rockzilla

We're holding 'Diversity Training' seminars at work over the next few weeks. When I asked my boss what Diversity Training was, he told me that it was something along the lines of learning how to work alongside gays and minorities. Attendance at the seminars would be optional but 'strongly encouraged'. I signed up mainly for the four hours of pay, but I'm also curious about what they could possibly tell us at these seminars to make someone change their views. I'm trying to go into this thing with an open mind, but I can't help but feel that after 7 years in kitchens and working, and getting along with more immigrants than naturalized citizens that there isn't much that your can teach me about diversity. Has anyone ever been to something like this? Do you think that a four hour seminar can change someones perceptions of those that are different? Are these kind of seminars a good idea or a waste of time? Discuss.

Cynthetiq

We had this initiative over the past 7-8 years.

Most of it was very common sense, but lots of it, people just don't realize.

Examples:

Girl walks into elevator, you look up and down at her body. That could be construed as sexual harrassment. Rogue or Elevator Eyeballing I believe it was called.

It brings up awareness. Awareness is what people think is key to making diversity work.

Personally, I don't agree. Diversity works because people want to work together, not because they understand that there are differences of people. I think that it does bring some awareness, but all in all if a person is rude and condescending towards women, gays, minorities, then nothing will change after a 4 hour seminar.

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Lebell

You must realize that part of the reason that such seminars are held is to cover the company's ass in the event of a lawsuit.

If the company does not provide training, then someone can claim that the company did nothing to train employees or to discourage harassment and therefore should be held financially responsible.

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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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Furry

I had to go through much the same thing when I was receiving training on how to take campus tours here at University and it's also something that my parents are heavily involved in. My personal experience is that while the training itself is a good idea, such sessions can only scratch the surface of someone's (possibly) deep-seated resentment of other lifestyles. It's a good introduction and a reminder of how to keep things professional in any situation but quite frankly the best diversity training available takes place over the course of one's life - it's called experience. You cannot expect a few hours of training to change people's outlook but that can - and often does - start the process of adaptation, soley because the way in which most diversity training these days is delivered is designed to do just that. Short-term impact followed by long-term change.

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Furry is the leader of his own cult, the "Furballs of Doom". They sit about chanting "Doom, Doom, Doom".
(From a random shot in the dark by SirLance)

Furry

Lebell, of course, is also sadly right. I still can't believe that it's possible to sue someone for "looking at me".

(But then again that all depends on context. Meh.)

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Furry is the leader of his own cult, the "Furballs of Doom". They sit about chanting "Doom, Doom, Doom".
(From a random shot in the dark by SirLance)

maleficent

EggZackly...

Personally, I think the "how to" seminars on sexual harassment, I mean the seminars on how to point out the evils of sexual harassment are a waste of time, the people that need them... Don't see themselves in the examples given - -they think it applies to other people. Diversity traininng is going to be no different. Most racists and sexists types do not recognize it in themselves and quite honestly if they did, they wouldn't care.

What it does is, it gives the people in HR a chance to justify their existance and think they are doing something good.

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rockzilla

And I can't believe that I could get away with it by saying 'Nobody told me it was wrong'. *shrug*

Lots of interesting insights so far.

MSD

This is a little bit over the line. I can see where ogling or gawking would make someone uncomfortable, but no amount of training is going to break my natural instinct, honed by 2 million yeres of human evolution, to look at and enjoy seeing an attractive female.

StanT

Just corporate BS, at my employer.

The highlight of last years traing was a list of "terms of endearment" that might be considered derogatory. With all due respect to the TFP member of the same name, "Sweetpea" was the term de jour. Imagine 20 or 30 guys all running around calling each other "Sweetpea".

Meditrina

I do not think I can add much that has not already been said above. Companies do it to cover their ass and it will not change much. It is hoped that it would help keep people aware of what they are doing and perhaps help them work in a more professional manner. I work in an HR office (I just run their reports and computer stuff like that), and I had to go to a few of these kinds of seminars. During the seminars, people sat around the table and made jokes about the sexual harrassment information. You think people like that are going to change? I highly doubt it.

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MoJoPokeyBlue

A four hour seminar is better than nothing...at least it's a start. We live in a country (United States) where racism is very much alive and thriving. There are hundreds of private golf clubs that still don't allow Africian Americans or Jewish people as members. (When in office, Bill Clinton unknowingly played golf at one of these clubs and then later had to give a public apology.)

Everyone's right...people won't change overnight, but I think you'll find some issues at this seminar that will get you thinking.

