The Double Bind of Anti-Racism and Diversity Equity Inclusion Training — Part 1
The expanding influence of Anti-Racism and DEI narratives in our society raises some important questions for employers beyond the…
— Introduction
The expanding influence of Anti-Racism and DEI narratives in our society raises some important questions for employers beyond the seemingly altruistic-sounding Anti-Bias, Anti-Racism Messaging that we are seeing in our businesses and workplaces today.
Proliferating reports from whistleblowers tell us that there are cases where these trainings are increasing tension, conflict and suspicion in work cultures and breaking down bonds of trust between colleagues instead of solving the problems they claim to have the solutions to. They create workplaces where people feel like they can’t speak freely and are constantly walking on eggshells.
If you are a business-owner, a professional, a manager, or an employee who knows what I’m talking about, but you can’t quite put your finger on it, this may be what is happening and the cost to businesses in workforce-turnover, lost productivity and eventually lawsuits will be extraordinary.
For example: Ralph Richard Banks, Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law, Stanford Law School points to between 500 and 600 documented cases of negative outcomes of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training that he has received reports on. These situations are so new that they have not had time to work themselves through the courts, but this process is beginning and where companies invite these ideologically-driven abuses into their workplaces, one can assume that class action lawsuits will follow.
These trainers are doing things like separating people in workplaces by race and forcing white people to sign confessions to being beneficiaries of historic oppressions, racism and white privilege. There are hundreds of documented incidents where trainers use unethical types of persuasion that can only be called toxic manipulations, including psychological double-binds, gaslighting, and trap questions. These are the same types of psychological tools used by cults to indoctrinate new members.
Some people believe that this is the truth of history and therefore this is justifiable, but there is no justification to establishing in-group/out-group social dynamics and pitting people against each other because they are one race or another. Read part two of this exploration where I detail the psychological tactics used by these toxic abusers in education, post-secondary schools and in the workplace.
You may have encountered this as something called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training (DEI) that’s being sold to you by Diversity or Anti-Bias consultants; you may have encountered it when it’s been presented as an external-consultant training in your workplace, or it may even have formed a permanent part of your organization’s human resource departments, with assigned representatives, given the role of Anti-Bias liaison.
Of course not all people who provide inclusivity training are going to have a negative impact on your workplace, but these days one has to be exceptionally careful when inviting trainers to deliver materials in your company.
Following the tragic and senseless death of George Floyd in the US, calls for racial sensitivity training and anti-racism training exploded all over the developed world, and I know several consultants and HR professionals who pivoted their offerings in response to the demands from employees and employers.
It’s a complicated and extremely sensitive topic and I thought who better to write about shifts in our workplace cultures and our beliefs about institutional racism than a white man?
I say this recognizing that some people will feel immediately uncomfortable with this and that’s a perfectly ok response. I also know that in the climate we are in, there are people who will immediately, and passionately tell me I have no place giving commentary on this issue. This is congruent with large legacy media organizations and large corporate brands who avoid anything that could be interpreted by activists and the cancel-culture cults as biased, racist, gendered, misogynistic, transphobic, or even white supremacist.
I share a link here to my personal disclaimer, which I don’t believe I should have to share because my words should speak for themselves. In a world possessed by ideological polarization, when facing a toxic ideology which labels anyone who doesn’t agree with ita bigot or a white supremacist, it is unfortunately necessary.
We are forced to chose: We either keep our heads down, say nothing, and avoid the conflict or to speak openly about legitimate questions and the false historical narratives being imposed upon us, and risk real consequences.
In the media this is called the Overton Window, within the frame of the Overton window, at any given time, are the topics and editorial positions that are acceptable for examination in public life. Today, the Overton window is closing on many topics and the experiences of many good, decent, and loving humans are being suppressed under threats of public shame and some variant of cancellation by self-appointed online or IRL (In Real Life) arbiters of morality.
It is now common for people with white skin to be attacked by anti-racists, told to shut up, sit down, step back, while being bullied into accepting race-based narratives that are gross oversimplifications of reality.
We live in censorious times and beyond the widespread intimidation and underlying implied threats of intimidation in the digital environment, these self-appointed moral authorities have bullied and shamed organizations and institutions into enforcing their “socially constructed” worldviews.
I read several weeks ago that the two least favorite topics on LinkedIn were politics and ideology. Yet over the last few years LinkedIn has seen a proliferation of cause-related and virtue-signal related to things like Truth and Reconciliation, Residential School graves and Race-Related solidarity statements against oppression. These political statements also include including your preferred pronouns in your LinkedIn bios which is becoming almost standard for people, many of whom do not really understand why they are doing it, except that it’s supposed to be supportive of historically oppressed transgender people. Political Statements like flying the rainbow flag from your profile pic during pride week in your community, even if you’re not part of the LGBTQ community yourself, are common and widespread.
It is of course less prevalent on LinkedIn than other corners of the internet like Facebook and Instagram, but it is nonetheless fashionable to make these statements about one’s sensitivity to the challenges of others as part of our normal digital communications. So as I move forward with regular commentary on this issue (as an individual — not as a representative of my workplace) I recognize this will be an unusual place for people to see this kind of editorial observation — but I believe strongly, after ten years of following this issue, that the trajectory of these unquestioned virtue-narratives is having, and will continue to have, unintended negative consequences on our employees, our work cultures and even our family lives. Many people are recognizing this already and if we cannot have open discussions about what’s happening it will be extraordinarily damaging and costly to our businesses and our communities.
There are a couple things you can do in response to this to support the exploration of this idea, which is what we do in open, liberal democracies. One is to engage in dialogue and dialectic with me. This is different from “discussion” which has the same linguistic roots as the word percussion — to strike. Discussion means to dash to pieces, to agitate, to smash or to shake apart. So, when some people talk about violence in language, a discussion is actually a way to act out opposing views with the intent on each side to win the argument by demolishing the other side. It has an embedded linguistic presumption of conflict. A dialogue, Dia Logos, however, is a way to reach a higher truth together in the spirit of seeing and understanding the positions around the ideas, and has explicit presuppositions of integrating and growing from the interaction. I would invite the spirit of Dia Logos to be present.
If you’d prefer, you can comment with a single question mark, or exclamation mark, or use the “Curious” button available to you in the post. Or maybe it looks like the cat ran across your keyboard. I say this because in certain workplaces and in certain businesses, people cannot speak publicly be or associate with someone who is going to say the things I’m going to say and these or other neutral engagements help with the algorithm to spread the ideas to others to expand engagement. Of course if you understand my message and feel comfortable, please comment, share and talk about the guy who is risking social and professional suicide to speak up about the toxicity emerging from people who make the benign-seeming claim… “we come to help.”
I hope we can get to the point where it will be uncontroversial for you to share posts like this with your peers, connections and colleagues.
Did I mention I am a cis-white male? So what really could go wrong here?
If you read my “Personal Disclaimer” you can learn more about my sign-off. It was a teaching I received from Indigenous Elder William Commanda when I was a young man. He was Band Chief, Anishinabeg, Kitigan-Zibi Elder — keeper of Wampum and Sacred Stories for the Algonquin people. He was from Maniwaki, Quebec and was one of many Red Nation elders and knowledge-keepers who I met and learned from on my personal medicine journey in my twenties.
As an initiated warrior, and as a humble recipient of sacred medicine from the time I walked the Red Road, I share these ideas with love and respect for people of the four nations, for my ancestors in spirit and for the seven generations to come.
I am You. You are Me.
All My Relations.