Diversity Training May Be Booming Through 2022
Our collective interpersonal courtesy is out of practice due to quarantine
America will always be fabulous so long as we continue striving to fulfill America’s unkept promise. Endeavoring with the knowledge that even though we may never feel the shade of the seeds we sow, other will experience a more perfect union
Given the recent series of fan attacks against NBA players & the overall decline in interpersonal racial diversity reported over the past year… diversity rehabilitation & training personnel are going to be working overtime this Fall.
Many of our auto-pilot sensibilities/ courtesies in intergroup relations may have to be relearned given that many monoracial people in racially diverse societies just lived through the least racially diverse year of their lives.
Why I Wear Glasses & My Vaccine Passport
I wear my CDC vaccine passport for the same reason that I wear glasses instead of contact lenses: it’s a salient way to communicate to people that *I’m safe* (Social Utilitarianism 101)
Race Ratio vs Sex Ratio
Sex ratios that don’t take community racial diversity into account assume a non-normative level of disassortative mating exists.
Race Ratios matter when discussing the Sex Ratio, unless
(1) you’re conducting research in a non-diverse country/state/municipality, or
(2) you assume that racial homophily doesn’t exist anymore & we now live in a utopia where a Black kid walking home eating skittles won’t be killed because someone thought the neighborhood is too nice for him to have any reason to be in, or that a Black professor/researcher won’t have a custodian open/enter his office without consent & proceed to bring armed officers to his office 45 minutes later because he looked suspicious due to working at one of America’s top universities while Black.
Affective Habituation (from mid-June 2020)
Our feelings for Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud, & George were going to pass at some point.
The deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, & (on my birthday, which I celebrated with my mom & my dad named George) George Floyd & sparked the release of long-tempered passions within the hearts of a diverse array of our fellow Americans & people around the world. For many, those passions will slowly show deference to our neural necessity of homeostasis. And that is okay: the unbearable grief & anguish we feel in the face of moral atrocities — the image of yet another body like mine in the posture of death in the street — needn’t last forever. What is critical is that we focus our resolve at this moment on introducing certain ideas into the sphere of conversational legitimacy.
Racial Trauma is one such concept. As is the reality that as America becomes ever more diverse our research & policy discussions must consider social processes beyond the scope of America’s original sin. The historical context of White-Black relations is critical as a baseline, but for too long we have treated the baseline like it’s the finish line. We are too diverse of a country for our discussions of intergroup relations to remain that limited, as though agnostic to the discrimination experienced by Hispanic & Asian Individuals, and the reality of interminority prejudice among minority groups (often in the form of Colorism).
In short, our emotions will reset. Right now an alarm is going off in our hearts but at some point our neural circuitry will begin to ‘cover its ears’ & we’ll turn our attention elsewhere. Thus, while we are within the womb of these overwhelming moments, let us strive to ensure that morally productive outcomes are yet borne from the labors of our collective civic virtue.
Intraracial infidelity is tolerated more easily than interracial infidelity (Shelton, P. R., 2003).
the literature has largely overlooked a distinct and potentially critical action that minorities might take to try to avoid anticipated discrimination: changing how they present themselves — especially in relation to racial cues” (Kang et al., 2016, p. 3).
…it does ‘‘not reveal the extent to which [minority] individuals change their behavior to avoid experiencing discrimination’’ (Blank et al., 2004: 112; see Pager and Pedulla, 2015). Thus the nature and consequences of the actions that racial minority job seekers might take in anticipation of discrimination remain incompletely understood.
Diversity ≠ Inclusion
— “Tredoux et al. (2005) in public seating areas, people of different ethnoracial backgrounds preferred to occupy different regions of the steps & this pattern recurred across observational intervals, but varied according to local population density on the steps (lower density tended to produce higher segregation). Frame-by-frame analysis of patterns of entry over time also suggested that this pattern was driven primarily by the seating choices made by Whites rather than by Blacks.”
“In a simple but poignant illustration, Holmes (1995) had school children draw a picture of themselves and others in the classroom and found that, revealingly, they positioned members of other racial groups slightly further away from self than classmates of the same race.”
The Periodic Table of Excuses (Jarryd)
“It’s not about race because…”
“It’s not sexism because…”
“It’s not biphobia/transphobia/homophobia because…”
Another reason why i often don’t even bother sharing. I already know that The Periodic Table of Excuses will be thoroughly considered before they truly bother considering what I experienced.
If the friendship with the person is important, then not sharing it with them is strategic as it removes the possibility that they will become distant due to feeling awkward about the conversation. Given the importance of socioemotional support following racial trauma, not sharing such events with your most logistically relevant friends helps preserve/ensure their social proximity within the temporal window in which you need their presence most.
In this way, they would be providing support indirectly as they would have no idea what happened. That’s fine — spending time with them reduces psychological distress, which improves immune functioning, which lowers one’s risk of developing an infection & (if infected) shortens the duration of the illness.
Random Thought.
Posting a black square is allyship practice; responding in an anti-racist way to a friend who has actually experienced racial trauma is the game.
Some friends are practice heroes. And that’s fine in most contexts, but don’t put them in the starting 5 for an actual game. Your starters should be limited to the people you know “get it”
(Response to Rebecca Stevens A.)
Getting a Taxi While Asian/Black/Hispanic
Johnny Silvercloud — On Sexism, U.S. Army Proves Re-Training As “Punishment” Doesn’t Work (assume direct quotes)
“Perhaps with some things, re-training works. If someone attempted to plug an undocumented personal thumb drive into an official computer? You can re-train that guy. But sexual harassment, sexual assault? No. There’s more than enough training that took place as is. If I remember correctly, SHARP training in the military is quarterly, four times a year.
There’s a measure of basic human decency that should prevent anyone from inflicting sexist offenses. You only need to be told once, if one needs to be told at all. Anyone who commits an infraction, in this case, is someone who already has an immense measure of disrespect for women. They need to be held accountable, not “re-trained.
Many social deviants look forward to the re-training because they know it’s a waste of time. Many social deviants are okay with the re-training because they know such a thing doesn’t affect their career.”
“Offenders Need Accountability, Not More PowerPoint Slides”
Jarryd: The retraining feels particularly useless when the perpetrator never actually provides an apology (even if to be communicated through the Harassment Prevention department) to the person(s) that he/she harmed.
Moreover, leaving them in place provides them the opportunity to create a hostile climate for the person(s) who reported them for racial profiling.
Racial Intercepts 101
Since society places Blacks lower on the racial intercept, Black NFL retirees seeking award for brain injury have to work harder to prove a cognitive deficit.
They have to prove the deficit isn’t due to dark skin.
