Diversity Training

I have been reflecting on Diversity and Diversity Training recently. As usual, this post is my thinking aloud on the subject. In particular, I am no expert on this one, and am interested if others think I am on the wrong track here.

A while back, I was running some change workshops for a large organisation, for a number of teams who were facing a serious and unwanted change.

As we planned them, the responsible senior manager mentioned that we would also have to include some diversity training, as it was that organisation's policy that all their training should include diversity training (I understand that there was some history behind that policy, of the organisation falling foul of discrimination legislation).

I was clear that I am not particularly well-informed on the subject: my idea of diversity training would be that we should be nice to everyone, whether we agree with, or approve of, them or not.

However, we realised that we needed to do something a little more substantial, and so the corporate diversity champion was invited to contribute. He agreed to do a half hour slot on each of the workshops.

He was a charming gay man, who entertained the group by starting his session singing an operatic aria: he had a fine tenor voice. He then told us a little of his history as a gay man in a world that was often prejudiced against gay men. He told us how hurtful it was when social workers had questioned him about his relationship, when he was seeking to adopt children. He ended with a plea that we should all campaign for equal marriage (this was before the legislation).

Afterwards, the senior manager with whom I was working said that she had wanted to ask some questions, but had known that she could not. Her concern was that they could have been interpreted by him or by others present as homophobic, and that would have been the end of her career.

I was reminded of all this when reading some of the debates surrounding Caitlyn Jenner, formerly Bruce Jenner, who has just been awarded Woman of the Year status by some magazine; and Germaine Greer's view that a man who decides he is a woman does not, thereby, become a woman. 

The odium heaped on Greer by some was extraordinary. She did not, so far as I could see, wish any ill on Jenner, or wish to deny him anything; she merely disagreed intellectually with him. And that gave me pause for thought. 

And what I thought was this:

Surely diversity cannot mean that we must all agree with everyone about everything; it must mean that we cultivate the ability to work positively and compassionately with those with whom we disagree.

I liked the gay man who was the corporate diversity champion, and it is no fault of his if questioning any of his assertions is too risky for a senior manager. I sympathise with Caitlyn Jenner: I cannot imagine what he has gone through, but can well believe it to have been very difficult.  

However, what both these people, and much of the diversity industry, seem to me to want is not just sympathy and understanding, but approval and unquestioning agreement with their worldview.

When one has been oppressed and hurt, I can see how easy it is to conflate disagreement and dislike: but in fact they are not the same thing.

And when it comes to diversity training: it seems to me that it is all too often promoting homogeneity of view rather than debating and, dare I say it respecting, diversity of view.

The pinch point comes when you get students at a University who are so wound up by this, that they wish to make the University a 'safe space' - a space into which views that they do not like cannot intrude. That seems to me to be the antithesis of a University, and I was glad to see the Vice Chancellor at Cardiff tread that difficult line of robustly defending free speech, whilst also positively affirming the University's commitment to equality and diversity.