MoJo

BigBen

We have SHARP where I work

Sexual
Harassment
And
Racism
Prevention

We watched a video about X's and O's, and how the letters couldn't get along... it was funny, but in a sad way. The instructor asked "Did anyone see anything on the video?" and I replied,
"Well, other than the X's being all different fonts, not much..." and I stole the thunder away from the 'facilitator'. Not a great idea.

If you are an asshole and are harassing people at work, you probably won't get much benefit from the video. If you are on the edge, it may help. If you are totally clueless, then it may be informative.

It took us 2 DAYS of training, and at the end I was scared to talk to anyone for fear of upsetting someone. I said Fuck It soon after, and prefaced most of my funny stories and jokes with the phrase "If this might be offensive to anyone, please stop me and explain." and I meant it. No problems

I had a superior (in rank only, I assure you) that took offense to my "colourful and profane language" in several instances. My reply?

"I make no appologies. Sometimes, I have to use the terms 'fuck' and 'cocksucker' to convey my emotional state. The people privy to those conversations have no problems with my language. I am sorry if you were offended." I then gave orders to my colleagues to be quiet when this person was within earshot. Soon after, I was again pulled into the office, except this time I was talking to a Major.

"Ben, what is going on here? The Warrant says you are engaging in harassment."

"I have no fucking idea what you are talking about, sir..." (the warrant was in the room, and it was the first time I had opened my mouth within their presence in about 2 weeks)
"You have to tell the troops to keep talking when the Warrant is in the room." The major was asking by the tone of his voice, not telling.
"I'm sorry sir, but I would not want to offend anyone with questionable language."
"Oh, Fuck that Shit. Noone has problems with language, as long as it isn't sexist or racist. You can call me an asshole, just don't call me a French asshole!"

The warrant was pissed off. I had got my point across. You don't like my language? How about noone talking to you at all, you hypersensitive fucknut?

Everything was resolved quickly, quietly, and at the lowest level possible.

__________________
3.141592654
Hey, if you are impressed with my memorizing pi to 10 digits, you should see the size of my penis.

Cynthetiq

I will recount a situation here at work that surprised the hell out of everyone here and it's still talked about to this day:

a young hip chinese college intern been with the company for 3 years with no problems, recently hired and on 90 days probation. He walks into a test datacenter and hears the loud radio playing some hiphop. He shouts to his friend, "Turn that mutha fuckin' nigga music down..." His friend took no offense to it and just turned the radio down.

Within 3 hours he was in front of HR and summarily dismissed because of a complaint from someone else in the room that over heard it.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

MoJoPokeyBlue

BigBen931,

rude comment snipped

MoJo

Squishor

I don't get it - why was it okay for him to say that? I would have a real problem with that kind of language. I wouldn't fire someone for it, but it would really bother me.

BigBen

I have a graduate degree.

The people I work with do not.

In certain situations, emotion needs to be conveyed to show your audience how strongly you feel about something.

"Okay guys, I need you to run over there very quickly and then look to the west. If you see something, please take the initiative on your own and either shoot it or report back to me."

Versus

"Get your fucking asses over there now! If you see a cocksucker, kill the filthy prick..."

I have tried both explanations, and I assure you, the profane command evokes something powerful, and the command is executed in the way I intended.

I never stated that anyone here was a Hypersensitive Fucknut... The person who did have a problem (in real life) was.

On another note: This is the second time in 2 days where my posts have been met with a non-standard-TFP-reply, i.e. I am stupid, and don't know what I am talking about. Have I displayed a different style of writing recently? Have others noticed a change in tone or emotion in my posts? What the fuck? I have VERY TOUGH SKIN. I have been called much, much worse by people who were in charge of me.

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3.141592654
Hey, if you are impressed with my memorizing pi to 10 digits, you should see the size of my penis.

lurkette

I don't really think diversity training is going to change the attitudes of a hard-core bigot - in fact, they'll probably just see it as more evidence of "thought police" threat to their views.

However, life is hard enough without having the workplace be even more unpleasant than usual. It can't hurt to clue otherwise clueless people in that some things they think of as harmless might be seen as offensive to other people. The "nigger" comment from cynthetiq's workplace is illustrative - the person he directed the comment to might not have been offended, but someone else sure was. Maybe he shouldn't have been fired on the spot, but was it necessary to use such an offensive term where other people could hear it? It just can't hurt to have the workplace be as civil and polite as possible, IMHO. And some people don't have the awareness to filter their actions based on how other people might perceive things.

