DEI Bart DEI

As Toni Morrison once told us, the real purpose of racism is distraction, so we (I'm Black) have to keep proving ourselves again and again and again

JPB Gerald

Boy, the latter portion of this episode sure hits harder these days... "So the end goal is not, like, the abolition of diversity trainings... ... but what they're doing is trying to create a framework whereby any person of color's position is inherently suspect, right? ***Their merit is perpetually in question.*** It's not about workplace trainings, it's about building a socio-cultural mechanism for reinforcing the existing hierarchy."

Tonelica

It was George HW Bush who appointed Clarence Thomas and all this time I've been blaming it on Clinton.

Shaw3na

These guys have given me so many brain worms (metaphorically, I'm not RFK jr)

Elaine

There's a technician fixing the dishwasher in my work kitchen right now, displaying his plumbers' crack in all its glory and all I can think about is swiping my credit card. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY BRAIN?!!!

Kerrie Murphy

Release the full identity trap!

Jordan McFadden

Ugh! My conservative brother came at me with this "they're telling people to be less white at work. How is that at all acceptable. We can't tell people to be less black, that'd be racist. DEI is racist!" I really want to sit him down and make him listen to this episode.

Katie B.

Oh hey the audio cut at the end 😱

Musse

I want you to go on the podcast. Say more about that please!!!!

Guinevere Sims

Long suffering HR Manager here - the dumb shit people will put on company emails is truly beyond belief

Michelle Lucas

The comments in this episode on the discussion on whiteness in diversity trainings seems pretty dismissive. Did you actually call a document on critical whiteness "stupid" twice? Also naming Krenshaw and not saying anything about her introducing the concept of intersectionality, which is central to any discussion of discrimination, seems strange.

Gwen

Ahh yes my favorite gluten free podcast

Casey Smith

At some point that credit card has to become biohazardous.

John McFadin

I’m so glad they brought up the office diversity episode, I always tell people the scene with Michael asking Oscar if there was anything other than Mexican he could call him because of the “connotation” it had is “*MWAH* chefs kiss representation of being a POC in white corporate America lmao

Yuri

Yes.

Heidi Antolick

Brilliant episode, as usual. Also, is “trainings” a word?

Mark Hull

Is anyone else having trouble accessing part two?

Phoebe

"Mega flu" OMG, me too, Michael! 101 fever on Christmas Eve and was on the floor for a month after that.

I listened to this episode when it came out (almost a month ago), then someone just mentioned something that made me want to find a source from this podcast, and now I'm realizing there are no sources. This is such a research-focused podcast that I never guessed I wouldn't be able to get links to sources on the Patreon!! Sure, I could listen to the whole thing again and write down when specific books or articles are mentioned, but that's a lot of work and you guys are always talking about your "notes". Am I not in the right tier or something?

Can we get a shen yun bonus?

Not specific to this episode, but for the main episodes, how do they absorb anything from these types of books? This isn’t a philosophical question. I have three leadership books that I have to read for work, and I can’t make it more than two paragraphs without completely zoning out. Help!

I thought this was about the San Francisco Bart lol

yema

Not related to this episode, but listening to Dr Jen Gunter (candidate for if books could save lives, IMHO) on Conspirituality pod this morning and they all-- pod Hosts Dr G, and Dr Gunter's husband gave love and shout-out to IBCK podcast. Yay! https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vR0xTUzExMjIzODk4NDI/episode/NzAzYzc4NDgtY2FhZi0xMWVlLTg4ZDktOTM1NjM2NWQ0ZWQy?ep=14

Erin Peterschick

My company also does this. I joined about 2 years ago so I don’t know if we ever had that issue, but, in my experience, ours ended up pretty progressive. We occasionally have someone go off the hinges and get upset at something that doesn’t affect them but everything is pretty wholesome out of these BRG’s.

The company I work for had "Business Resource Groups" focused around different types of identities - there was one for women, one for LGBT+, one for BIPOC, one for veterans, etc. the program was kind of new and being developed from the bottom up so the roles of those groups weren't super defined yet. Then the company expanded and apparently the new branches wanted to start BRGs for like, white supremacy shit, so the company freaked out and shut all of them down indefinitely. They've hired a DEI consultant to review the structure of those groups and come up with an official way to regulate and approve them but it's now been like a year and a half of just no BRGs at all because the process is taking so long.

Max LePage

It was mostly people who thought they were doing the right thing, too.

coffinrehearsal

Coming out and transitioning in the workplace was really annoying because everyone did sort of make it the focus of conversations with me, when realistically I was just there to enter data.

coffinrehearsal

Yes! Please consider making this free as a special treat so I can have more success pressuring my coworkers to listen to this 🙏🏻

Oh my god - I really want to play this to people at work. I want you to be paid for your work - is there any way you could permit a pay per download on individual bonus episodes? I would buy it 10 times to gift to people! I’m a trade union rep with more than a decade doing workplace equality. I work in a large UK government department. I have a background in human rights. So much here resonated with me!! Upon starting the equality work on behalf of the union, one of the first “victories” I found had been achieved by predecessors was a mandatory 1 hour online equality training. This is probably about 14 years ago - I don’t think it would’ve been unconscious bias themed yet at that stage - but it might’ve been. It was immediately obvious that not only was this not fixing any of our equality issues, it was actively countermanding them by 1) making the department think it had taken an action to fix issues and 2) people resented this mandatory requirement to do something patently patronising and stupid. Don’t get me wrong - I’m a dyed in the wool equality activist and I actually want stuff fixed. But all I’ve ever seen is lip service. Fast forward to now and of course as the Civil Service works for the government, the government has a unique ability to directly intervene in our work lives. Certain equality matters are now being crusaded against by the “anti-woke”. The department is still apparently trying to address equality issues. But nothing changes because fundamentally they fail to see it, treat it and address it as a systemic issue. It’s always treated as something for the individual if anything - latest initiatives are individual equality objectives being placed in our individual annual performance objectives, for example - I will call out racism when I see people saying racist things. This obviously totally misunderstands what we’re dealing with. In our workplace one of the major issues is that the higher up, the whiter, more male, more Oxbridge educated it is. It would be exceptionally rare for people to be saying expressly racist things to each other. Not saying that never happens - that’s naive in the extreme - but that’s not what’s causing our issue to fail to recruit and promote black people. These are different points. Also - listening circles. I won’t even go into what that is - I’m sure you can gather - but honestly, this will not fix anything. It probably just makes people feel worse tbh. So why can’t they get it right? I know that in the core role of what the Dept does it has experts - analysts, social scientists who are top quality. But they are never deployed in this area. It’s generally well meaning HR people with various levels of HR qualification. They haven’t the knowledge or the power to be able to really implement things that work. Maybe they just don’t even really know how. And honestly - all the Dept really wants to do is something they can point to but which costs nothing in cash terms and little in resource terms. It’s incredibly frustrating. And probably the same is true for union reps - certainly the lay union reps. They haven’t got a clue what works either and so they tend to get behind things that sound good but have no evidential basis. I honestly think some people think a session on biases and micro aggressions will stop people having them and expressing them. It drives me bonkers! Sorry - bit of a rant. But I’ve all but given up expecting any true commitment to deliver systemic change.

HEBP