Corp SJW ms

 from here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7JqXee6ABo

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[Music]

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whoops hello everyone and welcome to another jack of and talk my name is kale i'm the video producer

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here at jacobin and every week uh on weeknights we do

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uh three times a week we'll do a conversation or a lecture or a debate

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with uh left uh public intellectuals thinkers writers organizers about important politics for

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the left uh working through you know old and new historic debates

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and uh and sometimes topical sometimes evergreen um tonight it's a little bit of both

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actually um and uh so i'm going to be joined by jen pan and ariel thornhill

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jen pan is a writer for the new republic but she's also an author in jacobin her most recent piece

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is called workplace anti-racism trainings aren't helping um it's partially

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inspired uh this talk tonight um ariella is a board member of jacobin

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uh you can see her work on the jacobin youtube page actually that she was a recent uh co-host on weekends

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um and hope to see a lot more of both of you honestly um uh before we get going

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before i hand it off to them to talk about the history of diversity trainings and uh how it's used

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politically in the workplace i just wanted to quickly run through some of the other videos that are coming up this week

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on wednesday we have christian parenti who's going to be talking about his new book out from verso on the radical alexander

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hamilton um kind of a looking back at the historical legacy of the individual and

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uh through a leftist lens um very interesting uh if you are not aware um

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it's yeah it's gonna be good it's not at all like the musical i promise uh and then uh on friday we have

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stephanie lewis talking about the politics of full employment um what it means for uh for workers if

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for instance every single person has a job or the ability to get a new job through uh through a massive

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government jobs program what does that do to labor markets for instance and uh and the the boss's ability to fire

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people um so that one's gonna be interesting and then on saturday uh for another

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episode of weekends with anna kasparian and nando vila we have one of our favorites amber lee

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frost talking about her new catalyst essay which is just incredible and uh you know

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it's no you know she's not pulling any punches um

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it's extremely good and sobering and everyone should read the essay you

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don't have to read it before saturday but you know if you can you should

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on that note the last thing i'll say before i hand it off uh is please hit like please hit subscribe

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please share the stream uh and uh enjoy

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okay thanks kale um and obviously thanks to jacobin for having us on um so i think just to kick off um i

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want to start by giving like a very basic definition of the diversity industry uh which i do want to say is more

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commonly now called diversity equity and inclusion and i myself have sort of started

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referring to it as the social justice industry because i think one major turn over the

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last few years is that you now see people in that very industry saying well we need to go beyond diversity um

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so i'll talk about that shift in a little bit um but for the most part you know just wanted to put it out there that we'll be

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using the terms diversity industry and social justice industry like pretty much interchangeably

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so what is the diversity industry it is basically this massive unregulated industry that

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exists to help government agencies uh private sector companies schools and

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like all kinds of other institutions work toward achieving either a certain level of diversity

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or stay in compliance with laws around discrimination or you know train help train their staff

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members in racial sensitive or of course any combination of the above so this industry

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kind of encompasses like trainers consultants workshops advisors like any kind of

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service that helps employers sort of meet these dei goals um so kale can we get the first slide

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so in 2003 the diversity industry was estimated to be worth around 8 billion dollars which almost

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certainly means that it's worth way more than that today some form of diversity training is

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mandated at almost every fortune 500 company um about half of all mid-size firms

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which are companies that have anywhere between like 250 uh to a thousand employees

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also use diversity training and then two-thirds of colleges and universities in the us today also use some kind of diversity

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training so i think you know to kind of bring it back to the present um we've seen this industry explode even

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more recently in light of of course the recent protests against police brutality and racism

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um where you see all kinds of companies and organizations sort of rushing to publicly reaffirm their commitment to

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racial justice um and obviously like right now the kind of most

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famous practitioner of this type of training is robyn d'angelo the author went

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fragility um but uh you know she takes like 20 30 000 like doing a

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single training um and you know there have been like a ton of critiques and like responses to

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her so i won't get too much into that there um but i will say you know i recently

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found a google doc of just black owned diversity training services

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um and there was something like 300 just black owned dei consulting firms on that

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list so again i think that's just an indication of you know how how much this industry is growing

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how much potential there is for it to grow even more um and i also want to add like really quickly that even though i think the

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bulk of the diversity industry is kind of these third-party services uh and workshops and trainings

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that um that you know companies and schools can buy um lots of companies also have in-house

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diversity experts um so now you're seeing a rise in like managerial positions

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like chief diversity officer or like chief of equity um and just fyi like all the big

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tech firms like google facebook like they all have somebody in this position

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all of the big banks have somebody in this position um obviously you know salaries always can

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vary but these these are like six figure jobs like they are c level positions so um

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i think you know i just want to quickly touch on how exactly the industry got started um in 1964 you have the

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civil rights act um and this makes it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of race

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um and title vii of the civil of the civil rights act also uh establishes the equal

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employment opportunity commission which is the federal agency that kind of monitors and investigates workplace discrimination

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um so this was a big step forward in terms of reducing racial discrimination on the job

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uh obviously you know uh uh it was it like i said it was a step forward at the same time the eeoc guidelines on what it

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meant to discriminate were very very vague so basically we have the civil rights act saying

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you know you can't discriminate anymore um but they don't stipulate what your hiring practices should be what your firing

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practices should be um or what kind of training you should give your employees um so you know the like that kind of

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creates a situation where all of these companies are sort of left to fend for themselves in terms of figuring out how to comply

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um and then right after this is right after the civil rights act is passed you see you know a wave of discrimination

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lawsuits against employers obviously because those employers were discriminating um so companies are kind

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of like desperately scrambling to figure out how to prevent being sued and also how to stay

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in compliance with these new laws um and and you know i think this obviously in many ways creates a kind of

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perfect breeding ground for a new industry to arise to help employers stay in compliance with the law

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or figure out how they can skirt it um and then in addition to that of course you know especially now

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there's obviously this pr element where companies they they don't want any sort of public relations scandal where they

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look racist or sexist so you know a few years ago we saw that um

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there were instances of racial profiling of black customers at sephora and starbucks and obviously then a public

