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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

#61
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

There is clearly one area where your ethnicity/race matters: genetics. Your ethnicity can can be used to approximate genetic clustering and that is done to some degree within pharmacogenomics.

Apart from the that one carve-out, their point is correct.

However, ethnicity is only rough approximation for genetics as clustering is not perfect (obviously). Thus the cure for even this area is improved NGS testing.

So actually, their point is completly correct as-is.

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

#62

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.

It’s literally pulled from the training presentation. Would you have the same reaction if the presentation had said “Try to be less black”?

Yes, because telling people to "be less black" is racist.

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

#63

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…

The average person isn’t racist, isn’t sexist, and mostly just wants a decent deal for everyone. Unfortunately, those don’t make for attention-grabbing news headlines.

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

#64
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insulting and demeaning racial groups is the opposite of inclusion. It breeds resentment and hatred. For a time there was a focus on treating people as human and not as [racial/sex/religion] Trend these days is to encourage openly being a bigot, just as long as it’s against certain people. Replace the word white with any other social group and perhaps you’ll see the problem.

"White" isn't a racial group. "White" as an idea to describe a group of (roughly) light skinned European people, came about in order to justify enslaving and subjugating other groups. Various groups worked their way into being considered white over time, in part by contributing to the subjugation of others. And various groups once considered white, later were not considered so. "White" as what you call a "social grou…

You sound like klu klux klan members on Jerry Springer show trying to justify their bigotry.

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

#65

As an international entrepreneur, I am delighted that large US companies spend their time and attention on inconsequential and toxic identity politics. More opportunities for us to exploit their weakness, create real value and shape the future And it goes without saying that the future we create and control will have no place for this drivel

You make it sounds like non-American countries are going to take over America and then then rule over it with an iron fist. That being said I don't know how you'd create "real value" on top of what Coca-Cola does. They put sugar into water and sell it at absurd mark-ups.

I’m amazed that there is so much to do at Coca-Cola. You’d think by now the entire company would be a technician, a taste tester, and a marketer + an army of machines.

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

#66

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 “Confron…

That's great. Will Dr. Diangelo also retract and denounce her paper: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1065640.pdf where she states: > raising White children to be White is a form of child abuse Feel free to read the full context. So no, she may have not provided the slides. But yes, this is on point for her if you read even the smallest bit of her papers.

> raising White children to be White is a form of child abuse

That's off the rails! How many Fortune 500 companies were circulating her books in "recommended reading lists?"

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

#67

As an international entrepreneur, I am delighted that large US companies spend their time and attention on inconsequential and toxic identity politics. More opportunities for us to exploit their weakness, create real value and shape the future And it goes without saying that the future we create and control will have no place for this drivel

It doesn't work like that. You will be forced into compliance. Try creating a competing social network for example.

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

#68

As an international entrepreneur, I am delighted that large US companies spend their time and attention on inconsequential and toxic identity politics. More opportunities for us to exploit their weakness, create real value and shape the future And it goes without saying that the future we create and control will have no place for this drivel

In the culture war the U.S will come out on top like they always have. They are the kings of soft power and they fund academics to spread their ideology all over Europe. You can see it taking root in our universities. Unless our politicians wake up in a massive way we'll follow wherever America goes and it's not a trip I'm looking forward to.

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

#69

As an international entrepreneur, I am delighted that large US companies spend their time and attention on inconsequential and toxic identity politics. More opportunities for us to exploit their weakness, create real value and shape the future And it goes without saying that the future we create and control will have no place for this drivel

It really is like watching an empire die. Hyperfocused on obscure artificially-inflated issues while basic utilities cease functioning.

Racial inequality is not an "artificially inflated issue." Studies show that, despite reduction in de jure racism over the past 70 years, Black-white income gaps are large (with Black incomes being 19 percentile points below white incomes in the income distribution), and also persistent. Meanwhile, the incomes of other groups (Latinos, Asians) have or are in the process of converging with those of whites.

So there is a real, devilishly difficult problem here. But it's not going to be solved by telling people to "be less white." That's an insane non-solution to a real problem.

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

#70

Is there a definition of what it means to be white (or any other color for that matter)? EDIT: to the down voters - this is a serious question. First we need to know what DiAngelo means with being white. The statement 'be less white' implies that all white learners of her course exhibit some negative traits. What are those negative aspects? How else can you change if you don't know what you're doing wrong in her eyes…

One of the big problems with this entire conversation is the definition of terms. The word “white” has been defined hundreds of ways within the “woke” literature and multicultural academics - some of them having no connection to skin color. The nuance and depth of thought that has gone into these academic discussions is elided and you end up with “be less white” which is clearly and obviously inflammatory to a whole host of people. That nobody ever defines terms clearly causes everyone to talk past each other and the conversation becomes immediately divisive and counterproductive. There is a real conversation to be had here - but we’re not having it.
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