delicious irony in anti intolerance classes

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/30/study-tolerance-classes-school-more-likely-create-/


i couldn't make this up  classes create hate

[cambeul41]

classes create hate

Forced to take classes telling them whom to accept? Of course that invites resistance.

My Japanese born wife  — educated in Belgium (in French), Japan, and the US and married to me — was forced by her employer to take "diversity training" taught by a German. She resented being "taught" by someone who had no more knowledge of the subject than she herself had.

[brimic]

Lolz. Im intolerant to those who arintolerant to intolerance.

[AZRedhawk44]

I become just a LITTLE bit more intolerant every time:

1. The HR department at whatever company I work at compels the entire workforce to attend some sort of diversity or gender equality or whatever training.
2. Whatever educational institution I attend or have attended decides to derail actual coursework with fluff along the same lines as #1.


That LITTLE bit of intolerance aggregates.  And it's interesting how it does so.

Never had a racist or biased bone in my body when I was a child.  Had black/mexican/whatever classmates that I was good friends with.  Didn't see anything other than just another kid.  Then come the adults to screw it up by putting the existence of racism into a classroom that has none, and opening the subject up for discussion in the first place.  Then comes some little kid who heard daddy say some funny joke that he doesn't quite understand, and he repeats the joke on the playground and everyone laughs for one reason or other.  Some kids sorta get the joke, some don't at all but laugh along with everyone else.  Eventually, the more opportunities come up to talk about racism, the more it's passed along by means of overheard jokes or anecdotes from one generation to the next.

Jokes and anecdotes become observation bias.  More racism sets in.

Without the first fertile grounds being sewn in elementary school and junior high, racism wouldn't be 25% of what it is today (which even today is a FAR cry from where it was 100 years ago).

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

your observations are very similar to mine.



are you scared?!?


as a kid i lived outside. and am naturally dark complected. i was so dark my dad called me rastus.  and dad gave me buzz cuts that made me nappy headed.
the first time i ever heard the dreaded "n word" i was 5 and some kid called me that on the playground.  could tell from how he said it i needed to do something so i hit him.

it gives me great hope to watch kids   as you observed they start out without bias and they give me much hope.  sides in about 300 years we'll all be cafe' au lait

[Perd Hapley]

Perhaps this goes here?

http://variety.com/2013/tv/news/espns-chris-broussard-under-fire-over-homosexuality-comments-1200425834/

[brimic]

When and where i was a kid polock jokes were the predominant ethnic joke.  Thought they were funny until i was old enough to know that immostly polish in decent. After that point i mainly just shrugged them off.

[roo_ster]

This happens at my kids' school.  Before: no real concept of race, some friends are described as "brown," because they are a bit more brown than others.

After: It seems that 1st graders might not 100% understand the objective and absorbed their usual 75% of the content...which results in them asking me "Why do we have to make Africans sit in the back of the bus?"  Or, "Why did the teacher call <brownfriendsname> "African' when she is American?"  And a few incidents where the lesson learned was that different-looking folks treat each other poorly. 

The incredulity on the teachers' faces would have been funny, were it not for the damage they caused that I had to fix.  They did not appreciate my critique of their February social studies curriculum.

[AJ Dual]

When and where i was a kid polock jokes were the predominant ethnic joke.  Thought they were funny until i was old enough to know that immostly polish in decent. After that point i mainly just shrugged them off.

Sorry... my Polish family taught me all the good ones I know.  

A big IT outsourcing firm I worked for had a diversity/sensitivity/sexual harassment class, and beforehand, 1/3rd of the entire IT dept. at the customer site who worked for this firm agreed beforehand to sabotage the class. Although the Indian guys, save for the one who was fully Americanized as his family immigrated when he was a child, were all terrified and refused to participate.

But they were also all too terrified to rat us out either.

In class we kept coming up with ideas and told the instructor what we all already did that was more PC or more "careful" or more "sensitive" than what the class material and the trainer advocated. And the suggestions slowly increased in absurdity. Like an imaginary "safe zone radius" around the door to the women's restroom. And that we had an acronym "EABTN" (eabaton) for "Eyes Above The Neck" we all used at our worksite. At first the trainer was delighted that she'd hit paydirt on the first office of people that really "got it".

