I will say, I think it's strange they are asking them to admit to being racist, and "be better". It's a systemic thing, so it requires systemic change. Asking them to say they are racist and that they need to be better seems unneededly divisive.
Edit: As others have pointed out, the last sentence is kind of wrong. The paraphrase should probably say, "I recognize I'm a part of a system or systems that uphold racism". Look at the ADL's definition for racism to see what I mean:
By their definition, you are racist if you help uphold any of the "systems, institutions, or factors that advantage white people and for people of color, cause widespread harm and disadvantages in access and opportunity."
Here's a definition from the ADL for systemic racism.
"A combination of systems, institutions and factors that advantage white people and for people of color, cause widespread harm and disadvantages in access and opportunity. One person or even one group of people did not create systemic racism, rather it: (1) is grounded in the history of our laws and institutions which were created on a foundation of white supremacy;* (2) exists in the institutions and policies that advantage white people and disadvantage people of color; and (3) takes places in interpersonal communication and behavior (e.g., slurs, bullying, offensive language) that maintains and supports systemic inequities and systemic racism." [1]
So if you support one of the "systems, institutions and factors", you are by this definition, racist. I just said most white people probably are, by this definition.
This definition doesn't even bother me on face. Obviously, systems can be designed to advantage one group and disadvantage another group. And, obviously, Jim Crow effects the distribution of family wealth to this day.
What bothers me about BigCorp diversity training is something a quite different. Choose a random public company. Its stocks are almost certainly disproportionately owned by white people. Many of the older companies even did business with apartheid states in the USA (and elsewhere) pre-1960. The ones that have been around for a century might've even done business with Nazis or were even run by anti-Semites (eg Ford). But even if not, just due to the fact that wealth is disproportionately owned by white people, so too are most stocks in large companies.
Racially skewed allocation of large company's stock due to a combination of historical discrimination lumping capital into white folk's pockets until ~60 years ago and the compounded nature of wealth is EXACTLY the sort of thing actual social theorists mean when they say "structural racism".
The problem with diversity training at BigCorps is not that they talk about structural racism per se. The problem is that they use the training as a way to distract from the actual structural inequalities in our financial system and instead put the onus of change on low-level employees who have almost no access to actual power and agency within the org (or larger society). I'm half convinced that this sort of diversity training is intentional miseducation.
When I listen to these training seminars, I can't help by hear them as the board/CEO saying "please don't pay attention to our mostly white and ivy-educated executive's stock-based compensation plan or our disproportionaltely white stockholder's dividends, which are actually excellent examples of structural racism in action; look over there instead".
Ironically Ibram X. Kendi uses this exact example in "How to Be an Antiracist."
Only fanatics seriously consider large scale forced redistribution for good reason - the damage to property rights causes the market to come tumbling down as it undermines trustworthiness. Would you work for someone who just decides one day "You know what? You worked for us for a decade - we're going to need all of your remaining salary back."?
Well, maybe they shouldn't be declaring themselves society's chosen vanguard against structural racism, then. After all, it wouldn't be forced redistribution if they volunteered to just mail every black person in the country $16,000 worth (to take an example from a film about reparations) in company stock.
That's kind of my whole point, right?
It wouldn't be "systemic" or "structural" if a single CEO or a few CEOs could unilaterally fix the problem, because one man isn't a "system" or "structure". The thing that makes systemic/structural racism systemic/structural is that you'd have to radically change of the normal order of things to address the underlying problem. It's not personal, and it therefore can't be fixed by a few personal actions. It has to be fixed at the systems level.
BigCorps can't change anything about systemic racism because they are the system.
> Focusing on things they can reasonably change is a legitimate approach.
"Mandatory HR training made me rethink my views on systemic racism" -- no one ever.
In fact, I'm 100% convinced that these diversity trainings are actively counter-productive to actually changing any minds.
If you take structural racism seriously, then the idea of BigCorp "doing something" about structural racism via HR lectures to low level employees is prime facie absurd. Cindy in accounting can't do shit about structural/systemic racism... that's kind of the whole point of distinguishing it from more personal forms of discrimination/prejudice.
Training on systemic racism might make sense for powerful people with the ability to effect the functioning of systems over years/decades. Politicians, boards, CEOs, execs, VCs, maybe some managers, etc. And it's the sort of thing that activists should try to explain in public forums.
But at the individual contributor level, a much simpler regimen of "what is explicit discrimination" + "we will fire you for overt explicit discrimination because it is illegal and not aligned with our corporate values" + "dear god don't do stupid shit like wearing blackface to the company party" + maybe a short module on implicit bias is much more effective. Because that's the sort of material is actionable at the IC level, and it's the sort of thing people are open to being told by HR drones.
Half day trainings on systemic racism for Cindy in Accounting or Bob the Admin Assistant makes no god damn sense, and probably does more harm than good.
