No Talk Tuesday*: Racially Hostile Environment For White Male Employees?
It’s at the complaint stage, so that the allegations have yet to be proven. But if true, they raise a question that few would have anticipated would ever be asked. Joshua Diemert works for the City of Seattle as a “program intake representative,” which means his job was to “connect city residents with public resources.” He held the position for nine years until he could take no more. The reason was that he had become the enemy and he could no longer suffer the hostile working environment. The reason, he contends, was because he was a white man.
“The city of Seattle believes that race representation is paramount, and they believe that people should not be judged by their individuality or their individual actions, but should be judged by their collective race,” says Diemert. “In fact, they say that if you judge people by individuality, that was actually a tool of white supremacy used to oppress people of color.”
In most past cases involving a white person suing for discrimination, the claim was that they were denied a position, such as a place in medical school, because of race, being passed over in favor of someone else because of race. In general, these cases did not fare well, as long as race was not the determining factor and considered only as a proxy for diversity, which was acceptable as an educational benefit for students. The situation here is quite different.
It wasn’t that Deimert wasn’t a good employee, or wasn’t good at his job, or even that he didn’t play well with others. The problem was one beyond his control. He was white in an environment where white people were unwelcome.
The environment Diemert describes is almost too toxic and oppressive to be believed; in his account, Seattle’s RSJI program sounds like a conservative’s nightmare about a progressive workplace—something that would be brutally parodied on South Parkor Portlandia. But his complaint is well-supported by hard evidence: actual copies of documents from the bizarre antiracism training that the city uses. Indeed, these documents can still be found on the city’s RSJI website.
As Robby Soave notes, the training was based on the work of “Tema Okun, a consultant who identifies perfectionism, timeliness, a sense of urgency, and writing things down as aspects of ‘white supremacy culture.'” Okun now claims this is a misunderstanding of her work, as if that changes anything.
“On multiple occasions in the trainings, I was forced to do things like play privilege bingo or stand up in front of everyone and rank myself within a racist continuum,” he says.
Privilege bingo Pacific Legal Foundation
Declining to participate was hardly an option: This was labeled “white silence,” a significant transgression. Opposing the agenda was even worse, of course.
“If I disagreed or offered another opinion, I was told I had cognitive dissonance, and my defensiveness was evidence of being a racist white supremacist,” he says.
While such trainings may be well intended, even if of dubious effectiveness in making the workplace more accommodating for minority employees whose concerns and sensitivities may not have been adequately considered in the past, has it gone too far? Is it unfair to flip the script and not make the white man the bad guy for having the misfortunate of possessing such privilege as being “not a redhead” or, you know, white and male.
One of the tenets of progressive ideology is that discrimination can only be suffered by the oppressed, and not the oppressor. In the scheme of identity politics, white people in general, and white men in particular, as oppressors. Does that preclude any claim on the part of a white man that the environment created in the name of ending discrimination for some authorizes a hostile work environment for others based solely on race? If so, what can employers do to make white employees more sensitive to the concerns of black and brown employees or women employees that won’t be perceived as an attack on white male employees?
*Tuesday Talk rules are suspended. Only comments that focus on the issue at hand, don’t launch into extremist propaganda, don’t make people stupider and don’t piss me off will be permitted. Because reasons.
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14 thoughts on “No Talk Tuesday*: Racially Hostile Environment For White Male Employees?”
Grant
The complaint does spend most of its space on the hostile work environment claims. However, the complaint does include an allegation that the plaintiff was forced to accept a race-based demotion from program intake lead to program intake representative, paragraphs 28 to 37.
Guitardave
Howl
Elpey P.
A white man could just as reasonably claim to be a victim of racial discrimination as he could to be a victim of physical assault. The “oppressors can’t be victims” nonsense is from taking a debatable assertion regarding the aggregate power of demographic groups and conflating it with individual cases.
Whether the discourse on this is fueled by foolishness or bad faith, people have shown they are incapable of moving past it. As Mel Brooks (sort of) said, Oppression is when someone from Group B cuts their finger, Comedy is when someone from Group A falls into an open sewer and dies.
Looking at this scenario with a *true* Critical Race lens, it should be reasonable for a non-white employee to also claim this CRT-fueled nonsense creates a hostile work environment. They are subjected to white supremacist theories about the nature and aptitudes of nonwhite workers, with the incoherent rationale that adding “but these are actually good” somehow makes these racist tropes beneficial instead of dehumanizing.
Redditlaw
There is case law that holds that white people (or any other “non-protected” race) can state a cause of action under Title VII. Ricci v. DeStefano, 557 U.S. 557 (2009), and Piscataway School Board v. Taxman, 91 F.3d 1547 (3d Cir. 1996), are promotion/termination cases, as noted above, but the central point that Title VII protects everyone still holds. In fact, I can even dimly recall an appellate case from the 1970’s with this holding that I read as an undergrad, but I cannot remember the names of the parties.