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outcry um so then you know then these companies sort of like rushed to say like oh well we're going

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to fix this by instituting more diversity training and more anti-racism training um but i think you know i i think the

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thing to keep in mind is that because the law is so vague um and because so much of it is left up

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to the corporations and to the private sector the standards around diversity and anti-racism in the workplace are

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basically changing all the time um so kale can we get the second slide

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yes thanks okay so so this is kind of just like an overview of the timeline

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um and basically what you can see is that diversity training and diversity compliance has changed a lot over the last few decades

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so in the 60s and 70s um as i mentioned there was obviously a lot of emphasis on compliance with the

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law but you also start to see some companies begin to talk about diversity as a moral imperative

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and this is when you start to see trainings um around you know getting workers to kind

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of reduce prejudice in the workplace and then in the 80s we have a backlash to

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affirmative action under reagan and he institutes funding cuts to the equal employment

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opportunity commission so um during this time period a lot of workplaces kind of shift

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to an assimilation model of diversity training um which is which is i guess kind of you know trying

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to get women and people of color to speak and behave more like their white male counterparts

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so actually like when ariella and i were talking about this earlier she pointed out that in um you know she pointed out that this is

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sort of the basis of the more recent sheryl sandberg lean in mode you know like if you just tried harder to keep up

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with the boys and act more like them you too can bootstrap your way to the sea level

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um so then after the 80s uh the 90s is when you see a shift

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to the kind of classic feel-good coca-cola liberal multiculturalism that

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i think we now all think about uh when we think of like diversity trainings um and so this is the type of diversity

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training that's about you know understanding and celebrating all of our differences um you know that uh uh this training

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insists that like diversity is is our strength and diversity is actually really great for businesses productivity and you know

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it can be good for your bottom line as well um and then you know to fast forward to today i

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think we are seeing another shift where we're kind of leaving behind that 90s multiculturalism and moving

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to um to what lots of people are calling equity um or even sometimes these initiatives

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are called racial justice so i want to focus on this more recent shift for just a second because

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you know i think i think a lot of people especially on the left kind of understand at this point that

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there's a form of like corny corny corporate diversity that can be kind of shallow right like lots of

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people know that this 90s coca-cola diversity is kind of just window dressing and like you know people know it's not

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good enough um and the response then um or you know what people are leaning toward

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now is that we have to shift away from diversity to serious racial equity and

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i think that sounds good but i also think in many cases when you start to

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pull apart what that means in the context of workplace initiatives um it's not actually all that clear what

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people are talking about or like when people say equity is that really very different from the

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diversity that came before um and this is something that walter ben michaels has talked about um from time to time

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also so you know just the um like from my own life like recently i

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was in a meeting with people from the congressions um and everybody had kind of gotten

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together to discuss um how to push forward racial justice initiatives in the workplace

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and so everybody went around and sort of said what they thought was the biggest obstacle to racial workplace and almost every

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single person said i think that the you know i think that the biggest obstacle is that there

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are not enough people of color in leadership and then at one point um the facilitator

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of the discussion um was like the lack of of people of color in leadership is a structural

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inequity and i just kind of like paused for a minute um and was a little taken aback because at

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least in my mind like the structure of the workplace is the employer has power over the

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employees and diversifying management i mean whatever your thoughts are on that

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like that doesn't really seem like a structural change that seems like the personnel changed you know um i also want to say that a

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precipitation at a firm uh even at the very top

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has always been a goal of the diversity industry um from the 70s to the 90s to now

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so i think again i think even though we're starting to see yet another shift um in how people

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are trying to push beyond diversity and even using your radical language

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i think it's still worth taking a look taking a hard look at you know what exactly they're

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advocating for and whether it's actually different from what has come before

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a little bit more about the relationship between like the diversity industry and like company profit

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so take it away yeah so companies never do something because they

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just want to do it right they have a set of incentives as a firm and profits are there are chief among

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those set of incentives the other is managing personnel and then there are consumer relationships so

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businesses started to get this idea that burst diversity could actually be really profitable and really good and i

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want kale to run this what women want click right now uh because this is indicative of this

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shift in the mindset that happened this movie was um made in the year 2000

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but the shift really started to take place like in the late 90s early 2000s and beyond

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[Music] this is good more insightful than i would have thought

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this line doesn't feel exactly right if you're thinking that that line isn't perfect i agree it needs a

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little work there's something not exactly right about it isn't there i mean it's it's not bad it's insightful actually

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it's just well what do you think this woman's thinking uh well

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um let's see uh she's thinking about what she wants

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out of life what's she gonna accomplish i mean how's she gonna do all that i mean women you know they think about that a

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lot i mean surprisingly a lot uh they worry all the time about everything

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you're so right how do you know that well you know even i had a mother

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all right so that racist ass melly gibson clip is indicative of a sense that many

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firms had that diversifying their personnel would lead to innovations it would lead to better insights into

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their customer base and the premise of the movie although it's cheesy and horrible

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is that this man who can then gain insight into the thoughts of women by being able

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to listen to them is better at doing his work and better working with women

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we've now reached the point that what women want was trying to get at

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with implicit bias trainings trainings that are really meant to supplant

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the experiential narrative in a person's mind with other experiences um so

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firms started to think diversity was profitable for that reason but also for others the foremost is that

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it protects their bottom line businesses started to care a lot more about diversity

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after they were paying sometimes billion half billion dollar payouts

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to settle diversity and discrimination lawsuits um they also wanted to make sure

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that they were keeping up with trends and personnel changes so in 1987

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a report called workforce 2000 was published and it changed the focus about

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diversity once it seemed to make the case that diversity was inevitable the press misunderstood the report's

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claim that there would be a big marginal increase in minorities in the workforce

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they thought that this meant that there would just be a big increase they didn't understand that marginal

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versus net increase but this fueled the idea that diversity was inevitable and companies needed to

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find a way to manage it and the diversity industry expanded to meet that need

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and as jen said it employed a wide range of strategies and it pulled these strategies from academia

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from the social justice world from non-profits from anti-racism educators sociology

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social psychology and more recently from tech um i want cale to bring up for me

