding a wiser, more helpful way of thinking, there was a moving post by @Popehat (attorney Ken White), "Ten Things I Want My Children To Learn From 9/11." This is an excerpt from one of the points:
4. It's Best To Define Yourself By Your Reaction To Events, Not By The Events Themselves.
Here I borrow a page from my pastor, who preached today on living from the inside out rather than from the outside in. A life lived from the outside in is a life defined by what has happened to me. A life lived from the inside out is a life defined by how I conducted myself in reaction to what happened to me...
To me, as I write in "Unf*ckology," who we are is what we do. This means what we do as individuals -- our individual actions. The stuff we choose and the people we choose to be.
It's a childish fairy tale that people are going to be equal. Some people will be born smarter or prettier or to richer families or be less likely to get stopped by the cops because of how they look (and especially their skin color), when they're doing not a thing wrong.
Focusing on that -- that last thing, for example -- for purposes of changing policing is good. Focusing on the rest and trying to give people social justice demerits for the color they were born -- that's ugly collectivism, and worse, it's racism.
Looking at the possible results of this, there's a paper, "Does 'Privilege Checking' Make Us Less Racist, or More? Generation and Political Orientation Matter," by Louisa C. Egan Brad, Tatiana J. Spisz, and Chloé G. Taneg:
The assumption that underlies the White privilege recognition component of diversity trainings is that White individuals' acknowledgement of racial privilege may beget a greater commitment to inclusive and antiracist behavior.
And from their abstract, the findings -- suggesting that diversity training can, indeed, backfire in precisely the people the trainers are hoping to positively effect:
A national online sample responded to a racial privilege checklist (or a control checklist), then expressed attitudes about an Airbnb.com policy that enables hosts' racial discrimination against guests. The present evidence indicates that while a White privilege salience exercise may increase anti-racist attitudes in moderate and liberal Pre-Millennials, it is associated with a backlash effect in Millennial conservatives and moderates, who express more racist attitudes when White privilege is salient compared with a control condition.
paper via @jayvanbavel
"Diversity training" at my Federal contractor seeks to promote the fiction that everyone has the same abilities. What it does in practice is enforce Affirmative Action, because, no, that person isn't magically able.
Recall the Hoax, and note that SJWs can only blame the culture actually responsible for prosperity for not giving it to others.
Radwaste at September 12, 2018 1:58 AM
who we are is what we do
Sounds familiar. *digs into the fortune files* Ah, yes, here it is.
I forgot that Bill and Fred were involved, but I did remember Jean-Paul and Frank.
I've long suspected that putting people who are not racist into "diversity training" may have negative effects, perhaps breeding resentment.
So...you're saying calling people names creates a negative feedback loop? too bad the SJWs just see that as proof positive those called out were guilty of the named thing before it was revealed by the name calling.
I R A Darth Aggie at September 12, 2018 6:49 AM
Diversity training and affirmative action became a war on competency a long time ago.
What it means in practice is that for every professional engineer who is a white male managing 250 million dollars in construction projects, the feds have to hire some woman or minority who majored in gender studies to hand out little pink ribbons during sexual assault awareness week, for the same pay as the engineer.
So engineer salaries have doubled and tripled in the private sector, while remaining flat in the government, and of course, there are shortages of engineers.
While goverment pretends that both jobs are essential.
Isab at September 12, 2018 6:50 AM
It doesn't help that most diversity instructors don't know what they're talking about, or are pushing a political narrative.
I took one class (mandated) in which the instructor told us that using sports terminology (she used "the whole nine yards" as an example) excluded women from the discussion.
She broke out every disproven shibboleth of the feminist Left, including the "75¢ for every $1.00" canard and the 1-in-5 sexual harassment on college campuses.
The entire class was about not excluding women by the use of terminology or behavior. By the end of it, I found myself wondering if women were even capable of standing up for themselves in a competitive environment and, if not, why we employed them.
LINKS:
10 Words Every Girl Should Learn
Interaction Patterns and Themes of Male, Female, and Mixed Groups
Conan the Grammarian at September 12, 2018 7:54 AM
A diversity meeting could center around how wonderful I am and I would still resent the crap out of the meeting because I always resent the waste of my bleepety-bleep-bleepin time when I'm trying to just get my work done. Being fed nonsense about how wonderful I am NOT is just that much worse.
RigelDog at September 12, 2018 7:58 AM
My black neighbor later told me (after we had been close friends for years) that my wife and I were the only ones in the neighborhood who were nice to them (I didn't tell him that no one was nice to me either--just a keep-to-yourself kind of place). So I showed by actions and he was a cool guy without a chip on his shoulder.