__________________
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- Anatole France

Redlemon

Looking at the posting times, someone else reported it and Lurkette trimmed the offending message before you finished your post. Rock on, brother Ben, don't ever change.

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Squishor

My boss is a bit of a bigot. Unsurprisingly, he is pretty ignorant. We deal with photographs of various types of people in our office, and somewhere along the line he had one of a Sikh man wearing his turban and decided it was hilarious to make terrorist jokes about him. He's been doing it over the last few years, only he can't tell the difference between people of Middle-Eastern descent, the supposed target of his jokes, and Indians, South Asians, Armenians, Greeks, etc. He just sees a picture of someone with olive skin and straight black hair and starts going, "I'm going to blow this place to kingdom come!" To top it off, he uses an Indian accent when mimicking his supposed "terrorists" so the whole thing is just completely skewed. I've taken to yelling out, "Those are Indians!" They are Hindus, not Muslim!!" But to him, he just doesn't know or care what the difference is and doesn't even realize what a fool he looks like for being not only such a blatant bigot, but because his bigotry is entirely misplaced. Aaargh!! I don't think sensitivity training would help this guy - he needs to go back to school first.

To make matters worse, ironically enough, he is Jewish....

raeanna74

I rarely make racially based jokes. Once in a while hubby and I will share one but that's usually prompted by a Hmong in a nearby city (they're thick as flies there) who does something stupid. In general we keep our thoughts to ourselves and treat the people we meet as respectable members of society, despite their race, until they prove themselves otherwise.

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killeena

You know, that really seems to be rampant. I remember one time I was in a van with some friends and friends of friends. It wasn't that long after 9/11, so of course we were talking about that. This girl in there pipes up, "Yea, I don't want to be on a plane and see some Hindu motherfucker with a box cutter." I really wanted to say something, but I couldn't, it was just too ignorant for words. A lot of people really can't tell the difference between an Arab and an Indian. It is ridiculous.

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Ambient1

Ben,

Your stories always kick fucking ass... keep writing!

Signed,

Your Fans.

MoJoPokeyBlue

Sorry, I didn't mean to attack any one person. I'll try to keep things in the 3rd person, instead of directing comments at individuals.

IMHO, people who use words like "fuck" and "cocksucker" to convey their emotional state are simply immature. I don't mean this in a negative or sarcastic way (unlike my first post, for which I again, apologize), it's just my opinion of the way things are. (I tend to use the word "immature" to reference an age group, not to degrade.) Personally, I don't understand why someone would want to use these words in everyday conversation. To take things further and actually "brag" about and "be proud of" how someone uses these words, is truly perplexing. I'd honestly like to sit down and have a conversation with such an individual, to try to understand them better.

MoJo

Redlemon

I must say, if I tried to identify someone's nationality, I'd probably fail. The difference is, I don't care. It wouldn't change how I would interact with them.

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I can't read your signature. Sorry.

Squishor

Well yeah, that's how it should be. What just boggles my mind is the nerve of someone opening their mouth to sound off about something about which they are blatantly ignorant. But I guess that's a big part of what bigotry is, in essence.

JustJess

Hey! Just wanted to point out that not all HR people/departments are evil. They certainly can be, but HR is often constrained by laws and legal issues far more than the average employee. HR sits in an awkward spot - we are there to help the employee, but we also have to, in a very real way, assist the legal department - are we compliant? are we doing everything we're supposed to? etc. etc.

We have diversity training here too - we have to for a lot of reasons. Most of them are CYA (cover your ass). So that should we get an employee like in Cynthetiq's example and someone is upset, it's just the employee's fault instead of the big bad company or HR for not training them properly. Plus, the point of the training here is definitely awareness - people are bigots either way, but they CAN learn how to treat someone professionally no matter their personal feelings. There are lots of people I don't like that I have to be nice to anyway - I imagine it must be similar for a bigot.

It also helps with the vanilla ignorance cases - like not knowing social norms for other cultures that you deal with. That's pretty important in a hospital setting (I work in a hospital, clearly) because of all the different types of patients we have. We have patients, other companies have clients - isn't it useful to know more about the people you're dealing with?

That's not to say that all people will get something out of it, or that all diversity training is useful. But it's possible, right?

__________________
My heart knows me better than I know myself, so I'm gonna let it do all the talkin'.

BigBen

What I am about to post, I AM NOT KIDDING:

My mother worked as a nurse on an Oncology (cancer treatment) ward at the local hospital.