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the slide from talent lift that explains the top 10 reasons to

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incorporate workplace diversity so we have higher innovation it leads to a variety

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of different perspectives faster problem solving i'm not reading them in order

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okay increased creativity higher innovation variety of different perspectives faster

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problem solving better decision making increased profits higher employee

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engagement reduced employee turnover better company reputation and improved hiring results so some of

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these you can see the case that's being made here if you're picking from a pool of applicants and you're not considering

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qualified people on the basis of their race gender or sexual orientation you're losing out on talent but others

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are more spurious claims um so one pretty much every single one of these

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studies cites a report by the mckinsey institute

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that seems to make the case that more diverse companies are more profitable so

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kale could you bring up this graphic i started to dig into this because i really wanted to see what the mechanism

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was and i couldn't find one in fact the report itself says while

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correlation does not equal causation greater gender and ethnic diversity and corporate leadership

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doesn't automatically translate into more profit the correlation does indicate that when companies commit

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themselves to diverse leaderships they are more successful more diverse companies we believe are

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better able to win top talent and improve their customer orientation employee satisfaction and decision

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making and all that leads to a virtuous cycle of increasing returns this in turn suggests that other kinds

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of diversity for example in age sexual orientation and experience such as a global mindset

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and cultural fluency are also likely to bring some level of competitive advantage for

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companies that can attract and retain such diverse talent so it doesn't really matter if diversity

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is more profitable or if diversity leads to more innovation because these metrics are about a belief system

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that's used to manage corporate employees and as long as it's believed

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they will keep using it we saw this with sheryl sandberg's lean in approach right she you know was notorious for

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going into these companies and basically training women to be more assertive and to access parts of

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them that you know they felt weren't feminine or whatever and assimilate to the workplace

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and it's not necessarily true that that works um most famously it didn't work for

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hotel workers that we're trying to organize but it doesn't really matter because

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these companies have tons of income to pour into these things and they will try to implement anything

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that can make them more profitable but they'll also try to implement anything that will make them

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have more control over their employees personnel is one of the biggest expenses in the overheads company and

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controlling it including retaining it um cutting down on trainings

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for new employees not diversity trainings and things like that are all part of why companies push for

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these kinds of things um and so it's become so common and

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deeply ingrained in these top companies that they are now tying executive and

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managerial bonuses to the promotion retention and hiring of diverse people

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i have a quote here um from payscale.com it says catalyst ceo debra gillis

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strongly advocates increasing monetary bonuses for leaders who deliberately promoted women

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and docking the pay for those who don't now just a little aside from me i fail

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to see how that will make you have a friendlier relationship with women or want to hire them

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if you don't promote them and your pay is docked but the quote and also what about like if a

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woman you hired finds out you got like 500 dollars to hire her yeah for real i mean all of these things

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really undermine solidarity particularly the way it's articulated through these incentive programs but the

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ideology itself also does and the incentive programs just kind of like make that more acute

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um so the quote goes on we know that women face a glass ceiling and for women

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of color it's a concrete ceiling gillis said in an interview with fairy god boss in

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2016. i didn't make that up that's a real thing given that 95 of leadership positions at some of the

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largest companies are occupied by men they need to be champions of gender equality end quote tying diversity goals to

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financial benefits signifies that companies take diversity advancement goals more seriously and pushes leaders

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to be accountable for their behaviors and confront their unconscious bias quote who gets promoted

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who gets that new opportunity said ellis it should be people who manage in a way that's inclusionary

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so this is part of a broader trend now microsoft intel johnson and johnson facebook and uber

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have all introduced programs like this and google was actually asked to create

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a program like this by its employees so the rank and file

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google walked out because of a sexist discrimination issue in their workplace

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a broad broad issue that is long standing and has not been solved by the way and one of their demands along with

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google's shareholders was to tie bonus compensation to sustainability metrics like

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executive diversity so that is why so much money pours into the

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diversity from the private sector um and it's only increasing like jen said

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people are really struggling to grapple with these problems every time there's an issue of systematic racial injustice

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or sexism discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and identity

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firms scramble to try to incorporate the kind of new theories of

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the day in terms of racial justice into their bottom line into their business model

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and into their managerial processes so now jen is going to tell us how

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diversity and equity initiatives operate in the workplace today to undermine and divide workers

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so i think actually what you said about the google employees like kind of asking for like more i guess

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you know accountability or like asking for certain types of training in this area um that was something that

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i started thinking about because uh the staff at the new york times has also asked for mandatory anti-racism

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training um i think that you know there are a lot of kind of white-collar professionals or like white-collar

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people in in creative fields who look at these initiatives and think this is a step forward you know like the

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shows that the company the company is doing is doing something and especially again contrasting like corny 90s diversity

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to like radical good like right now right now equity or anti-racism like it

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does seem like a step forward um so i do want to take a minute to look at how

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how these trainings actually operate in the workplace um and and what the effect is on workers

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so um you know so so this was the subject of the article that i wrote for jacobin a

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few weeks ago which i think is thanks gail i think this is also linked in the description

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box so if you want to read it please do but basically um

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we have tons of studies at this point that have shown that diversity training doesn't work

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diversity training doesn't really make offices more diverse mandatory anti-bias or anti-racist

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training in the workplace does not actually lower people's biases or prejudices

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and unsurprisingly everyone hates them so um i think now we want to queue up a

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video from dr phil um and this is a clip of what's called a privilege walk

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if you have spent any time in like the non-profit or activist spaces um you're probably familiar with

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this but this is an exercise that's used in um a lot of educational settings and

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this is kind of like a cornerstone of anti-racism training so let's watch i'm going to be asking

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you a series of 35 questions if your parents work nights and weekends to support your family

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take one step back if you are able to move through the world without fear of sexual assault

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take one step forward if you can show affection for your romantic partner in public

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without fear of ridicule or violence take one step forward

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the experience today definitely helped me see the world in a different perspective i kept stepping forward and as i was

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keep going forward it was like am i really that privileged i didn't feel like i deserved to be up there

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if you have ever been diagnosed as having a physical or mental illness the primary language spoken in your

