New Report Slams Corporate Diversity Training |
FALLS CHURCH, Va., July 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- National Legal and
Policy Center (NLPC) has released a Special Report titled "The
Authoritarian Roots of Corporate Diversity Training: Jane Elliott's Captive
Eyes and Minds." The report compares "diversity training" to thought
control.
"Diversity training" is a term that describes a brief, but intensive
program of lectures, presentation of written and audio-visual materials,
and perhaps most ominously, participation in role-playing exercises, all of
which are intended to heighten employee awareness of potential sources of
racial and ethnic conflict. The Report argues that diversity training is
counterproductive and instead results in weakened company morale and
increased racial resentment.
Carl F. Horowitz, director of NLPC's Organized Labor Accountability
Project and the study's author, observes, "Even in mild form, diversity
training is manipulative and abusive, creating a double standard in which
blacks and other nonwhite employees can criticize or complain about whites,
but whites can never answer in their own defense," he said. "That CEOs and
other corporate officials not only wink at this practice, but aggressively
promote it is little short of a national scandal."
The Report is critical of current and recent CEOs, like PepsiCo's Steve
Reinemund and Chrysler's Tom LaSorda, who have aggressively promoted what
they call diversity. The key to challenging the current regime, Horowitz
argues, is leadership by principled CEOs. He points to Cypress
Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers, who has brought a truly diverse workforce
to his company while standing up to shakedown attempts by Jesse Jackson and
other racial hustlers.
The Report details the history of diversity training, especially
sadistic role-playing exercises begun nearly 40 years ago by a white
third-grade schoolteacher in rural Iowa named Jane Elliott. Today, Elliott
is an institution. She's personally led role-playing exercises at General
Electric, ExxonMobil, AT&T, IBM and many other companies. In the process,
she's spawned an entire industry, in the U.S. and elsewhere.
The 16-page Special Report may be downloaded at http://www.nlpc.org.
NLPC promotes ethics in public life, and sponsors the Corporate Integrity
Project.
SOURCE National Legal and Policy Center
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CONTACT:
Carl F. Horowitz of the National Legal and
Policy Center, +1-703-237-1970
