Advice for my fellow DEI skeptics: Life is unfair

[UPDATE: On June 19, 2021, I changed the title from "Unsolicited advice for DEI skeptics...." to "Advice for my fellow DEI skeptics...."]

Much about DEI trainings is unfair. Some of it is plain wrong. But life is unfair. Sometimes (not always,but sometimes) we should just accept it.

We're often required to attend DEI trainings. That's true even for supposedly "voluntary" trainings. Your job performance may be judged in part on how well you can parrot accepted DEI norms. Or it's just one of those things that whoever is in charge simply expects people to do even though it's voluntary.

The trainings themselves function largely to teach--and enforce--certain scripts you are supposed to learn and repeat, whether you believe them or not. And if you don't believe them, then that's a sign you really need to learn and voice the script, so that you won't be found out.

During the training sessions, we are often subjected to broad-brush statements by trainers or by participants whose comments the trainers don't challenge. I'm referring to comments that generalize about large numbers of people who share some trait over which they have no or little control, such as skin color, gender, sexual orientation. I'm also referring to comments about certain traditions, such as specific religions or cultures. Those traditions may have many, many problems, but they cannot be easily set aside. And yet too many DEI sessions permit sweeping statements against them.

You may have heard, in a single session, that it's okay to feel defensive, but in practice any expression or acknowledgment of that defensiveness is critiqued as "white fragility" or "mansplaining." You may be invited to participate in discussions, but told to be silent and not impose your views on others by participating, but be criticized for not speaking on the grounds that that shows your hostility to the proceedings.

Thoughtful engagement can be a challenge. Depending on the training and workplace culture, raising anything that someone might interpret as a criticism could endanger your job, sometimes slightly and sometimes more than slightly. But declining to follow the script with sufficient fervor will mark you.

At this point I'm supposed to acknowledge that marginalized people experience more unfairness than a person who, like me, enjoys most of the privileges a person in 2021 America could ask for. I'm supposed to go further and say people like me should take on these feelings of vulnerability, of being "marked," and use them to empathize with people who have gone through so many more challenges than we have. And, well, yes, I guess we should.

But I'm growing increasingly skeptical of the "let's make them feel what it's like to have the shoe on the other food" school of teaching empathy. For one thing, the person who appears to have so many advantages may, in ways unbeknownst to you, have had the shoe on the other foot many times in their life. Add to that this challenge: if you claim you've gained some insight or empathy, you will be contravening the script that forbids claiming you can ever understand what it feels like to be marginalized.

All that--and more--is unfair.

But we need to remember that no one has yet invented a workplace that is completely fair. Sometimes and on some level, we just have to accept that it's unfair. That's not ideal, but it's also not a unique wrong. 

Frankly, unless you've had an exceptionally fortunate working life, you've probably faced your share of toxicity in the workplace. I believe all jobs and careers have their frustrations and unfairnesses. If you work customer service, for example, you'll encounter people every day who might not be bad people, but who are positioned to tell you what to do and how to do it. And you have to do it with a smile. Change things around depending on the job, and pretty much any job requires something like that.

Sometimes DEI unfairness can be more than the everyday unfairness that comes with living in a world of scarcity. Those cases are probably different. We've all heard horror stories. Someone makes a mistake, or says something taken out of context, or maybe it's taken "in context" but doesn't represent everything that person is and does--and their career is now ruined or endangered.

In those cases, maybe there's cause for complaint. I assume (and hope) they are less prevalent or are more complicated than the "look what they're doing to people now" reports we might hear on social media. But regardless, I'm not referring to those at first blush egregious cases.

We should, when it's safe to do so, offer civil and well-thought out critiques of programs that claim to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, but yet fall short. But let's not pretend that it always amounts to a gross unfairness and injustice.