Diversity Training Gone Wild

Via Rogier Van Bakel http://www.bakelblog.com/nobodys_business/2006/05/proud_moments_i.html
comes a link to the Seattle Public Schools’ policies on race. Of interest is the definition of racism set out in the policy:
“Racism:The systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have relatively little social power in the United States (Blacks, Latino/as, Native Americans, and Asians), by the members of the agent racial group who have relatively more social power (Whites). The subordination is supported by the actions of individuals, cultural norms and values, and the institutional structures and practices of society.”
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/equityandrace/definitionofrace.xml

I get it that racism is usually directed at non-whites, but is it really helpful to define racism in such a way that it is impossible to be racist toward whites? Moreover, the definition itself seems racist at its very core. It speaks of racial “groups” instead of “categories” and in doing so implies that race is, in fact, a valid organizing principle. A non-racist approach would specify that race or ethnicity is a “category”, i.e. a single characteristic by which a person may be classified for some limited purpose but which does not necessarily signify anything else.

Note that the definition treats all “Whites” as a monolithic “group” and implies that there are no whites who might have relatively little social power (an error that watching an episode of “Cops” will disabuse one of). Of course, since the subordination must be “systematic”, it takes little note of individual circumstances and complexities.

Van Bakiel quotes the definition of “Cultural Racism”:

“Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.”

Here, the policy compounds its earlier error by suggesting that “Whiteness” is associated with a set of values, norms and other characteristics such as “individualism” and “future time orientation”. The clear implication is that other racial “groups” have, as part their race, sets of norms and values that differ from those of whites. This is as racist as it gets, in my view. The policy claims that there is something about “whiteness” or “membership” in any racial “group” that goes beyond the accident of having ancestors from Europe, Africa, the Americas, or Asia.

This has always infuriated me about doctrine among diversity trainers. They seek to attack racism by acknowledging the significance of race while encouraging white people to raise awareness and make nice. That is certainly a worthy goal, and it is true that white people are often oblivious to the problems of racism endured by non-whites; however, I reckon that it is more desirable to raise consciousness among whites without feeding them a line of crap about how there really are races that come with race specific norms and values. I recall a diversity trainer’s teaching that black people are just naturally more rooted in the present while white folks look to the future, that black folks are more loving while white folks are acquisitive, that black folks are more sensual and white folks more austere. She taught this as if it were undisputable fact and not the least offensive and certainly not racist (since she was black, she could not by definition harbor racist views).

There is nothing, aside from phenotype, that unites folks of various races. White people and black people and people of all hues enjoy a diversity of values, norms and tendencies without any connection to their race. It makes as much sense to lump people together on the basis of height or weight or favorite pizza topping. And asking people to believe that the actions of people in racial categories are determined by their race is going to reinforce racism, not defeat it. The message ought to be that race, for most purposes, ought not to signify, that folks ought not to be prejudged on the basis of their phenotype. To do so is irrational.

We’ve all heard standup comedians riff, sometimes with great hilarity, sometimes not so much, on the differences between white folks and black folks, but we all know that these are gross, albeit funny, generalizations. We also know that cultural characteristics may be shared by folks who have shared experiences such as growing up poor and black in the city or white and middle class in the suburbs. What is not remarked upon is that the existential circumstances of growing up poor make poor whites and poor blacks much more similar in many ways than either is to more affluent folks of any race. Being rural, urban or suburban often means more than being black or white in terms of shaping values and preferences. To focus on the perceived correlates of race is the height of racism.

Racism is the attribution of other characteristics to persons of a particular race other than those following from their shared ancestry, eg vulnerability to particular diseases. The kind of diversity policy promulgated by Seattle’s Schools is itself racist. It is akin to declaring: “I don’t judge a man by the color of his skin; rather, I judge him by the texture of his hair and the width of his nostrils.”