How about if I re-word it as: Women, in general, aren’t as strong as men?
Exercises like this typify why I loathe diversity “training.” These “classes” bring nothing new to the table. They simply restate, ad nauseum, that “racism/sexism/ageism/ism/schmism is bayud, mmkay?”
IMO, two hour, half a day, or even day-long diversity classes are unlikely to change someone’s life-long beliefs.
Ever considered the possibility that many of the people being forced to “teach the Bible” are doing it under duress, and because they don’t actually believe what they’re teaching are unconsciously sabotoging their own teaching?
I’m tempted to simply use KellyM as a demonstration of the point that “some prejudices are so deep that some people get hysterical and blow diversity out of proportion”.
Most people who “teach diversity” love it, and do it for less money then then could get being corporate enablers. Most people who take diversity training volunteer the extra time and love it; I’ve seen the comment sheets from after the events. The single most common comment offered after a diversity seminar: “Please have more of these”.
Where all the hate comes in is a subject for a different discussion, not this one. It seems “diversity” is becoming a fnord, a buzzword that boils the blood pressure of extreme right wingers even if they have no idea what’s actually going on.
I would have to disagree Pixiegrrl . This message board is quite structured in forum and topic. The enitre point of GD is an excercise in exchanging opinions and ideas. The users here do in fact break into groups on one of several points of view in a given debate. Often those of moderate temperment will find middle ground and that is good. Also, those of extreme temperment will resort to name calling and the like. There are good and bad points to discussing our differences. There is also much to be said in favor of disregarding differences in favor of a greater good, peace. So go ahead with the diversity for those that feel the need to participate but I don’t think we should promote a climate of everyone recognizing everyone elses differences.
Do you like fishing Esprix? I do like fishing. For the sake of this post, lets say you also like fishing. Cool. Lets go down to Cabo and catch a few billfish together. (catch and release of course) Say you like beer too? cool. Lets get our bellies full of Dos Equis and talk person to person about our beliefs. I can almost guarantee I will walk away feeling as if I have found a great friend regardless of our differences. OTOH, if you wish to divide into “groups” and pit agendas, we will probably never get to go fishing. Differences can be overcome on a personal level. The group level is quite different.
Careful with those generalities. I was a trainer, and most of us hated delivering diversity training: no substance, just fluff, and with the elevated liklihood of disagreements, arguments, and generating ill will. Furthermore, since we ourselves were also scored by the participants, we came to resign outselves to the fact that there would always be one or two responses that skewered us…because the participants hated being there.
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I was paid the same whether I presented “Diversity” or international geography.
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Heh. I’d like to see someone volunteer to take diversity ‘training’ on their own time. Fat chance.
I’ve also seen the comment sheets. There are the typical “I loved it; do more” responses, but these classes also generated the highest percentage of “the biggest waste of time I’ve ever been forced to endure” comments.
Nope. I don’t think the workplace is an appropriate setting for kumbaya indoctrination.
Rysdad, you seem to be pointing out that most corporate-staged “classes” are a waste of time. I would generally not disagree with that. Take a bunch of professionals out of their work day, tell them that they are bigoted/insensitive/stupid/gauche/whatever, and that someone (either a “wonderful” motivational speaker or some drafted co-worker) is going to sit them in a room for two hours a week for three to six weeks so that they can be “improved,” and you have a recipe for disaster.
Of course, there is nothing new in that. Before the current round of diversity training, there was sensitivity training for sexual issues. Prior to that was sensitivity for racial issues (sort of a pre-diversity training for the time before we realized there were enough Asians in the country to work up some good hatred over).
Intermixed with these were the writing proficiency workshops that were so “popular” at about the time I got into an office job in the early 80s. Before that, companies pushed Dale Carnegie courses to improve their employees’ abilities to speak to an audience and other “communications effectiveness” courses.
Very recently, the other popular corporate course offerings have been focused on “wellness.”
Companies love to think that they are actually improving morale by taking short-sighted half-measures to give people warm fuzzy feelings. (And you don’t even want to know what some companies did with “warm fuzzies.”)
However, the persistent, ongoing failures of this sort of corporate educational largesse has little to do with whether or not the current crop of diversity training actually divides people.
I’m still looking for evidence that diversity programs (whether they are ineffective corporate classes or some other organized attempt to get people to recognize the value of a diverse population) actually causes divisiveness.
I can see some efforts causing some/many people to roll their eyes, shake their heads, and mutter “This is silly.” However, I have yet to see anyone go out and break another person’s head because they were shown that there can be much to learn from other people who are different.