Everyone has some sort of handicap. A beautiful smart person in high school may fail to learn how to study or become vain and lazy and have a hard time in life (there is actually some research showing this). What matters is what you do with what you have. If Danny DeVito can headline movies and TV shows, then anything is possible.
Of course diversity training breeds resentment. You are being blamed for something you may not be guilty of (ever have your wife accuse you of something that she in fact did, like make a mess? irritating) and for which absolution is never possible. You cannot open your wallet and bring out your "not a racist" card and get out of the class.
As for the feminine aspect of diversity: the whole nine yards is from the military --a machine gun ammo belt was 9 yards and giving them the whole nine yards meant giving it all. There are lots of expressions from domains of life relevant to business like sports, the military, hunting, even video games. There is nothing stopping women from learning this terminology. As for men talking over women, I have been in a technical environment (not university) for decades and have never seen it. What I have seen is that women rarely offer an opinion even when no one contradicts them and everyone listens politely. And I have seen big differences in productivity between men and women that could easily lead to resentment.
cc at September 12, 2018 8:18 AM
That's already been dismissed as the origin of the phrase.
"The Oxford English Dictionary finds the earliest published non-idiomatic use in an 1855 Indiana newspaper article. The earliest known idiomatic use of the phrase is from 1907 in Southern Indiana."
"Perhaps the most commonly offered explanation is that World War II (1939–1945) aircraft machine gun belts were nine yards long. There are many versions of this explanation with variations regarding type of plane, nationality of gunner and geographic area. An alternative weapon is the ammunition belt for the British Vickers machine gun, invented and adopted by the British Army before World War I (1914–1918). The standard belt for this gun held 250 rounds of ammunition and was approximately twenty feet (under seven yards) in length. However, the Vickers gun as fitted to aircraft during the First World War usually had ammunition containers capable of accommodating linked belts of 350-400 rounds, the average length of such a belt being about nine yards, and it was thought that this may be the origin of the phrase. This theory is no longer considered viable, since the phrase predates World War I."
Conan the Grammarian at September 12, 2018 8:39 AM
Conan, just speculating here, but the term could also come from sewing. Dont know how long a standard bolt of cloth might have been in the 19th century, but nine yards sounds about right.
Isab at September 12, 2018 9:27 AM
As boring as a debate about a phrase which is well researched and has no conclusive origin is, it is still better than diversity or sexual harassment or whatever training.
The other side is none of this ever leads to happiness. SJW comes from Marxism. Marx called religion the opiate of the masses, a term that probably can't be used for Marxism. Quite frankly Karl Marx didn't want people to be happy. He wanted revolution and change and happy people don't revolt. Hence people who follow his philosophies are almost never happy. Doesn't matter how wealthy or powerful they become, still angry and miserable.
Marx kinda deserves to be called the father of modern misery.
Ben at September 12, 2018 9:54 AM
My east-coast-based energy company is pushing the diversity narrative HARD. A couple of months ago I got pulled away from my actual work for a hour to listen to a lecture about how to be an “ally” and learn newspeak gender vocabulary.
I find it particularly offensive that there seems to be an assumption that we don’t know how to treat people. None of the men in my company are calling me “Honey” or touching me inappropriately, and I’ve never heard anyone use a prejorative to refer to any type of ethnic or gender minority. (And yet, my boss has to attend some kind of workshop next month that actually has “White Male Privilege” in the title. Attendance is mandatory.)
There is an incredible amount of pressure to affix a rainbow badge to our email signatures right now to identify ourselves as “allies.” I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, other than signaling. I recall from my reading that everone was expected to wear the tricolor during the French Revolution. While I don’t currently fear the guillotine, I still don’t like where this is going.
To top this off, we had an “inclusion” survey recently, and the results in our (very large and fairly diverse) group aren’t what the top brass hoped. The diversity pushers have interpreted this to mean that there’s not enough outreach to minorities, women, and LGBTQs. It has not even occurred to them that conservatives, Christians, Jews, Republicans, normal white people, or red-staters might be the people might be the ones who are being “excluded” or feeling discrimination.
ahw at September 12, 2018 10:12 AM
To top this off, we had an “inclusion” survey recently, and the results in our (very large and fairly diverse) group aren’t what the top brass hoped. The diversity pushers have interpreted this to mean that there’s not enough outreach to minorities, women, and LGBTQs. It has not even occurred to them that conservatives, Christians, Jews, Republicans, normal white people, or red-staters might be the people might be the ones who are being “excluded” or feeling discrimination.
ahw at September 12, 2018 10:12 AM
Surveys....something else to keep the diversity strom troopers busy when they arent actually haranguing you.