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household growing up was not english if you have ever tried to change your speech or mannerisms to gain credibility i'm

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from a small town in connecticut so i've heard like i live in a bubble because i'm white or because i blonde

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hair like doesn't mean i should be in front of them if you can go anywhere in the country and easily find the kinds of

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hair products you need that match your skin color if you were embarrassed about your clothes or house while growing up

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if you can legally marry the person if you would never think twice about calling the police when trouble occurs

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take one step forward i'm already a double minority being african-american also being a homosexual male i'm always

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like expecting myself to be further back

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so um if you if you ever feel compelled to watch the whole clip i uh you can find it online it's about

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five minutes long um and basically like at the end everybody involved feels like [ __ ]

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like all the kids at the back are like all the kids are all it's so sad you know it's really sad

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it's really they're like i just thought my parents did a good job and i didn't think i was that bad off

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exactly exactly yeah like the kids at the back are all like oh my god like i didn't know that like my life was so

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awful and then the kids at the front are like i didn't know i was so awful so and so i guess that's how you know

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that the training worked right like at the end like everybody everybody feels bad um and you know the

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takeaway of the exercise of course is that some people have certain privileges um and they tend to be invisible

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but at the same time this exercise obviously conflates sort of a number of different dynamics

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like it talks about bullying but then it also talks about like unemployment and wages and like night shifts

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um and then talks about like speaking a language other than english at home and those are all like very different

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things and you know i don't i don't know how helpful it is to lump them all into the privileged basket

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and importantly i i don't think that doing that that is lumping them into the privileged basket actually

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gives us um any direction on where to go in terms of like doing anything about inequality right

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um and obviously the dr phil example is is dr phil and like these are college students so

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you know this isn't like this isn't like everybody but i think that i think that this video is instructive

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because like this is ultimately where these mandatory workplace anti-racism kind of consciousness racing

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um sessions end up like there's no real takeaway it's just kind of an exercise

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in like trying to change the way that people think and like trying to change the way that people feel and like

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perhaps trying to change the way that people speak as well um but then of course on top of that

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like i said before they don't even they don't even work to do any of that they don't reduce people's biases

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um like like i said we have a pretty robust set of research at this point um from psychology and other social

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sciences that show that these interventions do not reduce people's prejudices um in some weird cases they even like

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more deeply ingrained those prejudices um yeah can i can i cut in with

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the example that i found so one of the exercises that used to happen in the late 70s and 80s was to have

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participants list like stereotypes they associated with different identities

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it was actually used to try the firm in a discrimination lawsuit and they won

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because they encouraged employees to say things like black people are lazy right they

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encourage the boys to say literally racist things in at a mandatory training at work right

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right that's a very very very bad example of this

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but these trainings have never they distill these feelings for workers they distill

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these feelings of difference rather than removing or ameliorating them exactly

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um and there was actually another study from just last year that looked at it so i think like two

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psychologists um wanted to see what happens when you talk to specifically educated liberals about

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white privilege um so they wanted to see if talking to educated liberals about white privilege

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would change the way that they felt about poor black people or change the way that they felt about poor white

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people and after they conducted the experiment they found that um so basically if you sit you know a group

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of educated liberals down and you explain white privilege to them and then you measure how much empathy

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they have for poor black people

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however their empathy for poor white people went down so i think that's again like this really

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interesting example of you know it it didn't work in terms of making people

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like more racially open-minded but it like kind of backfired in a class direction as well which is like the

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worst of both worlds right so yes so these programs are um questionable at best

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um and i i think so so as as you know we had been talking

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about before um i think we're seeing now you know a lot of kind of well-intentioned like liberals and like white-collar

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professionals like advocating for these trainings again um part of that i think is because the

34:14

trump administration and like tucker carlson and some other right-wing people like recently found out about anti-racism

34:20

training and like lost their [ __ ] and like trump is like we need to ban this from you know federal agencies

34:26

um and they all think that it's like a marxist plot you know um and you know karl marx famously

34:33

advocated for people to do that walk of privilege exercise right exactly

34:38

the privilege is in uh capital volume one and exactly

34:45

um yes so yes so so you know the right wing thinks that this is like creeping marxism

34:50

um and and i do want to say like i think that a lot of these trainings do come from a genuine impulse um

34:57

especially when you know it's it's employees who are advocating for them i do think they come from a genuine impulse to want to kind of address

35:03

or stamp out interpersonal uh racism in the workplace um but you know we have to be extremely

35:10

careful because like i said they don't work um and then the second part is this is

35:16

like this is like a little more disturbing but i i i feel like there's starting to be more evidence that employers are using

35:23

these types of social justice like trainings to surveil and discipline workers

35:29

so i talk a little bit about this in my article but i started combing through the harvard business review like to see

35:35

what managers were saying about anti-racism trainings and i found this one ceo who

35:41

you know a big big proponent of racial equity in the workplace he was like mandatory anti-racism trainings for

35:47

everybody and then on top of that he was like every year i make my employees give

35:53

a personal racial justice goal that they're going to achieve over the course of the year and then uh when you know when it's time

36:00

for performance reviews we evaluate like how much progress they've made on that goal and just like what and then there was

36:07

like this other management expert who you know basically doubled down

36:13

on at will employment by looking at the amy cooper case which of course is the you know racist white woman who like

36:20

called the cops on a blackbird watcher in central park and he basically pointed to her and was

36:26

like amy cooper's employer firing her immediately for being openly racist outside of work is like

36:32

exactly like what we should be doing like this like this is the kind of policy we should be implementing no tolerance

36:38

and like obviously the point is obviously the point is like not to shed a tear for amy cooper because like who

36:43

cares but like we should also not rush to stick a like progressive mask

36:48

on at wheel employment right um and then one last example that i have to tell

36:53

because it's so dystopian is um northeastern university researchers are currently working

36:59

on an ai machine that is meant to monitor workers speech uh nonverbal cues and eventually quote

37:06

physiological signals in order to assess how much unconscious

37:12

bias they have and how much they're bringing to the workplace so like you know the researchers the