That’s so sentimental, I think I’m going to cry. Do you offer this to everyone you deal with that is different from you? Taken the time to do this yet with anyone at all? How about just with one representative of each kind of person different from you - a woman? A black person? A Jewish person? Gay? Bisexual? Transgendered? Native American? Chinese? Shall I go on?
Oh, I’m sure you think that’s just silly - you don’t interact with every one of these people on a day to day basis. But what happens when you do? Is this this your own personal diversity training? Wow, if only everyone were as magnamimous as you, wouldn’t the world be a nice place? Pity you seem to be one of the very few, then, who bother to learn something about people who are different from them, as most people are quite comfortable with what they already know. Ignorance breeds many nasty, nasty things in this world, and I’d think that exposure to different things and people, even if it’s only a token program of some sort, can only improve relations between people. I was raised to think Catholics worshipped statues, gay people chose to live an evil lifestyle, and all them niggers were worthless. Did my attitudes change because of a program? No. But exposure to people who were different than me - through personal contact, college, spending time in the city, being a minority myself, and, yes, some really good diversity programs out there - helped me be a little more open-minded to the world around me.
Are there bad diversity programs? Of course. There are also bad teachers/trainers. But there are also a lot of really good ones, too. Mayhap it has just as much to do with the quality of the presentation as it does the mindset of the people to which it is being presented?
Ooo, there’s a thought…
Agendas? I’m sorry, I thought we were talking about appreciation of differences. Does even the mere bringing up of the fact that people are different constitute an agenda? (Hmmm, chalk another point up for the mindset of the people being presented to…) And why, pray tell, is “the group level” quite different?
Doesn’t that really depend on what those differences are? If we’re talking about superficial differences like clothes, skin color, native language then I can agree. If we’re talking about philosophical differences because of politics or religion I don’t see how, or even why, I shouldn’t acknowledge the differences without loading them with my values.
Not necessarily. I’m sure the KKK and the Nation of Islam are well aware of differences between ethnic groups. And yet they dont’ seem to have much empathy, compassion, or understanding for their fellow human beings.
But to answer the OP I don’t think diversity training divides people.
Esprix,
Man you are making some poor character judgements of me. Where do they come from? I happen to interact without predjudice towards just about everyone. I justed hosted my girlfriends birthday dinner of five guest. Two of them homosexual. One of them borderline skinhead. One of them recovering from a life long obesity issue and my girlfriend has a four year old child with CF. I just moved from a house in town last month. While living in town the people I interacted with most were my neighbors. My neighbors were black. George across the street lived in a $50.00 a month camper behind the tire co. with no water or electricity. He ate supper with my son and I whenever he didn’t have money and that was often. Then there was Manuel and Genuine, the young black couple that found my sisters dog. They were transient, poor and engaged in some bad things because of it. I became friends with them and helped Mann get a job so he could quit being a petty drug dealer and pimping out his girl to survive. How dare you Esprix !! You don’t even know me!!
I suspect that the KKK and the Nation of Islam are only aware that there are differences without actually being aware of what those differences are. Each of those groups concentrates only on their perceived differences without attempting to discover where the differences merge into similarities. With no understanding of the actual differences, they tend to magnify the imaginary ones into objects of scorn and hatred.
OK, let’s take a step back, shall we? Personalizing an argument doesn’t become you, dear. I was attacking your argument (which you put in the first person), not you, personally. We’re debating, not drawing blood, I promise.
As to the rest of your post, it’s commendable that you’re so open-minded. Perhaps you, the individual, might not need any further diversity training. Sadly, you are most assuredly in the miniscule minority of the population. Because you fancy yourself open-minded, you’re ready to be rid of all diversity programs as superfluous? I think not.
I think highlighting our differences–whatever those differences may be–is a way of strengthening unity rather than dismantling it. I know that sounds cheesy, but I truly believe it. I always cringe when people say “I see no color” or “I see everyone as the same”. To the eyes of a Martian maybe we are all the same. But in my eyes, we’re different. Similar, yet different. What’s so wrong in admitting this?
I think that if people don’t appreciate diversity in a positive way, minorities and “out” groups risk being ignored or offended by those dictating the “norms”. It’s not that diversity training teaches people to see differences that they wouldn’t have been able to see before. I think the goals of these programs is to instill respect and awareness in people so that they see difference as something that should be appreciated and understood rather than scorned and shunned.
I suppose if you’re in a small town made up of a pretty homogenous population, you don’t have to worry about diversity issues. But in most urban locales, it’s close to impossible not to interact with people from an array of cultural backgrounds and standpoints. The John Rockers of the world freak out when they’re in these kinds of situations. Maybe many diversity training exercises are lame and misguided, but I think they are well-intentioned ways of combating insensitivity and intolerance.