Isab at September 12, 2018 10:19 AM
If not the father, then the father-in-law; certainly its ideological sire.
Marxism is based on Marx's theories of resentment and conflict between socio-economic classes.
- Marx theorized that, once a society organically reached peak capitalism (not Marx's term), labor would develop a political consciousness, rise up, and seize the means of production from capital (management).
- Lenin believed it was not necessary to await peak capitalism and that a socialist/communist socio-economic model could be imposed without waiting for peak capitalism; that the state could provide the working class with the political consciousness.
- Mao took Lenin one further and taught that peasants could provide the bulwark of revolutionary energy, led by the working class.
- Mussolini believed peak capitalism could be engineered and that a socialistic framework could then be imposed on society by the state.
- Georges Sorel taught that violence was a necessary and acceptable, even laudable, means to force society to change.
- Gramsci taught that culture was a hegemonic trap imposed on the working class by the bourgeoisie to maintain order.
__________________________________________________It's going nowhere good. However, since we're not allowed to view the French Revolution as the imposition of a totalitarian government on France, your analogy to the forced wearing of the tricolor won't serve as a warning.
Now, where's that rainbow badge, Citizen?
Conan the Grammarian at September 12, 2018 10:31 AM
The research cited appears to the be the typical bigoted, self-reinforcing tripe that is giving academia a bad name:
"In contrast, conservative ideology is characterized by resistance to change and acceptance of inequality (e.g., Jost etal. 2003). Conservatives tend to score high on measures of right-wing authoritarianism (Altemeyer 1981, 1998) and social dominance orientation (Pratto etal. 1994)."
Preposterous. Stalin's view of the Kulaks was as objective and reasonable is this swill. I think Phrenology or astrology would yield a more accurate characterization of conservative views.
River Raisin at September 12, 2018 2:23 PM
Conservatives are typically more accepting of inequality - inequality of outcomes, on an effort and skill basis rather than race or gender. If I work harder and study more, I get better grades. If I go to medical school and you go to art school, I will generally be rewarded for the more difficult field of study and the delayed gratification behind pursuing it. Acceptance of this kind of inequality is not racist, sexist, xenophobic, or homophobic, but it can be made to sound that way.
Conan the Grammarian at September 12, 2018 2:43 PM
The goal of diversity training is to *reinforce* suspicions between different people. As long as those exist, diversity trainers will never be out of work.
dee nile at September 12, 2018 2:57 PM
Actually, Conan, “the whole 9 yards” comes from the US Army Air Corps, in WW II.
The ammo belt for the .50 cal. machine gun wa 27 feet (9 yards). The P-47, Thunderbolt had 8 .50 cal. MGs, and had hard points for carrying bombs and rockets. While only a mediocre fighter, it was rugged and could take a lot of punishment, making it an outstanding close air support and ground attack aircraft. The attacking a train or German column of the road, the whole 9 yards meant a straffing run in which P-47s lined up and shot all their ammo from front to back along a target.
Wfjag at September 12, 2018 11:07 PM
Actually, Wfjag, the expression pre-dates World War I. To quote my earlier post, "the earliest published non-idiomatic use in an 1855 Indiana newspaper article. The earliest known idiomatic use of the phrase is from 1907 in Southern Indiana."
The rumors of its origins being in fighter (or bomber) machine gun belt lengths, hangs tough, but that is not where it came from. And given the variety of armaments on WWII fighter planes (.303, .30, and .50 caliber machine guns; 20mm cannons), the length of an ammunition belt varied from plane-to-plane, not to mention from mission-to-mission.
Besides, the likelihood that a fighter pilot would shoot his entire ammunition supply at one plane, leaving himself with nothing, is low. Firing 300+ rounds without let-up would also risk melting his guns. Fighter pilots were taught to fire in bursts, both to protect the guns and to avoid wasting ammunition.
From the Phrase Finder Web site:
Conan the Grammarian at September 13, 2018 5:24 AM
That's why the Fairchild-Republic A-10 puprose-built CAS aircraft was officially nicknamed "Thunderbolt II." That and the fact that Republic still owned the nickname. The A-10's grunt nickname, however, is "Warthog."
Conan the Grammarian at September 13, 2018 5:32 AM
"Acceptance of this kind of inequality is not racist, sexist, xenophobic, or homophobic, but it can be made to sound that way."
Indeed.
River Raisin at September 13, 2018 2:45 PM
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