DEI training is worse than useless if it’s not done well. In yesterday’s post, I talked about how I was unwillingly dragged into being a DEI trainer when I was a ‘mere’ admin assistant for a DEI department (or the equivalent thereof before DEI was officially a thing).
I was supposed to just deal with paperwork, more or less, but my boss discovered that I’m really fucking good at other things–like writing and computer-related things that she did not want to do. As I said in yesterday’s post, she was in over her head and really should not have been in the position.
The one thing I learned while doing DEI training was that most of it was shitty. This was thirty years ago, and while it may have gotten better since then, I think it still probably sucks. I mentioned it at the end of the last post that I came up with an idea for a diversity town in which people who are now in the majority (cis het white Christian dudes) expreienced life as the minority for a month.
I want the actual minorities to treat the people in the majority the way they themselves have been treated, no holds barred. It’s nearly impossible to explain to someone what life is like as a minority, especially as a multiple one. There are some people who have empathy, but there are more who do not. And there are a big number of people who haven’t had to be empathetic. The same people who would benefit from diverrsity town.
The reason I dismissed it was because, well, there were several reasons. One, it’s not very ethical to fuck with people like that. Two, it would take an astronomical amount of money. Three, it would be really difficult to govern. Four, crimes would happen. I’m just speculating on the last, but I’m pretty certain that it would happen. Or rather, there would be no way to guarantee that it wouldn’t happen.
Those ore the four off the top of my head. I am sure there are many more that I haven’t thought of–such as not being allowed to do any such thing. Also, people who are in the majority are already afraid of how they’d be treated if they truly were in the minority. This certainly would not help in that area.
I think it would be a good way to really open people’s eyes to prejudice, though. And I would make sure that they got to experience ALL the harrassment, microaggressions, gaslighting, and other delightful bullshit that minorities have to go through. Which, again, is neither ethical nor moral. And probably not legal, either.