37:18

researchers were trying to like pass this off as like oh this is like a great tool that will like

37:24

help managers you know like figure out like who should get more speaking time or whatever but it's like a machine that collects

37:31

your speech and physiological signals and delivers it straight to your manager's office so they can like figure out what

37:37

to do with you like we don't want that you know so um yeah so so i think that there are

37:44

just a number of ways in which uh again um despite some good intentions

37:50

i think despite some honestly good intentions um this is not the road that i think you know we should be going down

37:56

um at the end of the day when it's the employers who are still ultimately deciding what's racist who's

38:03

racist who's not racist like i don't think any of these initiatives are a win for workers

38:10

yeah so yeah sorry no i think that's exactly right and i think that

38:15

you know the shift towards asking for racial justice and social justice in the

38:21

workplace asking management for that shows that people one have a genuine desire

38:28

to address these problems and i think most people do but it also shows that they don't and can't conceive of other

38:36

potential solutions um and i think that the reason that they're so amenable

38:42

to management is precisely because they're not really threatening um so if you're cool with it jen i can

38:49

go into how it reduces solidarity yeah i was going to say i do have more tech examples

38:56

i'm sure there are many more and i found more yeah i found one where a man was

39:03

advocating for his um consultancy firm to do anti-bias trainings and he's like

39:08

we go in and we observe behavior then we make an ai model and we model the company's growth for

39:15

five years and we show that with these sets of behaviors these people will move up and be

39:21

promoted and these people won't and it's unclear like how this model

39:27

works he doesn't really go into it and i don't see why he would but it's common enough that there are

39:33

like multiple articles in harvard business review and science daily about people using ai in the workforce and

39:40

this is not the only kind of avenue that they're using that for it's

39:45

just one of them and the focus on ameliorating discrimination at work

39:52

which is a serious problem nobody likes to work in a place with racists or with people even you know

39:58

microaggressing you people's workplaces take up a lot of their lives and they

40:04

fundamentally change the outcomes of their lives and so like obviously these issues are deeply deeply important

40:10

but we can't skirt in more surveillance or empower bosses and management

40:17

to basically like decide the outcome of a worker's life on a whim

40:24

exactly like you said yeah so how do these trainings undermine solidarity

40:29

all right so here we go we're about to get a little bit mad but bear with me so the biggest issue with

40:37

the ideological and theoretical framework of these programs is that they treat disparities in

40:43

outcomes as the effect of individual failing they treat systematic outcomes and

40:50

systemic outcomes that are caused by path dependency the company's profit motive

40:55

competition with other firms and internal hierarchical structures

41:00

as individual problems that are caused by bad attitudes biases or the personal

41:07

failure of bad actors whether they are unconscious or consciously

41:13

acting in bad faith and this isn't just a corporate flaw it's a liberal flaw

41:18

racism and sexism are treated as the aggregate of millions of people's bad attitudes

41:25

and negative emotions rather than the consequences of capitalist accumulation

41:30

and socioeconomic inertia as stony carmichael said

41:35

if a white man wants to lynch me that's his problem if he's got the power to lynch me that's

41:41

my problem racism is not a question of attitude it's a question of power racism gets its power from capitalism

41:48

thus if you're anti-racist whether you know it or not you must be anti-capitalist the power

41:54

for racism the power for sexism comes from capitalism not an attitude so i want to dig

42:02

into how these trainings actually put forth this theoretical framework that these bad outcomes come from

42:09

individual biases unconscious thoughts or bad actors kale could you run the implicit biases

42:17

clip for me professor nosek and colleagues tested more than seven

42:23

hundred thousand subjects and found that more than seventy percent of white subjects more easily associated white faces with

42:30

positive words and black faces with negative words concluding that this was evidence

42:35

of implicit racial bias in fact additional evidence indicates

42:40

that measures of implicit bias better predict people's conduct than measures of explicit bias

42:48

i think that if you are anyone to be blunt that it's not a white male

42:54

you potentially feel that implicit bias maybe you're just looking for someone that is like you because you like you

43:01

and so you want to be around more people like you but what's really rooted under that is that you potentially don't think that

43:07

someone else is as smart or as capable and that is coming from a place of implicit bias

43:14

now here's some good news various scientists have criticized the iat

43:19

they point out for example that individuals who take the test on different dates often score substantially differently

43:27

even iat supporters admit that implicit bias at least as demonstrated by the test is

43:34

widespread but relatively minor and has only a small impact upon people's real world

43:40

actions in other words the results of the tests are not strong enough to predict

43:45

particular behaviors by individual people

43:50

however let's not get too comfortable even if the iat cannot predict the future conduct of any one individual

43:57

on a given occasion it still indicates how groups of people will act on average and that is worrisome

44:07

so there you have it that's the science behind the racism is an aggregate of bad actors

44:13

theory but racism isn't the thing is if you took everyone out of these firms that had some kind of

44:20

unconscious bias and you replace them with the most loving wonderful open people who are

44:25

deeply compassionate outcomes across the board would still be the same

44:30

competition between firms the profit motive all of these things and the inertia of

44:36

location and resource allocation create differences that become racially

44:42

inflected or inflected by other kinds of orderings of people including their

44:49

sexual orientation their gender identity and so you see the way that there's a bait and switch here

44:57

the clip itself says that um implicit bias isn't a good predictor of

45:03

an individual's actions because the test results can change in a given day

45:09

but then it says that it is it's better predicting their actions than their explicit answers to questions

45:16

basically the science behind this is pretty soft it's not

45:22

a good explanation even in its own like very truncated little world of what's happening here and even if it

45:30

were to be you wouldn't have any kind of enduring change as a result of implementing these

45:36

things in the workplace um so firms rely on the diversity

45:42

industry because they have an incentive to manage workplace safety issues and i do think that racism and sexism

45:49

as well as you know people's gender identity and sexual orientation are workplace safety issues but they

45:55

have an incentive to manage workplace safety issues and workers rights issues as though they are caused by

46:01

bad actors individuals not the power structure in which those individuals exist and this has always been the case in the

46:08

70s these trainings focused on compliance which was generally telling individuals like don't get us in trouble