Like, seriously, HR is not the right place for this conversation. You'll lose more people than you gain by shoe-horning such a complex topic into a BigCorp training module. Stick to shop ethics.
> White and Hispanic children have fairly similar rates of intergenerational mobility.... Because of these modest intergenerational gaps, the income gap between Hispanic and white Americans is shrinking across generations.... Asians appear likely to converge to income levels comparable to white Americans in the long run.
> In contrast to Hispanics and Asians, there are large intergenerational gaps between black and American Indian children relative to white children.... If mobility rates do not change, our estimates imply a steady-state gap in family income ranks between whites and American Indians of 18 percentiles, and a white-black gap of 19 percentiles. These values are very similar to the empirically observed gaps for children in our sample, suggesting that blacks and American Indians are currently close to the steady-state income distributions that would prevail if differences in mobility rates remained constant across generations.
In terms of rhetoric, moreover, it's deliberately inflammatory. Critical theorist academics appropriated existing terms with weight connotations, like "racist" and "white supremacy," to mean more abstract, systemic things that don't necessarily imply prejudicial intent.
People should be wary of adopting this rhetoric even if well-intentioned. Just because some academics thought this rhetoric was clever doesn't mean that people of color generally want race-relations to be defined by such inflammatory rhetoric. As a purely practical matter, there is a ceiling on the fraction of white people who will actually respond in a productive way to being called a "racist" and a "white supremacist" (even if you explain to them the academic twist on the words). There is a reason we do things the way we do them. There is a reason civil rights movements have been built on appeals to universal values and the goal of color-blind equality as the ultimate ideal.
"A belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race"
By broadly redefining racism in a way that removes individual agency you can declare anyone you want as racist. Then you can conveniently and selectively conflate it with the common definition to produce individual responsibility. It's a huckster tactic it's how you get things like
"I will say, I think it's strange they are asking them to admit to being racist, and "be better". It's a systemic thing, so it requires systemic change. Asking them to say they are racist and that they need to be better seems unneededly divisive."
By ensuring that the target they want is inherently racist and also individually responsible but with no possible power to change this, you can ensure an endless need for racism seminars and donations to assuage inherited guilt.
But then everyone is racist. Including black people. Everyone is part of this society that has systemic features tht benefit whites.
So if everyone is racist, what’s the point of labeling?
For example I wasn’t even “white” until I moved to USA a few years ago. Took me 6+ years to even grok how “white” works and what it means but I’m told I was racist all along.
And yeah sure I want the system to change, but honestly I have enough work with being an immigrant without inherent rights. Hell I’m technically a visitor so I don’t even have immigration rights yet. This is not my fight to fight ... but folks say that makes me racist and privileged and how dare I.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If I do yes to BLM does that mean I’m not racist? What if I speak in support of BLM? Is that a blanket dispensation against being racist?
This stuff barely flies with hyper-progressive elites, and many of them are deeply uncomfortable with it. This is possibly the dumbest thing ever pushed by those who think they are doing good.
Sure, but this only reinforces u/rayiner's point. Nobody amended or replaced the Civil Rights Act. No vote was held to enshrine a broader definition of racism as legally and ethically binding on all citizens. Instead, a small clique of well-connected professional-class people are imposing this stuff top-down through their control of ostensibly private (but in fact, pseudo-private, often dependent on donations, subsidies, tax breaks, or public funding) institutions.
To my mind, the solution is simple: bring major public institutions back under full public governance and control. No more "we're on private property" rubbish from people taking tax dollars.
And, preferably, a fresh labor law enshrining protection for political opinions in the workplace that do not violate extent civil-rights laws.
The point here is precisely to equivocate between two terms to manipulate others. You get your target to accept one claim using a relatively acceptable defintion, and the force them to concede rather more extreme claims by implicitly switching to a more self-serving definition.
In terms of specific actions that can mean a lot of different things! The diversity session can probably suggest a few concrete steps towards this end (I am not a DEI professional etc)
> 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
Because that word lacks any form of punch. Being "privileged" does not imply any personal responsibility; it's essentially saying you got lucky.
My understanding is that this tactic of taking very strong words like "racist" or "nazi" and superextending their definitions is just an attempt to harness the strong emotional response people have to these words and direct it at a very large group of people.
The unfortunate side effect is, that it slowly weakens the terminology, to the point where some day being a "racist" might just not be a big deal anymore.
The more direct danger of this strategy is that, in the short term, while most of the population still associates a term with a different definition, it allows quickly invoking very strong emotions with an accusation that is not technically wrong by the newer definition.
This becomes even more obvious when you look at how people often dance around these definitions to deliberately keep the newer definition as esoteric as possible, so the word retains its connotations for as long as possible.
They use that too, interchangegly and confusingly...
That's a complete crock. East Asians top the charts in income by ethnicity, college admissions, and have the lowest rates of criminality. For a supposed system created to benefit white people it sure is doing an awful job of it.
