"Try to be less white" - what?!?

[Kessler]

2xChevrons said:

Four Litre said:

Kesser 100% correct here. The second you start placing traits on skin colour its racist. No coming back from that. If that's your belief thats fair enough, just have to accept that your a racist. I think its a real shame when people see skin tone as opposed to the person.

Nope, I never said those traits were intrinsic to white-skinned people. I specifically said that the way the slide suggested hat was the problem with it. If that wasn't clear, then I'll say it again here and now - that slide is a Very Bad Bit of Work because it implies that these things are intrinsic to all white people.

But what I believe it was trying to do was challenging white people to consider their own responses to issues of race in society, which is a deep-rooted social and cultural thing. Such as the common "it's not a real problem anymore" or "people just complain because they like to play the victim" or "I'm not racist, so I'm not part of the problem" or "This is all a load of nonsense, it seems everything is racist these days" or "I'll tell you what, the real racists are the people pushing this onto white people."

All common responses to racial issues being raised, as seen on this thread, in NP&E and in society in general. It is often reflexive because it makes people feel some mix of anger, discomfort, threat, fatigue, annoyance and so on. Confronting bias is difficult and uncomfortable. All the more so when they're around such charged and unjust matters as race.

Like most bias education, the people who will loudly declare it pointless or counter-productive are the ones who need it most.

Yes, the course is implying white people have common bad traits such as arrogance, and it's indefensible.
I'm sure most white people are fine to have a discussion about to what extend racial issues exist today, and who/what is causing it - but this is obviously a biased "diversity course" which wrongly labels an entire race from the outset, and I doubt there is little room for debate - ie, is there room for a Coca Cola employee to argue that negatively painting all white people racists, constantly conflating white majority with white supremacy, and claiming black people are prevented from any success in life by privileged white people is a toxic narrative which is harming racial unity and demoralises black kids from an early age, or do you think that employee would have to be re-trained to align with the woke agenda - or find a different job? I'm pretty sure it's the latter given their choice of course and popularity of cancel culture.

[dandarez]

Red 4 said:

dudleybloke said:

Red 4 said:

RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:

Can't wait for the wokeness and virtue signalling age to be brown bread.

What's wrong with white bread ? Or "best of both" ?

From this point onwards any references to bread must be made in a nondiscriminatory way, in the interests of inclusion and diversity.

Unless you think white bread is oppressive, obviously.

Raise up!

Use your loaf.

Poppy, that's a bit of a seeded argument, says a me.
The sun always shines on some flour, my ol' pumpkin.

[Countdown]

ThrottleLine30 said:

Another company jumping on the bandwagon. Racism doesn't exist.

Do you not think the training material the OP posted could be construed as racist?

[anonymous-user]

Countdown said:

Do you not think the training material the OP posted could be construed as racist?

Nope. Racism is just a made up word. What Coca Cola is doing is just some stupid idea from a bunch of woke lefties. Probably box tickers.

[anonymous-user]

Stop being defensive!
I wasn't.
There you go again!

[Murph7355]

2xChevrons said:

.....
Leaving aside the (probably deliberately) provocative context to the slide, you reacted to a slide suggesting that white people can be overly defensive, certain, arrogant, apathetic and unwilling to listen to or consider structural racial issues in society...in a way that hit all those points. ....
...

The "have you stopped beating your wife" angle.

The slide does not surprise me. It begs the question would that slide in *any* context ever be typed up if one exchanged the word "white" with "black" (or "Asian" or whatever).

2xChevrons said:

.....
As I said in the thread about unconscious bias, a big problem is that when there's a push to introduce this sort of training to organisations (or, worse, be seen to introduce it) it leads to a lot of low-quality information which does the actual matter that should be at hand a huge disservice.

I agree with you.

And this is one of the challenges I see in the choice of language and words in things like "BLM". There are some serious messages need putting across. But the choice of words on how to do this is important, otherwise the divisions (real or otherwise) will get worse.

[JagLover]

Murph7355 said:

2xChevrons said:

.....
Leaving aside the (probably deliberately) provocative context to the slide, you reacted to a slide suggesting that white people can be overly defensive, certain, arrogant, apathetic and unwilling to listen to or consider structural racial issues in society...in a way that hit all those points. ....
...

The "have you stopped beating your wife" angle.

The slide does not surprise me. It begs the question would that slide in *any* context ever be typed up if one exchanged the word "white" with "black" (or "Asian" or whatever).

A classic catch 22.

