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In DU's diversity training I was getting weird vibes all throughout and I think I figured out why. All the questions and scenarios assumed those being discriminatory were ignorant and acting in good faith. That's simply not how discrimination and harassment occurs all the time 1/
Whenever I've confronted someone about behavior that is offensive or problematic and they're simply ignorant it usually takes a little bit of conversation and then the behavior is corrected. However, for those times when I've experienced harassment it's not in good faith. 2/
No matter how many times you correct them or try to engage in conversation they refuse to correct their behavior, and only will do so when the social cost outweighs their own personal investment in those actions. This is willful ignorance and is not covered in the training. 3/
There's also a strange focus on prevention to increase productivity. Maybe this is just me but preventing harassment and discrimination is right because it stops harm and can change attitudes not because it increases how productive someone is. 4/
The only time I see increasing productivity being valid reasoning is purely when trying to appeal to employees who don't believe harassment and discrimination is wrong on ethical or moral grounds, and in that case I don't want to be working with that person. 5/
There's also a general vibe of tone policing throughout. Being polite and patient is important in dialogue but it's really not ok to police those affected by harassment on how to talk to those who are doing the harassment. @kcrowe has a great thread on this topic. 6/
Finally, there was a survey question about whether you identify as a member of the LGBTQ+ community where the options were, "'Yes', 'No', 'No but I identify as an ally', and 'Prefer Not to Say'." We need more demo info for queer people but this is off. 7/
To me it feels like if under the question about race/ethnicity they gave white people a specific option to say, "White, but I identify as an ally". This is about demographic info, not soothing cishet folks who want a reason to feel nice when filling out a survey. 8/
I could see this being good option if you, like me, identified as an ally before coming out but I don't think this is the right way to measure that group. It might be better to just state strenuously that the survey info is anonymous to reduce fear of being outed. 9/
Overall the content of these modules is pretty good but a few things were off and I wanted to walk through them and explain what I think could be improved here. I'm happy DU is finally mandating diversity training, but this seems more likely to soothe the admin's conscience 10/
by offering evidence that DU is taking action but failing to address the structural and leadership changes needed to actually address discrimination. 11/11
