You seem to be making an argument along the lines of ‘there’s no sense in doing anything that won’t fix every problem forever.’ Which amounts to saying that nobody should ever bother to improve anything at all; because no technique will make everything perfect.
If the only difference it makes is that bigots stop pulling that crap in the workplace: that in itself is worth doing.
And while I think that people shouldn’t behave like bigots outside the workplace either, I’m not at all sure that I want workplaces deciding how anyone should behave on their own time. It’s their business how people behave at work. It’s not their business how those people behave elsewhere/when.
– plus which, some things are improper at work that are perfectly fine in most people’s private lives. Sending religious sympathy cards, for instance. Giving a private dinner at which there’s almost nothing to eat that doesn’t have pork in it. Saying a grace over that meal that dedicates everyone at the table to Jesus Christ. I could go on for quite a while. There’s nothing bigoted about doing such things among one’s own family and/or circle of friends all of whom happen to share similar religious beliefs/dietary habits.
I’m more responding to the OP. Corporate has all kinds of stuff that they make employees do that seems like it should matter but doesn’t. The only reason is the bottom line, so there’s no sense in trying to make sense of it. Just do the training, do whatever necessary to mark it done so your manager doesn’t bug you to complete it, and get on with your day. And especially when you’ve been in the corporate world for decades, it gets a little old having to see these things over and over.
Again: if it makes “employees realize that there will be consequences if they pull any of that crap in the workplace”: that’s something that does matter. Why do you think that it doesn’t?
I worked for a large corporation that lost a major civil rights law suit in the 1970s or 1980s and then mandated affirmative action (later renamed “diversity”) training on a regular basis. They had installations all over the country and as years passed, local management teams tried to out-compete each other on their diversity dedication in order to score points. We ended up with an AA/diversity training session every month plus a branch-wide “major event” quarterly. We also had to sign up for so many hours of individual AA/diversity training each year plus participate in an AA/diversity committee. Several entrepreneurs set up small companies near our facilities to provide us with speakers, courses, and activities and made a good living at it.
They fed us nearly every urban legend imaginable and required us to act as if it were in any way credible.
The one I hated the most was the one about the baby food company that tried to sell baby food to “African mothers” with pictures of babies on the jar. In “Africa” (Egypt? Congo? South Africa?–no difference) people are illiterate so they put pictures of the contents on the label of a jar. African mothers were horrified when they saw pictures of babies and assumed the jars contained crushed babies! (Really, wouldn’t that be the first thing that came to the mind of any mother anywhere in the world?) In reality (and unknown to the diversity trainers), this was a racist story designed to portray Africans as savage cannibals that became an urban legend.
And we had to change the name of the summer outing from the annual “picnic” to the summer “luncheon” because the word “picnic” derived from “pick a Nigg*r” which was a southern custom that involved selecting an African American to be lynched.
And did you know that the official definition of “racism” has been changed? Yes, it’s true. (You linguistic descriptivists will certainly understand this.) An official committee of college professors has issued a ruling that the word “racist” can only be used to describe white people. So, by definition, non-whites cannot be racist, end of discussion.
I could go on…
Yes, there was some valuable stuff too. Stuff you may not have thought of yourself that made you think twice about what you were doing. But, overall, the diversity training we had to put up with left a bad impression.
And why would it be wrong to make people realize that “pulling crap” (sic) qualifies as Not A Good Thing? Any training which does in fact prevent crap from being pulled has achieved its goals, at least partially. Just this morning, one of my coworkers started complaining about immigrants to me (hi, I’m a foreigner!), realized it and changed the phrasing; at some point, someone taught her that “whining about a group to a member of that group is not a good idea”. For people who apparently didn’t get that message from their parents, someone has to teach it.
I have. Numerous times. I have appreciated and learned from every one of them. And I want to. I wish I could take your place, as it would be fun for me.
I’m white, male, 62, straight, cisgender, American, and pretty much all the other privileged identities.
The point of getting everyone to one area isn’t to benefit the individuals congregated there bitching about the rain, at least not directly, it’s so firemen don’t risk their lives searching a burning building for someone who ‘Just went home’.