Someone tells you to stop being so white, you evil white bast*rd. You get offended and apparently this is being defensive which is another trait of being an evil white bast*rd

[anonymous-user]

I'm not convinced it's real. Even the most slack jawed "anti-racist" woke enthusiast surely understands what using negative character traits to describe a race looks like.

[Sophisticated Sarah]

fblm said:

I'm not convinced it's real. Even the most slack jawed "anti-racist" woke enthusiast surely understands what using negative character traits to describe a race looks like.

If you ever meet these people in real life, you’ll see that they’re oblivious to their hypocrisy.

[JagLover]

fblm said:

I'm not convinced it's real. Even the most slack jawed "anti-racist" woke enthusiast surely understands what using negative character traits to describe a race looks like.

Well they aren't really anti-racist. They have a hierarchy of races, beliefs and sexual preferences, it is just in a different order to the bigots of the past.

It is emerging from academia now and being put into the corporate world under the guise of "anti-racism" training. They implement it because it "ticks the box" and they can then proclaim themselves to be a progressive organisation.

[105.4]

fblm said:

I'm not convinced it's real. Even the most slack jawed "anti-racist" woke enthusiast surely understands what using negative character traits to describe a race looks like.

Robin d’Angelos bibles of racism are available on Amazon. Order one, read it and be prepared to be amazed.

My Wife and I know another couple who are the woke way inclined. They are probably amongst the two most bigoted people I’ve ever met, but in their minds they are the exact opposite.

[2xChevrons]

Kessler said:

Yes, the course is implying white people have common bad traits such as arrogance, and it's indefensible.
I'm sure most white people are fine to have a discussion about to what extend racial issues exist today, and who/what is causing it - but this is obviously a biased "diversity course" which wrongly labels an entire race from the outset, and I doubt there is little room for debate.

It's not indefensible, so long as you don't immediately assume that it simply means "white people = all intrinsically bad in these ways."

To flip the example around - it is statistically inarguable that in the UK black people are over-represented in the crime statistics at virtually every level, be that stop/search, arrest, prison population or recividism. That is a statement that is, by its nature, focussing on race.

Now, if you drill down into the stats and correct for economic status, poverty rate, educational attainment, geographical location and so on that disparity reduces significantly, or in some cases even vanishes entirely.

As if it needed to be said - black people are not inherently more likely to commit crimes because of some trait that comes from them having black skin.

But going by the stats they are, per capita, more likely to commit crimes than a white person. They are also more likely to be the victim of crime. Some of the underlying causes are economic and geographical. But some of them are to do with the lingering effects of racism in British society, and some of those underlying causes themselves have a racial element to them. And that's without getting into the whole knotty issue of how accurate the stats are, and how there remains amounts of prejudice, discrimination and racism in the creation, reporting and collecting of those stats.

It is not racist to highlight how black people are over-represented in the crime statistics. You can't properly discuss the issue of crime and all its many attendant factors without dealing with race and how it affects different groups' experiences with the law enforcement and justice system. But doing so is not laying negative traits on people because of their race and directly tying the two together. It is looking at how race does and doesn't affect a load of other compounding issues.

On the other hand, if the prison service was to provide a presentation which aimed to reduce reoffending by telling its BAME prisoners to "be less black i.e. just don't commit crime" then that is racism, pure and simple.

What this slide was (trying, and largely failing) to get across was that, for a whole slew of cultural and social reasons, white people in Western/white-majority societies, have a number of common responses and biases that kick in when talking about issues of race. It's not inherent to them because they are white people, but many have them engrained (to varying extents) by our social and cultural upbringing, education and norms. It's the reflexive, defensive response that we see so often that the slide was trying to get people to consider. In doing so - as I said before, possibly in a deliberate attempt to shock - it implied that simply "all white people are arrogant", which is racist.

Kessler said:

is there room for a Coca Cola employee to argue that negatively painting all white people racists, constantly conflating white majority with white supremacy, and claiming black people are prevented from any success in life by privileged white people is a toxic narrative which is harming racial unity and demoralises black kids from an early age, or do you think that employee would have to be re-trained to align with the woke agenda - or find a different job? I'm pretty sure it's the latter given their choice of course and popularity of cancel culture.

I generally disagree with the stance you've given in this paragraph, by the way (although I know you're saying it here in a place of a hypothetical person).

If they did that in a way that wasn't just a knee-jerk response to the basic premise, and was respectfully argued as part of a good-faith discussion about the issue, I would really like to hope that that would not only be allowed but actively encouraged. I'm afraid your suspicion is probably closer to the mark, but that's a problem with the very surface-level and performative nature of many of these 'education' courses, and in Coca-Cola's case a very bad choice of curriculum and 'teacher'.

