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Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

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Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#41

Post by nailer »

wzdd wrote: post #15
nailer wrote: post #2

Keep in mind the racist content wasn’t from Coca Cola (as the headline implies) but rather a LinkedIn Learning contributor based on the work of Robin DiAngelo. All material based on Robin DiAngelo’s work has since been removed from LinkedIn learning: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eu4u1VUWgAENWKd?format=jpg

> Dr. DiAngelo was not the creator or facilitator of the LinkedIn Learning course “Confronting Racism, with Robin DiAngelo.” She was unaware that her name, image, and work were being presented in this way and did not participate in or agree to the creation and distribution of an educational resource based on her research. Source: https://www.robindiangelo.com/

Thanks, I’ve updated my post accordingly. Note however that the training course accurately reflects DiAngelo’s racist views.

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#42

Post by throwaway803453 »

"In the U.S. and other Western nations, white people are socialized to feel that they are inherently superior because they are white," one of the slides read. "Research shows that by age 3 to 4, children understand that it is better to be white."

And the problem is these kids grow up and then one day have a female boss, or minority boss and if they aren't prepared they add subtle dysfunction to the team and it bruises their ego. I see this even today with my team, one of our employees seems to resent and refuse to learn from our developers in Central America. Or a buddy of mine that can't seem to understand the woman on his team is his boss and not his peer/subordinate so she should get to make the final decision.

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#43

Post by [deleted] »

insickness wrote: post #38

From the third slide: > To be less white is to: > > - be less oppressive > - be less arrogant > - be less certain > - be less defensive > - be less ignorant > - be more humble > - listen > - believe > - break with apathy > - break with white solidarity Basically associating everything negative with being white. If this is not racism, I don't know what is.

[deleted]

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#44

Post by someonehere »

philistine wrote: post #3

The quote in the title of the article is really an inappropriate way to try to describe inclusiveness. It’s not about being less, it’s about including others more.

So if I had kids and they were white and they pushed this on them in grade school, my kids should walk away feeling guilty for who they are? That’s some twisted logic sadly with how the US is treating this.

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#45

Post by mc32 »

insickness wrote: post #38

From the third slide: > To be less white is to: > > - be less oppressive > - be less arrogant > - be less certain > - be less defensive > - be less ignorant > - be more humble > - listen > - believe > - break with apathy > - break with white solidarity Basically associating everything negative with being white. If this is not racism, I don't know what is.

Wow! That’s incredible. How does something like this pass muster? Hey let’s find every negative stereotype about a class of people and let’s tell them to be less of that stereotype! Nice.

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#46

Post by chewmieser »

This is from LinkedIn's learning portal, which is used by numerous companies (like Coca-Cola). The training claims to be created by Dr. Robin DiAngelo (author of books such as White Fragility). Dr. DiAngelo has a statement on her website claiming that she had nothing to do with this content and it was created without her consent:

Dr. DiAngelo was not the creator or facilitator of the LinkedIn Learning course “Confronting Racism, with Robin DiAngelo.” She was unaware that her name, image, and work were being presented in this way and did not participate in or agree to the creation and distribution of an educational resource based on her research.

The course consisted of a selection of clips from an interview Dr. DiAngelo did for the outlet Big Think in 2018, in promotion of her book. The videos were re-edited and presented as an anti-racism training resource by LinkedIn Learning, who licensed the clips from Big Think. She did not provide the slides that were included with the video, and they do not represent the work she does for her virtual or in-person presentations, trainings, and workshops.

The course was removed voluntarily by the owners and creators of the content when it was brought to their attention that it was being used without her knowledge.

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#47

Post by [deleted] »

insickness wrote: post #38

From the third slide: > To be less white is to: > > - be less oppressive > - be less arrogant > - be less certain > - be less defensive > - be less ignorant > - be more humble > - listen > - believe > - break with apathy > - break with white solidarity Basically associating everything negative with being white. If this is not racism, I don't know what is.

[deleted]

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#48

Post by seneca »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #23
sokoloff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that instruction was contextually intended to support non-white employees who felt like they had to "play white" in order to succeed, I think the advice is generally good ("be yourself"). If that was contextually directed primarily towards white employees, it's offensive and inherently racist. I didn't (and now can't) see the context, but context matters. "White before black" is offensive/racist in many contexts,…

Funny how people are jumping out of the woodwork to defend racism. There's literally no context where attributing qualities to people based on their skin color is OK. When did we go back to the 1950s? I sure hope you don't feel comfortable being this racist in real life.

> There's literally no context where attributing qualities to people based on their skin color is OK.

Strongly disagree. Talking about likelihood of having sickle cell anemia without talking about race would be absurd.

This probably sounds pedantic, but my point is that we should stop all of these emotionally charged over reactions, on both sides. Saying "attributing any characteristic based on skin color is racist" is almost as absurd as what you're arguing against. There has to be room for nuance.

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#49

Post by rayiner »

I first heard this notion of trying to "be less white" in the context of Robin DiAngelo: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/anti-racist-education-is-anything.... I found it alarming, but people assured me she was just a crackpot. To see such rhetoric become normalized enough to be presented in training materials for a Fortune 500 company is truly disturbing.[1]

Rhetoric like this is deeply problematic, especially for mixed-race people: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/anti-racist-education-is-anything.... About 1 in 6 children today are mixed race, and most of them have some white ancestry. What does it mean to a mixed-race person to tell them to "be less white?" I don't want my half-white daughter being told "be less white." (More like me, less like my wife?)

The thing is--if some random guy on the street said it, like when someone yelled "go back home" to my wife and daughter, I could shrug that off. You can't eliminate bigotry from society completely. But educated people normalizing this sort of rhetoric in Fortune 500 companies is intolerable. That's bigotry backed by a theoretical and ideological framework. That's something I can't just shrug off. I have been reading Thomas Chatterton Williams (an American writer of mixed heritage who now lives in France) lately. In my view, he has the better take on this: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/part-of-a-larger-battle-....

We also can't overlook what this rhetoric does to ordinary white people. "Be less white" is easy to say for educated and privileged white people like Robin DiAngelo. They aren't bothered by the implications of this because of their own status and security. They see it as harmless "punching up." Let me tell you, that's not how my grandmother in-law perceives it. To her, "white privilege" is an academic abstraction. She grew up in real poverty and never went to college. By contrast, "be less white" is quite easy to understand as a statement of overt racism. And, perplexingly to her, its overt racism that's evidently being given sanction at the highest levels of our society.

[1] An excellent assessment of DiAngelo's book: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizi....

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#50

Post by nobodyCloak »

Honestly seeing the comments on here makes me feel a little better about life. Even if there are people out there who want to judge me literally by the color of my skin and not the content of my character, I’m happy there are still a lot of people here who don’t want to go back to the 1950s way of looking at race (or heaven forbid to the racially-focused social Darwinism that caused so much suffering in the early and mid-20th century in so many countries).
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