46:13

by saying the wrong things um in the 80s they mixed in a focus on assimilation into workplace culture

46:21

sheryl sandberg's style um and they blamed individuals for their failure to succeed at work

46:28

um and told them that if they used the approaches that they advocated they would then do better and then in the 90s this gave

46:35

way to a kind of boutique multiculturalism soft tooth like tolerance

46:40

approach and later to pop psych critiques of internalized racism and

46:46

sexism then shame and guilt exercises and then to privileged theology and unconscious bias

46:52

training i want to show how this bait and switch turns issues of workers power

46:58

into issues of interpersonal difference

48:47

sorry that was so long but i think it's important to view that um clip from accenture i think it's

48:54

called which is itself a diversity training clip and it's making the case that if

48:59

a group of individuals all decide to be better and make better choices then the outcomes for all workers will

49:07

change but that's not true and this clip exemplifies the liberal ethos of anti-discrimination in the workplace

49:13

issues that are directly tied to workers rights like parental leave compensation and promotions are turned

49:20

into issues of feeling but companies are not denying men paid parental leave because of feelings

49:26

or paying people less because they don't like them and in so far as these decisions might be based on bias and i do think

49:33

sometimes they are like promote promotion decisions or internal hiring practices

49:39

real durable changes can only come from union representation and worker power rank and file action because

49:47

as soon as the boss who promotes black women or hires trans people leaves your gains are totally lost

49:54

the other thing about these trainings is that they're fundamentally unsolitaristic they tell workers that only other

50:01

workers are responsible for their issues in the workplace that clip was just a list of

50:06

interpersonal resentments for feeling judged that you had to leave early to pick up your kids or feeling as

50:12

though workers other workers in your firm and your peers don't think you are as driven and you're more entitled

50:20

because you're a white man these interpersonal issues may affect the day-to-day

50:26

but they don't actually change the power structures in the workplace that create those attitudes or those

50:32

outcomes and so these trainings tell workers that attitudes and emotions from their peers

50:39

are changing the outcomes of their lives because they would rather that then

50:46

take a good look at what they owe their workers a real durable change would come from

50:52

workers organizing to actually assert their power and demand their rights be met but these kinds of

51:00

programs obviously aren't even going to get close to that um so instead of creating more

51:06

understanding between people with different experience these programs create less and they

51:11

frame these differences and experience as barriers to the well-being of others the only thing that they then say can

51:19

solve this is more anti-discrimination training and as jen has said this doesn't work so one of the kind of

51:27

main social justice theologies right now is privilege politics and i just wrote a

51:33

book called white kids growing up with privilege in a racially divided america by margaret

51:38

hagerman who's a sociologist who did field work in an affluent school with mostly white

51:44

kids and when they were given the privilege exercise they felt the need to protect it because

51:50

what it did for them was it articulated everything that made their lives nice as a product of white supremacy

51:59

so if you're already part of the team and you're anti-racist and a person says hey look at your privilege and look at

52:05

all these things that may be easier for you or you have access to because of the you know accident of your birth as xyz

52:13

you're probably gonna go oh wow i feel bad i want other people to have those things what do i do but if you're not or i mean maybe

52:21

these kids might not be racist either but when it's articulated that white supremacy is an economic program that

52:27

ensures all of these wonderful things it's no surprise that some people would be like i love my white privilege

52:33

and i need to protect it and that's precisely what emerged from some of these trainings and

52:38

famously in 2008 the internal memo from a google employee who was upset that his biological

52:46

essentialism of women wasn't reflected in the diversity trainings and upset that they took place at all

52:51

articulated a lot of these things um he was actively um in community

52:57

or sorry in conversation with these ideologies um rather than

53:04

you know other kinds of trainings which take place at unions that do cover this they do cover

53:10

discrimination they are also subject to title vii but they say racism is a problem for

53:15

worker solidarity racism undermines worker solidarity and undermines worker power

53:22

and they have a ways to go to fix that as well but the language and the framing is completely

53:28

different so um on that note um it looks like we're

53:33

running up on time but i know that we talked about the non-profit sector and like the philanthropic foundation world

53:39

and i really think that we should just like touch on that a little bit so do you want to quickly like get into

53:44

how you think the nonprofit sector kind of overlaps and like intertwines with the um

53:50

diversity industry um and then i'll say just a few words on foundations after that um and then maybe we can like

53:56

i don't know like throw out some ideas of what you know we know actually works in terms of making

54:02

workplaces better for workers of color um so take it away all right so

54:07

nonprofits share the same set of um motivations that for-profit firms

54:14

have except they just don't have to make a profit they have financial incentives like a for-profit firm but their

54:21

financial incentives are according the donor class or getting government grants

54:26

they also are businesses that have to meet certain goals and manage their workforce

54:31

in order to do that they are also liable under title vii and so they came to rely on the

54:38

diversity industry in the exact same ways for for-profit industries did they needed to be

54:44

compliant they also need to be compliant in the way that they um served the communities that they were

54:52

a part of because oftentimes they were providing vital social services that were contracted to them

54:58

by state and local agencies and if they didn't do this in a fair

55:03

non-discriminatory way they would be liable so we can see this

55:09

sort of voluntary failure of the state to invest in social services or retrenchment

55:14

um creating a dependency on nonprofits and then these non-profits are increasingly subject to scrutiny for how they're

55:22

delivering these services and one of the most famous criticisms of this dynamic is kimberly crenshaw's

55:29

famous stanford law review article that highlights these failures so just

55:34

to gloss over the article which i think people should read because i think it's highly misunderstood

55:40

crenshaw is pointing to issues with service provision at women's shelters she's showing that certain women's

55:46

shelters don't take into account that women needing their services may not speak english

55:51

and because of funding competitions with other non-profits they are not able to hire

55:58

staff that can meet those needs and she goes into this case by case by case in some examples she shows

56:05

that women who are looking for services in a shelter may if they're women of color may have

56:11

other unmet needs and may be need in need of food they may not have stable housing at all and they may

56:18

be fleeing to this place because of interpersonal violence but also have this set of other issues