I think that the reason why the plaintiff threw so much detail into the complaint is that some courts have held that the degree to which you have to state a prima facie case at the initial stage may be greater for a member of a “non-protected” race. The plaintiff filed his complaint in the Western District of Washington, so that may be one of those jurisdictions.
As far as the current, woke trainings being of dubious effectiveness, you are being too kind. To the extent that the trainings–as currently constituted–have been studied, they are counter-productive, causing an increase in tension and defensiveness among employees.
Paleo
It astounds me that the adherents of diversity and inclusion can’t comprehend how bigoted and just plain cruel they are. And hateful.
But it is heartening to see that – since less than 1% of our population is homeless- 99% of the population gets to be the oppressor in Bingo by virtue of being “housed”.
Rengit
This resembles the stated approach that Eugene Scalia, Trump’s Secretary of Labor in the last year of his presidency, was going to take in opening up an investigation into these DEI training programs: that they sometimes could create a racially hostile environment against white people. Doesn’t seem outlandish to suggest that being told, “you are wrong, and the reason you are wrong is because you are white” can be construed as racially hostile, analogous to how the plaintiff in PriceWaterhouse v. Hopkins had a valid Title VII claim when she was told she couldn’t swear like her male colleagues because that was “unladylike.”
On the question of, “Well, how then do you make your white employees more sensitive to their black and brown coworkers?”, I’m tempted to say: you don’t. Sensitivity to feelings and claims of hurt are subjective, and the only way to resolve such claims is by declaring one party right and the other party wrong. Absent mutuality, I don’t know how you make one party more sensitive to the other without giving one of the parties some kind of trump card, and what these DEI trainings are doing is making race (and sex and gender identity, etc) into that trump card, which creates a racial hierarchy in the workplace, at least in terms of how employee disputes are resolved. Unless your argument is that Title VII/EEOC rules *require* a racial hierarchy in terms of emotional and psychological perceptions to avoid hostile environment claims, but that’s a different matter.
Dan H.
I’ve always liked Chloé Valdary’s approach to diversity training. She emphasizes humanizing people and explores conflicts through art and music. It seems like a great way to educate people on differences without taking individuals to task for innate qualities they can’t control or whatever historical atrociities are associated with their ethnicities. I haven’t seen a study on the effectiveness of her work pulled out from other types of DEI trainings. The privilege Bingo is clearly a great way to sow division among employees.
Richard Parker
If it ever was about equality, those days are long gone.
KP
He outta get a haircut and get a real job.. One where his talents are recognised and rewarded. He’ll be better off, the world will be better off, and Seattle can sink.
Anywhere that bingo card appears is a place you don’t want to be.
R C Dean
“While such trainings may be well intended”
Or, it may not. It’s hard for me see how any training that targets a race or sex (and “privileged” in this context is definitely a Bad Thing that apparently arises from immutable characteristics) is not well intended, but rather is intended to sow division, create unrest, and disadvantage the targeted group(s). Of course, the more division and unrest a company has, the more it needs “DEI training”, so the fact that division and unrest serves the interests of the people doing this training only confirms my suspicions.
Moose
The bingo square seems a tad disingenuous. To wit; while a few of the boxes (being smarter, being taller, being better looking) are indeed low probability right tail events and can certainly be advantageous in life, there is not much, absent going full Harrison Bergeron, than can be done about it. The bulk of the remainder are simply characteristics shared by a large majority of the population; hence are merely representative of normality. Minorities lacking those characteristics can, of course (and many times are), be at a disadvantage. But that is not quite the same thing as privilege.
Quinn Martindale
The complaint is poorly drafted and paints the plaintiff in a poor light, but if the plaintiff proves the allegations he was demoted for taking FMLA leave while white, threatened with assault on work emails for being white, and ordered to attend trainings where the facilitators taught that white people were cannibals, he should win.
The complaint does spend most of its space on the hostile work environment claims. However, the complaint does include an allegation that the plaintiff was forced to accept a race-based demotion from program intake lead to program intake representative, paragraphs 28 to 37.
A white man could just as reasonably claim to be a victim of racial discrimination as he could to be a victim of physical assault. The “oppressors can’t be victims” nonsense is from taking a debatable assertion regarding the aggregate power of demographic groups and conflating it with individual cases.
Whether the discourse on this is fueled by foolishness or bad faith, people have shown they are incapable of moving past it. As Mel Brooks (sort of) said, Oppression is when someone from Group B cuts their finger, Comedy is when someone from Group A falls into an open sewer and dies.
