Diary Of A Mad Voter: Jessica Peck Corry

Denver’s Diversity Training Needs To Go

By Jessica Peck Corry, 11-29-07

Mean jokes can lead to hurt feelings. But portraying white men as racist, sexist slobs is perfectly acceptable.

This is the message public workers have been subjected to as part of a City of Denver employee-training video titled “Laughing Matters - Think About It.” In the eight-minute-piece, the main character is Billy, a white blue-collar worker. He walks around the office making fun of every minority imaginable.

The video opens with Billy mocking an Hispanic co-worker, Carlos, who is waiting for job supplies. Billy asks, “What’s his problem? He can’t sell breakfast burritos without the supplies or he takes a siesta?”

But Billy doesn’t stop there.  He rambles off a blonde joke.  He makes fun of homosexuals. He even belittles midgets.  Meanwhile, his innocent coworkers — mostly minorities — respond in shock. 

City officials say the video’s purpose is to show workers how inappropriate humor diminishes respect in the workplace. Really? We need a taxpayer-funded video to teach grown adults that mean jokes hurt the feelings of others?  But this video is about more than jokes.  It’s about spreading a message that whites are bigots.

According to Dennis Supple, a white city employee who works as an air-conditioning mechanic, the video is part of a larger effort to characterize white males in a negative light.

“Right now, their diversity program is racially motivated against white males” he told the Rocky Mountain News. “If you portrayed a black woman (or a Hispanic or a homosexual) in that manner, there’d be hell to pay,” he added. “But it’s OK for them to portray a white man in this manner because you put down one little (disclaimer) at the end of the (video) that says, ‘Remember, anybody could be Billy.’ That’s a bunch of bull.”

Fortunately, after Supple went public, the video was yanked from the line-up of the city’s employee training. But how many city employees saw the video and were shamed into silence? How many city officials saw the piece as it went through the production process and said nothing about the negative stereotypes perpetuated?

While the city issued a press release saying it was pulling the video, there was no apology from those responsible for perpetuating such ruthless stereotypes.
The video was developed by the city’s Diversity Advisory Committee. In the early days after Supple voiced his concern in the media last week, officials remained committed to its usage, saying they’d consider revising it in the next year or two.

They pointed out that it had won second place nationally in 2005 for “instruction/training” from the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors. I guess we’re supposed to be impressed that there are a whole lot of people in power out there who think it’s perfectly acceptable to perpetuate an image of whites as racists.

According to City Councilman Charlie Brown, the only official to express outrage at the content, the city spends $250,000 a year on promoting diversity. But if this diversity, taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to fund it.

Mayor John Hickenlooper, as a leader who has frequently indicated his commitment to a progressive social agenda, needs to take a stand. Simply dumping the video is not enough. In addition to offering an apology to offended city workers, he should issue an immediate moratorium on all diversity training.

If the tables were turned and minorities were presented in a negative light, he certainly would have commissioned a citizen task force to investigate all diversity-training materials and the impact they might have on protected classes.

But perhaps Hickenlooper’s silence is the result of attending one too many diversity sessions himself. After all, portrayals like those seen in the city’s video are the norm in training sessions across America. I know because I’ve attended dozens of them as part of my professional research on the negative impacts such training has on interracial interactions.

They perpetuate the extreme views of sociologists, as described in the Wikipedia entry on racism: “Some sociologists have defined racism as a system of group privilege. In ‘Portraits of White Racism’ David Wellman (1993) has defined racism as “culturally sanctioned beliefs, which, regardless of intentions involved, defend the advantages whites have because of the subordinated position of racial minorities....Sociologists Noel Cazenave and Darlene Alvarez Maddern define racism as “...a highly organized system of ‘race’-based group privilege that operates at every level of society and is held together by a sophisticated ideology of color/’race’ supremacy. Racist systems include, but cannot be reduced to, racial bigotry...Sociologist and former American Sociological Association president Joe Feagin argues that the United States can be characterized as a ‘total racist society’ because racism is used to organize every social institution...”

In sum, whites cannot escape their privilege. They are born racist and regardless of their actions, they benefit from a racist society. And to punish each and every one of them, they must endure a lifetime of diversity training.

While city employees in Denver and across the nation are being spoon-fed racist stereotypes, the joke is ultimately on taxpayers forced to fund such sessions. Supple is right that the video is “a bunch of bull.” But if history is any indicator, his outspoken criticism is only going to earn him more time in front of another TV screen spouting the virtues of an intolerant diversity ideology.

Editor’s note: Jessica Peck Corry’s weekly blogs are part of a new feature on NewWest.Net/Politics called “Diary of a Mad Voter,” a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. Check back this week at www.newwest.net/madvoter.

[End of article]

As a white male that is supposed to be so incensed by this diversity video training, let me be the first to say "oh bulls***."

I've worked plenty of blue collar jobs and a lot of the fellas I work with need this video. It is an embarrassment to hear these jerks tell jokes just like "Billy," the character in the video.

