The United States is an increasingly multicultural and multiracial society—and so is its consumer market. At the same time, American companies are increasingly taking a global approach to thinking about where to sell their products. This means that companies need to think hard about how to appeal to—and not offend—diverse groups. High-profile stories about racially incentive behavior or statements by employees and leaders of companies like Starbucks and Papa John’s illustrate this.
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Robin DiAngelo, in an article for Medium, discusses the difficulty in helping white people come to grips with their unconscious biases and the impact of their privileged position as a group in American society. “One way that whites protect their positions when challenged on race is to invoke the discourse of self-defense,” she writes. “Through this discourse, whites characterize themselves as victimized, slammed, blamed, and attacked.”
DiAngelo notes that this attitude can make it extremely difficult to conduct productive diversity training. She adds that “[w]hite fragility functions as a form of bullying: ‘I am going to make it so miserable for you to confront me — no matter how diplomatically you try to do so — that you will simply back off, give up, and never raise the issue again.’”
This doesn’t mean that racial bias training is doomed to fail. But it does mean that those providing these trainings need to be aware of the sociological dynamics among white employees that could potentially derail a training and actually cause more harm than good.
Diversity and inclusion are key goals for any business—not just for common decency and civility but also for the company’s bottom line. But diversity and inclusion means including everyone—white people too. Employers need to ensure they conduct their diversity trainings in a way that does not alienate white employees but rather encourages them to be active participants.