56:26

and those shelters ended up being unfunded this is actually directly a result of

56:31

the way that non-profits dependence on state funding and donors creates funding gaps

56:37

and it's true that marginalized groups suffer more but crenshaw's intervention wasn't to say let's give all people food

56:45

um or let's make sure everybody has a housing guarantee her intervention was to create a

56:51

framework to explain the erasure of women of color and the ways that their needs were particular because of other kinds of

56:57

oppressions like class race sexuality or cultural and political motivations like a sense of honor

57:03

the distrust of police and the inability to report because they were undocumented

57:08

so she she actually managed to change the nonprofit sector nonprofits

57:15

became more niche in order to provision these services and by their very nature they're

57:20

particularistic because they're courting the donor class and they're trying to get these grants

57:26

and the way that they apply for them has to be very specific and narrow um but the failure of the approach of

57:34

intersectionality is that rather than looking at a universal program and and seeing how

57:41

that could affect the most marginalized groups which could be an intersectional approach to universal programs and that would be

57:48

fine crenshaw takes more of an issue with the way that the funding structure allocates

57:54

resources and not the retrenchment of the federal government and state governments not

58:01

providing social services and that's not to her fault she was a lawyer she's writing this as an

58:06

intervention that's particular and very legalistic but the problem is the diversity industry

58:12

swallows these things up and part of that is because there's kind of a revolving door between

58:17

academia and particular fields in academia and then the diversity industry the

58:23

social justice and non-profit world and then the for-profit world and so you see these figures emerging

58:28

and emerging and crenshaw herself admits that the concept of intersectionality has spun way out of

58:34

what she initially meant but the issue here is that firms

58:40

particularly non-profits are always looking for a way to better serve their customers

58:48

that doesn't impact their bottom line and their bottom line is to have a

58:54

service to provide so they're advocating for these very narrow solutions

58:59

um and you see this lead to a particular emphasis on equity providing very different services to

59:07

different groups depending on a diverse set of needs rather than on liberation which would be

59:13

freeing people from hunger from housing instability or from dependence on relationships for

59:20

their well-being um so i'm gonna throw it over to jen to talk about

59:26

foundations okay so um yeah i mean i think this actually

59:31

like flows really well from what you just said about nonprofits having to adapt their agendas over time

59:37

um so you know i would say that uh or i mean i think that a lot of people probably agree that

59:43

foundations in many cases often end up shaping nonprofit agendas sometimes even more than the nonprofits

59:49

themselves because after all they're the ones with all the money uh they're the ones that the nonprofits have to rely on for funding right

59:56

so um just a quick definition of foundations i mean lots of people probably know this already but foundations are basically these giant

1:00:03

tax-exempt endowments of money that are governed by private boards and they give out money

1:00:08

you know to non-profits and individuals as an act of philanthropy so mark zuckerberg has a foundation um

1:00:15

bill and melinda gates famously have a foundation um and like i said they fund all kinds

1:00:21

of things sort of across the political and social spectrum and much like nonprofits i think in kind

1:00:28

of a best-case scenario um they do help fill a gap that's been

1:00:33

sort of left by the erosion of the public sector but that said foundations

1:00:39

also help perpetuate the retrenchment of the state because they don't pay taxes they often

1:00:45

function as these kinds of like tax shelters for billionaires and multi-millionaires um

1:00:51

you know the trump foundation is probably like the most cartoonish example like that's obviously just a

1:00:56

front for hiding money but even if you look at something like the gates foundation which i think is very um committed to you know

1:01:04

providing funding for education they have a 46 billion dollar endowment

1:01:09

and they're only required by law to pay out five percent of that annually so again this is just a big pile of

1:01:16

tax-free money that's sitting there and then um on top of that foundations

1:01:22

are sort of inherently anti-democratic because they have a lot of influence on sort of

1:01:28

public life and even the political system i think that they exert you know a lot of soft power

1:01:35

but they're run by these extremely wealthy founders and um you know a small handful of rich

1:01:41

or at least affluent board members who kind of decide what agenda they're gonna set uh with

1:01:47

obviously no input from like voters or the general public um so there's there's obviously

1:01:53

been a lot of really great research and writing on foundations so i like won't linger on the drawbacks of

1:01:58

the philanthropy model too much um but i do want to say um you know um

1:02:04

over the last couple of months a number of foundations have sort of publicly recommitted to racial justice

1:02:10

so uh you saw the open society foundation which was founded by george soros

1:02:16

they recently pledged 220 million to racial justice and to black-led organizations

1:02:22

um the ford foundation i think a little before that uh said they were giving one billion dollars to

1:02:27

racial justice work um and just today susan sandler who owns a foundation um and who's kind of this like liberal

1:02:34

philanthropist who donated to cory booker and i think kamala harris um she announced that her foundation is

1:02:40

going to be giving 200 million dollars to racial justice initiatives as well oh and i think that um mckenzie scott uh

1:02:48

the former wife of jeff bezos who's now the richest woman in the world i think she was like i'm i'm also giving like a

1:02:54

billion dollars to um to racial justice initiatives so kale can we do the first ford foundation

1:03:01

slide so right after the ford foundation announced their commitment or their big

1:03:07

pledge to racial justice they released a statement and this is a quote drawn from that statement

1:03:12

and i'll just read it out loud quickly so um two program officers at the ford foundation wrote the twin pandemics of

1:03:20

cabin 19 and systemic racism have thrust the challenges black people across the diaspora face into sharp relief

1:03:27

but anti-blackness and the struggle for freedom and racial equality globally is nearly as old as white supremacy

1:03:33

itself at the ford foundation we are proud to support individuals and organizations worldwide

1:03:38

that are forging the path to freedom equality and justice in the u.s and abroad and like that's that's pretty

1:03:45

radical language right like that that again is a departure from the kind of feel-good multiculturalism

1:03:50

diversity of the 90s however kale can we get the second word

1:03:56

foundation slide so this is something that uh ford foundation president darren walker

1:04:01

said just a few years earlier um so he wrote let us bridge the philosophies of smith