I watched the minute-thirty clip linked in the article and didn't see a thing that doesn't actually happen in the workplace, and that shouldn't be played as part of a diversity training video. Unless it gets a whole lot worse in eight minute version referenced, you can take your politics of outrage and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Thank you, Jessica, for having the intestinal fortitude to suggest that our always-politically-correct culture is outrageously hypocritical.

Although you, Carl, may be totally accurate in your comments regarding white male jerks in any workplace, you fail to recognize just how many of those same kind of jerks exist who are NOT white.

And that is where the hypocrisy begins.

It ends with an enormous number of examples proclaiming that racism is only a disease carried by those people who have white skin. It permeates society and if it all does not end up encouraging guilt and shame in our white-skinned children ~ for the simple reason that they were born with white skin ~ I do not know what would.

A prime example of "the rest of the story" hit the airwaves nightly awhile back on the Arsenio Hall late night show on TV. He frequently had famous guests on that talk show who were not white, as do all other interview shows. None of those persons were amongst the downtrodden, obviously. But the difference that you could count on happening almost every single night on his show was the "whitey bashing" that went on ~ often derogatory to the extreme with no holds barred ~ and those comments were never edited as they hit the airwaves. No white person would have dared to make such comments about any one who was not white; and, had they done so those comments would definitely not have been aired without editing.

We have seen many examples of white persons who did dare to make equally derogatory remarks in a public setting about non-white persons and they had HELL to pay for doing so. Can anyone recall a non-white person who had those same penalties to pay for a like-kind bashing of a white person?

And it is not just those overt types of hypocrisy that exist. Would anyone dare to start up a White Chamber of Commerce? ... or any other kind of a professional or private group with the word White in its name? Obviously they would be labeled "skin heads" if they did and nothing but the worst-of-the-worst would be attached to them all, assuming they did not end up charged with an actual crime.

Inappropriate behavior of any kind is not a Whites-Only club.

... or so it seems to me ...

Nice to see you got one thing right in your story - when you said (and I quote) "In sum, whites cannot escape their privilege. They are born racist and regardless of their actions, they benefit from a racist society." What you apparently missed is: it's not the fault of whites that they benefit from these racist systems. What I hope readers (and city employees across the country) will realize is: it IS our responsibility as whites to try and change the systems so that everyone is treated equally. Take a look around your staff-room, your lunch-room, your office - is the person at the top a white man? Is the second in command a white man? Most likely. Is it their fault they got there? No. They probably worked very hard. But don't pretend there aren't more white men in power than proportions would dictate - unless you're willing to say they deserve it because they are harder workers or smarter or learn better - in which case, go ahead and say it outright, so the rest of us know what you really think.

I've been to several diversity trainings and they've always made racial interactions much harder in the short term. But they've paid huge dividends in the long term. I wish you'd attended some as a participant and not just as a close-minded observer.

I've read your essay...as a white woman who has seen racism to be a national and international problem of many centuries duration, I think its important to participate in this discussion of the portrayal of "all whites are racist...." I do believe that white priviledge extends to all people recognized as white in our country. This includes young children, newly arrived immigrants from Europe who are white, and even very poor whites. The white priveledge is the simple universal presumption that white people are superior, and if they receive more or succeed more than others, it is simply that they are better...The collorary to that concept is that if people of color were better they too would receive more and succeed more....This theory of inherent white superiority serves to cover the fact that many of the social structures in neighborhoods which are predominately made up of people of color are extremely substandard...So schools, medical facilities, economic opportunity, youth programs etc. often do not meet the needs of people, and so they do less well...become angry and hostile and it becomes easy to point a finger and say "See, they are less, and will always be so....."

While the diversity training video may have seemed offensive if it suggested that all white males are arrogant and insensitive, nevertheless, it's true that arrogance and insensitivity, by dominant cultural figures, ie white, straight, middle class, often male persons is a common experience for non-dominant persons.
Isn't that what Imus and Howard Stern, and all who support their shows all about...Wouldn't Bill of the video be an Imus-listener?
While I can respect the sensitivity of those who feel that white people might be offended by portrayals of people like Bill, what kind of sensitivity is required to appreciate the real hurt and anger experienced by those who Bill encounters and denigrates....

I truly believe that people of color suffer the consequences of racism, institutional and personal. But it is white people who historically and to the present actually do racism....I don't think racism will end until white people come to a deeper appreciation of how racial remarks/attacks/presumptions weaken our whole country...We are all less because of the lack of trust, honesty and social bonding which a strong country requires to move ahead.
Fear, anger, rage, denigration, hatred.....do not a great country make....And when the American Empire declines, I suspect history will say "they failed to develop all their resources, including their people power, because they only really developed some of their people and left a large portion to languish...."

I'm surprised someone didn't say it was biased to construction workers. I hate to see this white backlash! Whites are the majority. Racism started with whites. Whites need to change this racist system. This is a good video. It has to start somewhere. If you don't like the way the city is trying to make our workplaces better, than, please find a better way - don't just stop a good thing.