Looking at this scenario with a *true* Critical Race lens, it should be reasonable for a non-white employee to also claim this CRT-fueled nonsense creates a hostile work environment. They are subjected to white supremacist theories about the nature and aptitudes of nonwhite workers, with the incoherent rationale that adding “but these are actually good” somehow makes these racist tropes beneficial instead of dehumanizing.
There is case law that holds that white people (or any other “non-protected” race) can state a cause of action under Title VII. Ricci v. DeStefano, 557 U.S. 557 (2009), and Piscataway School Board v. Taxman, 91 F.3d 1547 (3d Cir. 1996), are promotion/termination cases, as noted above, but the central point that Title VII protects everyone still holds. In fact, I can even dimly recall an appellate case from the 1970’s with this holding that I read as an undergrad, but I cannot remember the names of the parties.
I think that the reason why the plaintiff threw so much detail into the complaint is that some courts have held that the degree to which you have to state a prima facie case at the initial stage may be greater for a member of a “non-protected” race. The plaintiff filed his complaint in the Western District of Washington, so that may be one of those jurisdictions.
As far as the current, woke trainings being of dubious effectiveness, you are being too kind. To the extent that the trainings–as currently constituted–have been studied, they are counter-productive, causing an increase in tension and defensiveness among employees.
It astounds me that the adherents of diversity and inclusion can’t comprehend how bigoted and just plain cruel they are. And hateful.
But it is heartening to see that – since less than 1% of our population is homeless- 99% of the population gets to be the oppressor in Bingo by virtue of being “housed”.
This resembles the stated approach that Eugene Scalia, Trump’s Secretary of Labor in the last year of his presidency, was going to take in opening up an investigation into these DEI training programs: that they sometimes could create a racially hostile environment against white people. Doesn’t seem outlandish to suggest that being told, “you are wrong, and the reason you are wrong is because you are white” can be construed as racially hostile, analogous to how the plaintiff in PriceWaterhouse v. Hopkins had a valid Title VII claim when she was told she couldn’t swear like her male colleagues because that was “unladylike.”
On the question of, “Well, how then do you make your white employees more sensitive to their black and brown coworkers?”, I’m tempted to say: you don’t. Sensitivity to feelings and claims of hurt are subjective, and the only way to resolve such claims is by declaring one party right and the other party wrong. Absent mutuality, I don’t know how you make one party more sensitive to the other without giving one of the parties some kind of trump card, and what these DEI trainings are doing is making race (and sex and gender identity, etc) into that trump card, which creates a racial hierarchy in the workplace, at least in terms of how employee disputes are resolved. Unless your argument is that Title VII/EEOC rules *require* a racial hierarchy in terms of emotional and psychological perceptions to avoid hostile environment claims, but that’s a different matter.
I’ve always liked Chloé Valdary’s approach to diversity training. She emphasizes humanizing people and explores conflicts through art and music. It seems like a great way to educate people on differences without taking individuals to task for innate qualities they can’t control or whatever historical atrociities are associated with their ethnicities. I haven’t seen a study on the effectiveness of her work pulled out from other types of DEI trainings.
The privilege Bingo is clearly a great way to sow division among employees.
If it ever was about equality, those days are long gone.
He outta get a haircut and get a real job.. One where his talents are recognised and rewarded. He’ll be better off, the world will be better off, and Seattle can sink.
Anywhere that bingo card appears is a place you don’t want to be.
“While such trainings may be well intended”
Or, it may not. It’s hard for me see how any training that targets a race or sex (and “privileged” in this context is definitely a Bad Thing that apparently arises from immutable characteristics) is not well intended, but rather is intended to sow division, create unrest, and disadvantage the targeted group(s). Of course, the more division and unrest a company has, the more it needs “DEI training”, so the fact that division and unrest serves the interests of the people doing this training only confirms my suspicions.
The bingo square seems a tad disingenuous. To wit; while a few of the boxes (being smarter, being taller, being better looking) are indeed low probability right tail events and can certainly be advantageous in life, there is not much, absent going full Harrison Bergeron, than can be done about it. The bulk of the remainder are simply characteristics shared by a large majority of the population; hence are merely representative of normality. Minorities lacking those characteristics can, of course (and many times are), be at a disadvantage. But that is not quite the same thing as privilege.
The complaint is poorly drafted and paints the plaintiff in a poor light, but if the plaintiff proves the allegations he was demoted for taking FMLA leave while white, threatened with assault on work emails for being white, and ordered to attend trainings where the facilitators taught that white people were cannibals, he should win.
I admire your effort to look beyond your blinders, no matter how badly they obscure your vision.