She stated to me that she had a "______" (person of asian descent) on her ward that was about 75 years of age. He had just recovered from surgery, and was about to enter the Chemotherapy stage of treatment. He was pressing the call button, and:

"Every time I went to see him, he would talk _______ (in his native language). I couldn't understand him, and I said that if he needed anything, he needed to tell me in english. We are in Canada for god sake, not _________ (a derogatory term for a country in asia)!"

I found out later that the man was in so much pain that he was close to screaming, and he was in so much distress that he had forgotten that he was in Canada and had reverted back to his native language. My mother had failed to give him his pain medication (that was properly prescribed in LARGE quantities) and refused doctor's orders until the patient could ask for help in english.

I have never felt so ashamed of my family, my heritage and my mother. I felt like screaming. I wanted to cause her pain and then scream at her to ask for help in Farsi or she could just sit there.

I haven't talked to my mother in years, and her bigoted comments are inappropriate. I have told her that, on several occasions, and her reply is simply "You are too sensitive. You have so many _______ friends that you are starting to think like them now..."

There is no changing some people.

I have never shared that with anyone before. Fuck, it still hurts.

__________________
3.141592654
Hey, if you are impressed with my memorizing pi to 10 digits, you should see the size of my penis.

JustJess

BigBen - clearly, she wouldn't have gotten that much out of DT. But we still have to try for other people, right?

I'm sorry you had to live with that. Thanks for sharing.

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My heart knows me better than I know myself, so I'm gonna let it do all the talkin'.

killeena

You are right, I should rephrase that. If you are going to be a bigot, and attack someone of a certain, at least know who the hell they are.

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Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices. - Theodor Adorno

jorgelito

Wow Ben,

Thanks for sharing. Much respect to you. I appreciate your story.

Telluride

I'm not into racial hatred, but even my "defenses" would immediately go up if I was encouraged or ordered to be trained in the often politically-loaded subject of diversity. Instead of turning it into a political issue (diversity), maybe companies should focus on reinforcing proper work-place behavior.

I agree. But to me, this sounds like an issue of lack of professionalism rather than a lack of awareness about diversity. Even if the guy who made the "nigger" comment had left out the "n"-word, it still would be totally inappropriate behavior in most workplaces and probably offensive to at least a few people.

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"I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice." - Friedrich Hayek

shakran

IMO diversity training is pointless. I'm NEVER gonna convince a KKK member to like a black guy. Not happening.

A simple policy would take care of everything without the necessity for diversity training:

"You can hate minorites, gays, women, and anyone else you want, as long as you do it on your own time. Do it at work, and you're fired, no exceptions."


All this crap about trying to change attitudes isn't gonna happen. If someone grew up hating gays and spent their whole adult life hating gays, a few hours of some guy shoving diversity down his throat isn't gonna change his mind. And in fact it's probably gonna make him all the more set in his ways - - - when's the last time YOU responded well to being lectured to?

And then the training is also gonna piss off the rest of the employees - -the ones who already have no problem with diversity. I don't care if you're black, white, green, gay, straight, bi, or asexual. As long as you're a decent human being, you're OK in my book. So I get pretty pissed when I have to take a day away from what I'm supposed to be doing to go have some dink tell me to embrace diversity when I already do.

analog

Diversity training = corporate ass-covering, nothing more.

Also, as a person who is an avid fan of the english language (I write), and one who uses that language to represent the varied and innumerable types of feelings and emotions contained within my fellow human beings (I write dialog, mainly), I would have to say that...

...is quite closed-minded with respect to the power of words and their meaning. Using words to convey emotion or feelings is, in many ways, much like painting (metaphically, of course) a beautiful landscape. Some people may talk like a Picasso- not much to hear, but with deep meaning nonetheless contained within it. Some might have the linguistic flare of a Monet. On close inspection, fragmented sound bytes... but take a few steps back and see the big picture for what it is, their passion for a topic they convey in small parts. Everyone paints a picture with their mode of speech- and the more words you use, the more evocative their emotions and feelings become.

To simply dismiss an entire palette of words as "immature" is missing the whole point behind words themselves: all words exist as tools for more accurately or faithfully conveying the meaning behind what they represent. To deny any word its usefulness is foolishness, IMO. Sure, "rape" is a horrible thing- but we must have a word to represent it, must we not?

Consider, if you will, that many of the works of Shakespeare are recognized as having very sexually racy content and strong language for the time period in which they were created... would you have censored poor Billy Shakespeare, and taken away our Hamlet? Our Romeo and Juliet? I'm not saying that "shit cocksucker balls" is akin to "wherefor art thou, Romeo?", it's just an observation.