As someone who has been doing diversity work and delivering diversity training for almost 25 years, I feel compelled to respond to the recent article that appeared in The Washington Post on January 20 titled “Most Diversity Training Ineffective: Study Finds.” The study, the second in two years by Alexandra Kalev at the University of Arizona and Frank Dobbin at Harvard, claims to show that diversity training has failed to deliver on its promise. Specifically, the report states that diversity training is "ineffective and even counterproductive in increasing the number of women and minorities in management," and that the negative effects are particularly present when trainings are mandatory and "corrective" in nature: ergo designed to undo perceived injustices.
This study has given us an opportunity, once again, to look at whether or not diversity is effective, and at ourselves as diversity practitioners. While I haven’t had an opportunity to read the full study, which at this time has apparently not yet been published, I do have concerns about the implications of such a report. Not the least of which is the tendency to describe diversity training as a monolith and evaluate it accordingly, as if one could make an assessment like "Restaurants are. . ." without taking into account how different one restaurant might be from another. There are a wide variety of diversity trainings that are introduced and used in a wide variety of ways. In addition, the assertion in the study that mandatory trainings "are the problem" belies the fact that some of the most successful companies in the country have produced results using mandatory training as a tool for diversity. Clearly, for those who disagree, the study provides justification for what they already want to believe.
In fact, the rabid "I told you so!" reaction to the study on the part of respondents which can be seen on The Washington Post's blog site indicates that it has tapped into a profound reservoir of resentment, much of which has been generated by people who claim to have been forced to attend trainings in the past.
At the same time, however, I am concerned about the reactions by some in the diversity industry to the recent report. I have read reactions over the past few days that have denigrated every aspect of the study, and I have been struck by the knee-jerk, defensive responses, not only to the report, but even to its principal author who has been the victim of personal and petty attacks. Diversity supporters seem to have their own need to justify their already established point of view.
I almost feel like I am watching a political campaign.
As is so often in life, the truth may be in between. People have every right to hold those of us in the diversity industry accountable as to whether or not we have produced the results we have promised because, despite our best intentions, we often have not. The fact that so many people have strong resentment to diversity training can be easily dismissed as a result of their inherent bias and resistance to change. Nevertheless, if we are to be thoughtful in our attempts to demonstrate any of the introspection that we often teach in our trainings, we should not be afraid to ask the question, "If we are doing the right thing in the right way, why are we generating so much hostility?"
I believe that we have to acknowledge that despite our most noble of intentions, diversity training has at times been superficial, self-indulgent, even sanctimonious and self-righteous, and not always focused on the business needs of the organization provided for. As diversity practitioners we should not be above working on our own agendas and our own issues both inside and outside the classroom. Most of us know that when people are forced to do anything it brings up a natural resistance. The old saying goes, "If you expect somebody to really say 'yes' to something, they first have to have the freedom to say 'no'."
But that is no reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
If we are truly going to practice what we preach, we have to be willing to listen to and learn from research like the Kalev/Dobbin study; to winnow out the valid from the invalid aspects of what they have to say. And we have to avoid the tendency to react from our own attachment to an already determined point of view, especially one that is self-justifying and supports our own economic survival.
Despite assertions to the contrary, a lot of diversity work has, for the past couple of generations, been too driven by an adherence to several "pillars" namely: 1) a U.S. centric focus on race and gender issues; 2) the tendency, despite our occasional statements to the contrary, to focus on individual rather than cultural approaches in organizations, and, most of all; 3) a deeply ingrained "them vs. us" approach that makes it seem as though we are saying that those of us who support diversity are "good" and those who are perceived to oppose it, like the authors of this study are "bad", or even "evil". We, in our common vernacular, speak to helping people "get it." As if we have something that they need and should have. As if they need to be "fixed."
It is time to Re-invent Diversity for the 21st Century; to understand that while we still have to be vigilant in addressing critical issues of discrimination and tragic situations that emerge (such as what took place in Jena, LA) it is time to realize that our expanding globalism calls for a change in our approach from the framing of all diversity work in the "them vs. us" conversation to a broader, more inclusive outlook. It is time for us to realize that most diversity challenges are not caused by evil people consciously trying to keep others down, but by normal people, including ourselves, reacting to a broad level of unconscious beliefs that create different world views and at times correspondingly different actions.
It is time to realize that we have to develop a greater sense of cultural flexibility to be able to study, work, and live in this increasingly multi-cultural world. It is time that the work we do focuses on the needs of the organizations that we are serving, not on our own personal agendas. And it is time to listen more and debate less if we are going to create a society that can truly inquire and dialogue about these important issues.