Then she got a little unsure of herself. Started to catch on, but didn't want to believe it.

Then when the final straw that broke the camel's back, (Something about how we didn't call the toner in the printers "black" because it might offend someone... I forget the specific thing...) she came to full realization she'd been mocked the whole class, and just ran out and didn't come back.

My understanding is it raised holy hell all the way up the corp. ladder back to TX and at the customer site we all worked for, but it just got dropped because nobody knew what to do, and there was no way to prove we'd even really done it.

Next year it was an online CBT/web conference thing and we were given a sheet with all the answers so they could say everyone passed it as some sort of lawsuit prevention boilerplate.

After: It seems that 1st graders might not 100% understand the objective and absorbed their usual 75% of the content...which results in them asking me "Why do we have to make Africans sit in the back of the bus?"  Or, "Why did the teacher call <brownfriendsname> "African' when she is American?"  And a few incidents where the lesson learned was that different-looking folks treat each other poorly. 

Oh Gawd... THIS.

We went through the same thing. My two older twins came home when they were six just bursting to tell us about "MARTIN LOOTER, THE KING... HE UH... MADE THE RULE YOU HAD TO BE NICE BUT HE BURNED A CROSS! SO THE OLD PRESIDENT SHOT HIM!" 

[Perd Hapley]

Excedrin for Racial Tension Headaches

[roo_ster]

Oh Gawd... THIS.

We went through the same thing. My two older twins came home when they were six just bursting to tell us about "MARTIN LOOTER, THE KING... HE UH... MADE THE RULE YOU HAD TO BE NICE BUT HE BURNED A CROSS! SO THE OLD PRESIDENT SHOT HIM!" 

This sounds familiar.

[Gewehr98]

My Japanese born wife  — educated in Belgium (in French), Japan, and the US and married to me

Unless it's a really open marriage, I *think* the above has a smidgen of redundancy built in.   

[HankB]

. . .   she came to full realization she'd been mocked the whole class, and just ran out and didn't come back . . .

I was in the corporate lab when they brought in outside trainers to give us all several days of diversity training, which we took about as seriously as you did. I don't think the trainer caught on until talk changed from his concept of "mattering" to our concept of "anti-mattering" which began to be laced with talk of things like pair production 

More recently they scheduled a couple of half-days of "refresher" courses . . . when the first didn't really turn out the way they wanted^** they canceled the second.

^** - example: They lamented the lower retention rate of new employees - hired with "diversity" in mind - as compared to the older workforce. They thought it was because the new diverse hires weren't being made welcome, but got the classic "deer in the headlights" look when it was pointed out that the company had abolished the traditional pension for new hires, eliminating the incentive to say put.

^** - example: During the workshop, we were to have a conversation which pointedly excluded one person in our group. That person was then expected to say how bad they felt . . . but instead, each one said "It felt pretty good - instead of wasting time in pointless chatter, I could long onto my laptop and actually accomplish something useful."

[Nick1911]

I grew up in a small farming community.  There were a few black families with kids, and a few hispanic families but not a whole lot.

I don't remember it even being a thing that anyone talked or concerned themselves with.  We did learn about some of the history of race relations - but it was just that, history; over, done with.  We got along with the racially different kids just like any other kids.  It wasn't notable.

Then I went to college, and got out and started working a processional job in the city.  It was then that I noticed people talking about race, usually decrying all the "ignorant racist white conservatives".  Jokes that weren't racist, but about racism.  "I prefer my coffee black."  "Ohh, that's racist!  hahaha!"

And I thought to myself - what the hell is going on here?  These supposedly enlightened college graduate big city liberals obviously thought about race far, far more then the people I grew up with in my town.  Very strange.

[kgbsquirrel]

They keep using this word "tolerance," I don't think it means what they think it means. What they are likely looking for is "coercive acceptance" although I'm sure they'd settle for Stockholm Syndrome.