I’m a graduate student at the most diverse university in the country (US News Report, 2001). I don’t think we’re any less unified than any other school. If you ignore our poor attendance record at basketball games, that is.
There’s very little way around the fact that sterotypes must be used in order to teach sensitivity toward or appreciation of diverse groups.
It’s a bitter irony that so few people are able to judge others on the content of their character as opposed to the color of their skin, who they sleep with or whom they pray to.
I consider myself to be a fairly open minded, tolerant person. I’ll spend time with anyone of any race, religion, national origin or sexual orientation or whatever provided they’re a decent individual and not personally mean, nasty, spiteful or otherwise awful to be around. (A jerk of any color is a jerk).
That said, I would also hate being forced to go to ‘diversity training’ because I think that 1) My job is the place to do my job, 2) Two hours a week for six weeks is not going to change a lifetime mindset. It may well just strengthen resolve and make the person hate “them” more because he/she had to be there, 3) As long as I interact with my coworkers on a professional level and do so respectfully, my boss has no reason to care who I spend my off time with, 4) If someone personally poses a problem of attitude, that person will be dealt with individually and perhaps fired, 5) Touchy feely Kumbayah stuff is not my thing, I’d rather just go hunting or fishing with another person or very small group and shoot the breeze.
So I guess if my employer ever has ‘diversity training days’, I will have to resort to my college acquired skill of sleeping while never losing eye contact.
tom, what evidence would you need…sworn affadavits attesting to a precise percentage increase in a certain person’s intolerance levels? Can we not infer that, at a result of frequently time-wasting, often intrusive, and at-times confrontational ‘training seminars’ that some people have gained less of an insight, but rather a greater amount of agitation and resentment? Is that too much of a stretch to believe?
I guess, to me, it boils down to this: My employer has no right to impress his mores on me. I’ll draw my own conclusions and make my own decisions, thanks ever so much. I’ll treat people with respect and friendliness, and I’ll expect the same–ain’t that enough?
I’ll accept this if you limit “most people” to people who spend their entire working day teaching diversity. However, the majority of people who are expected to “teach diversity” are full-time educators who have “diversity” inserted into their laundry list of things to teach this week by feel-good school administrators.
Well, duh. Diversity workshop means not having to do any real work for two hours, two days, or even two weeks. It’s almost as good as getting vacation (yeah, you have to diddle along with the facilitator-person, but that’s not really working, and besides you’re not blowing vacation days for this). Great way to get a paid break in the workaday grind.
The only reason most employers have diversity training is to reduce their legal exposure to discrimination lawsuits. If they’ve developed a training regimen and put people through it, then the company can deny liability on the basis that “they took reasonable steps to prevent discrimination” and only the employee in question is responsible. Of course, many of the instructors who teach these courses are willfully ignorant of the fact that the only reason they are there is risk management and that nobody else in the room gives a damn about diversity.
We might infer that. My experience has been more along the line that such programs do not really shift anyone’s position from acceptance or openness to hostility. The negative reactions tend to be aimed at the program and not at the “diverse peoples” who were the subjects of the program. I’ve encountered perhaps two people who have declared that they never saw the other side before and no one who declared that the program was so irritating that they were going to give up being nice and start hurling racist epithets around.
I would be curious as to where Pixiegrrl has worked with these programs: settings, size, duration. I have little faith that such programs as usually conducted in business settings have much effect one way or another. So where else do they occur?
On the other hand, such programs in elementary schools could have a decent effect (if the unstructured diversity “preaching” in my kids’ schools is any indication). (I suspect that programs aimed at high school kids would meet the same cynical responses I see in the workplace.)
As to the larger picture of “diversity.” There have certainly been some notably inept efforts made in TV programming, political appointments, and such places, but how many people actually encounter “diversity programs” in their day-to-day lives? Most of the complaints I hear lodged against “diversity” come either from legitimate gripes against the typical business-setting seminar or are launched by people who are simply reacting against the word “diversity” without actually encountering it.
Have you ever been in one when Affirmative Action or Bakke has been brought up? Those can get pretty heated, and depending upon the gender and racial makeup of the attendees, I’d be willing to bet that some (many? most?) of them would leave those classes with a little bit of a bitter taste in their mouths.
The truth is, though, that most often when those subjects are broached, the facilitator tries to steer the discussion away–or just plain blockades it. I believe that’s because most diversity classes are, in reality, designed to be only nominally informational about various groups’ perceptions/expectations/whatever. Moreover, these classes are just a way of conveying company policy wrapped inside a PC marshmallow. It would be more honest if the company simply posted their corporate policies on the bulletin board and made it required reading.
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Amen. Sociology classes belong in school, not in the workplace.