1:04:07

um adam smith and carnegie and king and break the scourge of inequality

1:04:12

for when we do to paraphrase another of dr king's most powerful insights we will at last bend the demand curve

1:04:20

for justice and i like i love this quote because i think it kind of perfectly illustrates it's

1:04:27

amazing right like it perfectly illustrates the motivations and the limitations of foundations so

1:04:33

like you know for the most part i think even the ones that say oh we're committed to solving inequality whether that's

1:04:39

economic inequality or you know racial inequality um and even when they use this very radical or

1:04:45

activist language they're really only interested in doing that within the bounds of the market um and then by extension because you

1:04:52

know um because they because they're so powerful and they set the terms of these non-profit agendas

1:04:58

just by virtue of controlling the purse strings like you can see how this type of agenda which is to say uh this this uh sort of

1:05:06

um dynamic where you can be like really radical on race but at the same time still want to keep capitalism intact

1:05:12

um i think cedric johnson calls this militant liberalism which is a great phrase um but you can basically see how this

1:05:18

bleeds out to the rest of the non-profit world so absolutely yeah um good stuff

1:05:27

i mean i think okay so i think on that note um because we're kind of running up on our time like let's just take a couple minutes to

1:05:33

kind of wrap up and say like what does make sense perhaps in the workplace since we spent like all our time

1:05:38

like talking about the things that are about all the negative things just one more negative thing just one more negative thing

1:05:44

um there's a great quote that i found in a book for hire that explains exactly the

1:05:51

dynamic you're talking about and i think it distills the role that they have so it um he

1:05:56

writes in liberal welfare state regimes non-profit service organizations emerge to fulfill

1:06:02

three key functions one they supplement government provision obvious two they can reinforce the prevailing

1:06:09

government policy emphasizing work norms self-sufficiency and markets and three

1:06:14

they can serve as a vehicle for pushing expanded government provision so your explanation i think

1:06:21

really focused in on too and i think it's really important because none of these firms regardless

1:06:26

of the intentions of the people that work within them can actually achieve long-term changes

1:06:32

for the people who receive their services they cannot do it you know like the ford foundation isn't

1:06:39

saying well we're just gonna give everyone a house or right we're gonna build free public

1:06:45

housing that's locally controlled and democratically controlled like they're not controlled yeah they're

1:06:52

never they're never gonna say that no i mean it's like what you were saying about the non-profits like it has to be more

1:06:57

particularistic than that at least in their schema so yeah yeah okay so what actually works so um i'm

1:07:05

just going to keep this really brief but i i do want to say that you know just as we have a lot of research that shows that

1:07:12

anti-racism training doesn't really work um the good news is that we also have a large body of research that shows

1:07:18

um what does work and basically what works um and this is like a little boring and

1:07:23

like not you know not that exciting but what works is when you put people to work with each

1:07:29

other on a common project as equals that tends to reduce bias that tends to reduce stereotyping

1:07:35

um and i think that the simplicity of that is is really interesting because as you had sort of mentioned earlier

1:07:42

like what's the best way to get people working together on a common project toward you know a

1:07:47

common goal as equals in the workplace the answer is unions um and uh i think megan day recently

1:07:55

wrote an article in jacobin sort of looking at a different study that recently came out that shows that lo and behold unions

1:08:02

reduce white workers prejudice and then of course we also know that unions famously

1:08:08

help to reduce or shrink pay gaps between men and women in the workplace they also help shrink

1:08:14

pay disparities between black workers and white workers um and you know i think it goes without

1:08:20

saying that we can't just snap our fingers and like unionize every every workplace like it's easier said than done

1:08:27

but i guess the takeaway is like when you look at the scorecard between anti-racism training and unions and look

1:08:34

at what they've actually achieved in terms of making things better in the workplace especially for workers of

1:08:40

color unions win yeah i've got a great anecdote about this for my aunt who

1:08:45

worked at a tobacco factory and she said that a plant had closed

1:08:52

and they were relocating the workers to the factory that she worked in which was mostly black people

1:08:57

and the people coming in were mostly white and when they got in they were you know feeling precarious and

1:09:03

potentially threatened and so they were like working late for free they were going above and beyond

1:09:09

kind of like sucking up to the managers and people got really mad because they were like why are you coming in here as

1:09:14

new workers and like disrupting what we've built here and instead of you know any racial

1:09:22

animosity arising out of it all of the black workers who were very active in their union invited them all

1:09:27

to a meeting and they were like listen we run this factory they don't run it they don't get to tell you what to do

1:09:34

we didn't work 15 years in this place and and start this union to let these other

1:09:40

people tell us what we got to do she was like my aunt was telling me you know she said

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we know better than they do we don't have to depend on them for anything yeah that role

1:09:51

it worked it worked and another example comes from my grandma who was a pediatric nurse who went on

1:09:58

strike with the other nurses in her unit and she said there was no color on the picket line and this was during jim crow yeah um

1:10:06

and i think these anecdotes also illustrate a broader point which is that when people are actually not in

1:10:12

competition which is so baked into these workplaces

1:10:18

including in non-profits they are more generous with each other

1:10:23

they work better together and they are more compassionate and accepting of other people

1:10:29

and i think you see this with um even studies in these firms these

1:10:36

for-profit firms the harvard business review said that one of the effective ways to reduce bias

1:10:42

was just to have like team management instead of one manager

1:10:48

so collective action in whatever iteration seems to be effective but the thing that

1:10:55

unions can do is they can make enduring change because even if you

1:11:01

have a diversity training that works for everybody you are still dependent on the goodwill

1:11:07

of the people who control your life for like your basic needs and

1:11:13

we can't have that focus we can't say oh we need to empower more generous people who then might leave and then what do we

1:11:19

have we have to start all over again it has to be rank and file demands that

1:11:25

can become institutionally um protected because they are brought into a union

1:11:34

contract 100 um i feel like we could definitely end on that note

1:11:41

on that last word um so thank you ariella and kale and toboskar and for the

1:11:46

jacobin team for putting this on um i had a lot of fun and thank you jen

1:11:51

could talk about this forever

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[Music]

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you