Diversity training shouldn't be toxic

As Election Day nears, President Donald Trump has found a new enemy: anti-racist diversity training for federal employees. Earlier this month, a memo from the Office of Management and Budget informed federal departments and agencies of a presidential directive to root out training programs incorporating "critical race theory" (an approach that analyzes society through the lens of race and power), or depicting either the United States or any racial group as "inherently racist or evil." Meanwhile, on Twitter, he railed against the programs as a "sickness that cannot be allowed to continue."

Reports on Trump’s initiative, apparently inspired by Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, have treated it as race-baiting for the base. It fits Trump’s image as the president of white people who resent losing their dominance and see him as their savior.

Yet whatever Trump’s motive, his target in this instance is a real problem: workplace diversity programs are often steeped in divisive, even toxic rhetoric. (Last year, the Harvard Business Review reported that research shows these programs are at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive.)

Unfortunately, Trump is the worst person to address the issue.

The toxic element in diversity training is exemplified by one of its best-known practitioners, "White Fragility" author Robin DiAngelo, who believes every white person has absorbed white supremacist attitudes and will perpetuate them unless trained in constant anti-racist vigilance. In one of her examples, a white woman interrupts a Black co-worker and reacts defensively when told it was a racist act. For DiAngelo, the only right response is to accept the charge and confront one’s inner racist. No wonder people get defensive.

The programs publicized recently by Christopher Rufo, a researcher with the conservative Discovery Institute whose Fox News interview brought the issue to Trump’s attention, raise similar red flags. Thus, a Treasury guide for facilitators of "conversations about race" suggests people should reflect on the racial mix of their circle of friends, people they see in everyday life, characters in movies and shows they’ve watched recently, and human figures in art decorating their homes.

At Sandia Labs, a nuclear weapons tech research center, a workshop for white men concluded with participants writing a letter to women and people of color. Ironically, materials in the seminar criticized the tendency to treat women and minorities as undifferentiated mass, not individuals.

Rufo has welcomed Trump’s ban on "critical race theory"-based diversity training. But it’s unclear what this order can accomplish — especially since I believe Trump will lose in November. In any case, the vast majority of diversity programs are not in the federal workforce, which employs only 1.5% of Americans, but in private corporations or state and local agencies. Even Sandia, a government-affiliated but private facility, is not covered by the ban. And one of the most noxious programs described by Rufo, in which employees are harangued about sins of "whiteness," is run by the Seattle city government.

Since Trump is widely seen (even by some Republicans) as racially divisive, the likely effect of his order will be to produce a backlash and cause everyone who isn’t a Trump supporter — including corporations and state and local governments — to circle the wagons around diversity training. That’s a pity, because a reexamination of such programs is long overdue.

Given the changing workforce, there’s a very real need to address racial and gender dynamics. But the way to do it is by encouraging people to see and talk to each other as individuals, not promote new stereotypes in place of old ones. Just because Trump is against something doesn’t mean it’s good.

Cathy Young is a contributing editor to Reason magazine.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.