I imagine, however, that the “floor leader” does, and would helpfully tell the firemen that Manson is still in the building, and maybe someone should go get him from wherever he collapsed.
Big business and the government can be dumb, but they’re not always dumb.
For my building, every floor has three or so fire wardens, who are supposed to keep a roster of the staff in their various sections. When we gather at our assigned meet-up locations, the fire wardens take role to make sure everyone is accounted for. Those who are accounted for are assumed to be in the building. This number would presumably give the firemen some idea who might need to be rescued.
Drills may seem like a pain, but I can see their utility. When we got hit by the earthquake several years ago, no one knew what the fuck to do. There was pandemonium as people tried to figure out if we were supposed to leave the building (elevator? stairs?) or shelter in place (go to a central location? hide under a desk?) After a few minutes standing outside, we were then all given permission to go back inside like everything was normal. But that was not smart at all, given the high likelihood of after shocks and given the fact the building might have experienced some structural damage.
Now we have a formal protocol to handle another earthquake. We are to get under our desks during the actual event and then leave the building with our belongings as soon as it is over. We are only to return when the building has been inspected first and deemed safe.
Drills may we seem like a waste of time to you, but to others it provides peace of mind. And yes, it is a way for employers to CTA. If someone decides to ride the elevator down during a fire alarm and they get stuck, they can’t turn around and claim they didn’t know they weren’t to supposed to do that and then sue someone. The whole point of drills is to take away the “But I didn’t know!” defense.
The vast majority of people have common sense and wouldn’t say or do something racist/sexist. It’s for the outliers, like **monstro **said, the 1%, for whom the training is needed. The other 99% may be bored or annoyed, but there’s no other way.
If you think only 1% of people in the working world at large won’t say something racist or sexist, you’re either an extreme optimist or have gotten lucky. As a ordinary looking white guy, I’ve heard racist and sexist comments from a lot more than 1% of people out in the working world because they think they’re talking to someone who ‘gets it’. And even excluding the ‘bad in private’ comments, a lot of people will make hugely racist and sexist comments without even acknowledging that they’re doing so. And that 1% figure gets really bad if you go outside of office environments and into places like auto shops and construction sites. Ask a woman who’s tried to make a career in one of those environments if she thinks just 1% of people make sexist comments. Some of the people may not think they’re making racist or sexist comments if they say things like ‘X race are usually so lazy, Joe isn’t like that at all,’ ‘women shouldn’t take that job, they just need a temporary job until they find a husband’.
And if you expand into anti-LGBT comments, whoo-boy that number skyrockets.
Velocity, I said nothing about “outliers”. I think there are quite a few stupid-asses in the modern work place and even more well-intentioned people who nonetheless have blindspots. Like an old boss of mine, who used to make us go around the room during staff meetings and say when and why we’d be out of the office for the rest of the month. I can understand why he needed to know when we were taking sick leave for medical appointments. But why did rando coworkers need to know all that? My boss was a good guy, but I think he would have benefited from some kind of training in “How Not to Embarrass your Coworkers with Pointless Rigamarole.”
I don’t know what percentage of people have reined in their excesses after sitting through a diversity training. But I do know there’s some percentage of people who feel empowered to say something after sitting through one. And then there’s some percentage of managers who take these complaints more seriously after sitting through one.
In addition to the fact that there’s unfortunately far more than 1% of the population who will indeed say or do something racist and/or sexist knowing that it’s insulting: any such training if done at all properly should cover not only deliberate insults, but also accidental insults and misunderstandings. It is not at all “common sense” (if there is such a thing) to understand what is and what isn’t insulting in the thousands of cultures that exist in the world, or even the dozen or so most common cultures in a particular workplace. And a great many problems can be avoided if it’s possible to get people to understand that not everyone shares the same assumptions.
The point of getting everyone to one area isn’t to benefit the individuals congregated there bitching about the rain, at least not directly, it’s so firemen don’t risk their lives searching a burning building for someone who ‘Just went home’.