Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

I was one of the first people to be diversity "trained" 14 years ago. I volunteered because I thought it was about combating racism, and I wanted to be good person and help fight racism. I now realize that "diversity" as an ideology IS racism that reduces people to a group identity and denies their individuality. 14 years later, I also feel great shame at having participated in a particular group excercise in which the diversity trainers seperated out all the "people of color", gays and women and encouraged us all to vent our hatred of white heterosexual men - while the targeted group listened to our spew. We wrote down our hatred in big letters on a wipe board just so the audience wouldn't forget the message. My enthusiastic participation in this hatefest haunts me to this day; it was like something out of the Nuremberg rallies. I do not see how demonizing a particular group of people is helpful to business operations or in fighting "racism". Me, I wish I could track down every single white male who witnessed that long-ago hatefest and apologize to them profusely. You can't fight hate with hate and that's what "diversity" training does, at least in my experience. It is disliked for a reason, plus the stupidities and contradictions are there for anyone to see and it just makes you feel like a fool for pretending that the stupidities make sense. Case in point: white "Hispanics." They are no different ethnically from other "European-Americans" yet somehow they are part of a "protected" class because they have a Spanish name. Yet in places like Cuba and Chile THEY are the privileged group lording it over mixed-race people and indigenous people. Yet they come to the US and instantly they are considered "Latinos", an "oppressed" group that's oppressed by bad evil whitey. Please -- they ARE white. Another case in point: rich Asians. I once knew a Pakistani immigrant who was from the 1 percent ruling class in her native land and she grew up on a huge estate with servants, horses and trips to Europe every summer. She had an Oxford education. Yet she is entitled to diversity perks ahead of me, a native-born white American who grew up in terrible poverty (my family were descended from California migrant farm workers aka "Okies"). I think not.

Diveristy is hated because it hurts people and because it's stupid. Since corporations force it on people you just have to grin and bear it, and you get through it by making fun of it behind management's back. Kudos to the manager who said it was a waste of time and tried to fight it, but he probably lost his job.

Mary your statement ... "you can't fight hate with hate" moves me deeply and begs the question... "What would it take to see all people as humans and to treat ourselves and others well?

Differences can only make us richer is we value these in ways that draw out the best from people. Thanks for sharing and for reflecting past what we are told to believe in ways that bring humanity back into being human.

Ellen,

Most "diversity trainers" teach that only the dominant group can be "racist." Members outside the group can't possibly be "racist." This is basically a declaration that it's open season on whitey, especially white men. White men and white people in general are not really "human" under this worldview.

PS -- Of course "diversity" training doesn't work. The originators of it were all radical Marxists, like Ricky Sherover-Marcuse, the wife of the famous 1960s Maoist Professor Herbert Marcuse. Do you think that radical Marxists really wanted capitalist corporations to "succeed" by adding "diversity training"? Doh, of course not. Rather the opposite I think.