Maybe I've been spoilt by being treated to some very good unconcious bias education where discussion, questioning, even arguing, was a crucial part of the process. One one course there was a pause for 'questions so far' and someone basically did say "I think this is a load of nonsense that's irrelevant to what we do" and a good discussion resulted.

In one element on another course we were shown pictures of people and asked to say what our immediate gut-response was. Someone said "threat" when shown an Arab women in a hijab. They weren't pounced on, chided, denounced as a racist or whatever. We had a very open and interesting talk about why they had that response, what it was based on, how many others in the group had a similar response, and different ones etc.

But, like all times when you have to confront your biases and the norms that have been engrained into you, you have to avoid the kneejerk or at least then reflect on the kneejerk and ask "why did I think that way? Is there any reason for it or is it just because it's different to what I'm used to? Is there something valuable to consider here?"

[Stigproducts]

Thing is, Kessler is a black fella. So Chevrons and Sgtbuttmuch need to think about what they've written now that they know that.



Eek! Totes Awks. So, do you see his point now?

[amgmcqueen]

Racism works both ways. Imagine 'try to be less black'....?!

Absolutely shameful.

[Misanthrope]

fblm said:

I'm not convinced it's real. Even the most slack jawed "anti-racist" woke enthusiast surely understands what using negative character traits to describe a race looks like.

Yes, people often react like that. "Surely it can't be that bad?" Even when they find out it's real - well it's "no biggie" to go to a Maoist struggle session and apologize for being white. It's only when they're being marched out into a courtyard and blindfolded they might think something's not quite right ... too late by then.

[Stigproducts]

I'm working on my slide

"Try to be less Black"

To be Less Black is to be

- less.....

If I type anymore it's an instant ban from pistonheads and if I did it at work I would be fired, rightly. I'm sure I could come up with a decent list and try and justify it and make out all the negative stereotypes I drew upon were in fact the fault of black people and no one else but that would be a massive generalization and incredibly racist and idiotic. I'm doing one for the Chinese as well, and Indians because it will bring everyone together, you see.

So whatever validity Chevrons has in his desperate attempt to justify this type of crap, the double standard and hypocrisy is SO egregious, none of what he says, or Coca Cola says should be given a minute of anyones time. To pay any attention to that kind of drivel, would be racist.

[Olivera]

2xChevrons said:

It's not indefensible, so long as you don't immediately assume that it simply means "white people = all intrinsically bad in these ways."

...

2xChevron's, you've descended into your typical lengthy but flimsy waffle, much like your attempts to justify mob rule pulling down the Colston statue.

This slide is the textbook definition of racism. It ascribes negative traits and qualities to people based on race alone. It's simply indefensible.

[blingybongy]

Kessler said:

Thought this was a joke, but no - it's just woke
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/coca-cola-sla...

Apparently Coca Cola wanted their employees to take this course by what seems like a woke cult leader.
The blatant racism is staggering, but it comes from a person who obviously makes big money on peddling the racial divide. Complete nutter

Edited by Kessler on Wednesday 24th February 12:25

fk off.

[anonymous-user]

2xChevrons said:

Kessler said:

is there room for a Coca Cola employee to argue that negatively painting all white people racists, constantly conflating white majority with white supremacy, and claiming black people are prevented from any success in life by privileged white people is a toxic narrative which is harming racial unity and demoralises black kids from an early age, or do you think that employee would have to be re-trained to align with the woke agenda - or find a different job? I'm pretty sure it's the latter given their choice of course and popularity of cancel culture.

I generally disagree with the stance you've given in this paragraph, by the way (although I know you're saying it here in a place of a hypothetical person).

If they did that in a way that wasn't just a knee-jerk response to the basic premise, and was respectfully argued as part of a good-faith discussion about the issue...

I don't know who you work for but I can guarantee that any attempt to have any kind of discussion of the type we're having here would have had me fired that day or at the very least sent for some kind of remedial diversity training at every company I've ever worked for (all major listed automotive and financial services). I remember once being told that you can't ask people where they are from (in a room with probably 20 nationalities). One American trainee asked why not and the woke training consultant played through the usual tedious; Where are you from? New York. No I mean where are you really from? Thing. Obviously there's implying someone doesn't belong somewhere and should go home and then there's showing a genuine interest in someone as a person. They agreed quite amicably in a brief discussion that context mattered. And that was the end of his brief career in banking...

[Leon R]

Everyone can 'understand' what someone was trying to say until they don't agree with them.