[00:00] Diversity, equity and inclusion
[00:02] are everyone's responsibility.
[00:04] DEI: Diversity, equity, inclusion.
[00:08] That sounds nice and responsible.
[00:11] No wonder all big companies
[00:13] now require employees
[00:14] to get training in it.
[00:16] Because we understand that racial
[00:18] and systemic bias have many causes,
[00:20] sources and ways of showing up
[00:22] within each of us.
[00:24] Even if that’s true,
[00:25] do you know what American companies
[00:27] now do to address it?
[00:29] Some make ritual apologies
[00:31] for America’s past.
[00:32] We want to acknowledge
[00:34] that the land where the Microsoft
[00:35] campus is situated
[00:37] was traditionally occupied by the Sammamish
[00:40] By proclaiming guilt,
[00:42] companies try to signal that
[00:43] now they’re virtuous.
[00:46] The Snohomish, the Tulalip.
[00:48] It's nice to apologize.
[00:50] Yes, but what is it really doing?
[00:52] Erec Smith was a diversity officer
[00:54] at Drew University.
[00:56] Now he teaches at York College.
[00:58] Why'd you stop being a diversity officer?
[01:01] I just thought it was a useless thing.
[01:03] There's a better way to go about doing this.
[01:04] Diversity and inclusion.
[01:06] Useless or not,
[01:08] companies continue to pay
[01:09] big money for trainings.
[01:11] There's a whole industry now
[01:12] designed to cater to companies
[01:14] looking for a quick way to check that box.
[01:16] In the US in 2020,
[01:18] DEI was a $3.4 billion industry.
[01:22] Every big company.
[01:23] They feel like they have to.
[01:24] They have to say something.
[01:25] They have to signal to the world
[01:26] that they're doing something.
[01:27] Is that effective?
[01:28] No.
[01:29] In fact, it seems to be doing worse.
[01:31] It seems to be making people
[01:33] less likely to interact with people
[01:34] who are unlike them,
[01:36] you know, because it's like a minefield now.
[01:38] Less likely to interact?
[01:40] After a training where you hear things about microagressions,
[01:43] if you ask somebody what they do for a living,
[01:45] somehow that's racist, right?
[01:48] If you learn that,
[01:49] then why would you take a chance?
[01:51] I better not talk to Erec
[01:52] because I might say something wrong.
[01:54] Precisely.
[01:55] So now inclusion means
[01:56] I'm going to silence myself
[01:58] and not talk to the black people.
[01:59] All white people are racist.
[02:01] Some trainings are just divisive and dumb.
[02:04] I believe that white people are
[02:06] born into not being human.
[02:08] This is extreme, I take it?
[02:09] It is extreme,
[02:11] but it's becoming more of the norm.
[02:13] These slides were shown at a
[02:14] Coca Cola diversity training.
[02:16] The thesis of this training was
[02:19] “try to be less white.”
[02:21] They're talking about arrogance and things like that.
[02:23] That is by no means a white thing.
[02:25] But the point is to demonize
[02:28] the other side as much as possible.
[02:29] And absurdly, diversity trainings don’t even do
[02:33] what they’re supposed to do.
[02:34] This Harvard professor analyzed
[02:36] studies of them.
[02:37] Sadly enough,
[02:38] I did not find one single study
[02:42] which has found that diversity training,
[02:44] in fact, leads to more diversity.
[02:46] In fact, the Harvard Business Review reports
[02:49] 5 years after diversity training,
[02:52] the share of black women managers actually decreased.
[02:55] It is not about data. It's about a power grab.
[02:57] A power grab that starts in schools.
[03:00] Melt the steel bars of racism
[03:02] and white language supremacy.
[03:04] This “expert” tells teachers:
[03:06] it’s racist to teach traditional English.
[03:09] If you use a single standard
[03:11] to grade your students’ languaging,
[03:13] you engage in racism.
[03:16] You actively promote white language supremacy,
[03:19] which is the handmaiden to white bias in the world.
[03:21] Smith was in the audience.
[03:23] I heard that
[03:26] and thought it was a bit misguided.
[03:28] So Smith wrote a long and thoughtful response, saying
[03:32] it’s a disservice to minority kids
[03:34] not to teach standard English.
[03:37] For that, he was attacked.
[03:39] We are professors in communication.
[03:42] I thought we could communicate.
[03:43] I was so wrong.
[03:45] Instead of a discussion,
[03:47] people called you racist.
[03:49] “Do you enjoy using Western modes of argument
[03:53] to invalidate people of color?”
[03:55] “Check your privilege.”
[03:56] What they saw in me was a
[03:59] bigger threat than anything they've seen before.
[04:01] A black person saying
[04:04] it's okay to teach black students standardized English.
[04:08] An academic named Eve complained
[04:10] about the harm Smith consistently perpetuates.
[04:14] Other academics joined in to coddle Eve.
[04:18] “Eve spent tremendous labor physically,
[04:21] intellectually and emotionally
[04:23] to write his response
[04:25] and it most probably took him extra time
[04:28] to recover from that labor."
[04:30] It's like they're victims everywhere!
[04:33] Yes. That's the point.
[04:34] You have to perpetuate the victimhood.
[04:36] That's part of the narrative.
[04:37] This just isn't even logical discussion.
[04:40] Has academia gone insane?
[04:43] Yes. That's the short answer.
[04:46] Yes, it has gone insane.
[04:47] I was surprised that that the leader
[04:49] of that academic conference agreed to talk to me.
[04:51] You engage in racism.
[04:53] He has since grown a beard.
[04:55] If you use a single standard
[04:56] to grade your students languaging,
[04:58] you engage in racism.
[05:00] Standardized English tends to exclude
[05:03] many groups of people.
[05:05] My parents came here from Germany.
[05:08] They made me learn standardized English.
[05:11] Were they being oppressive?
[05:12] Where would I be if they hadn't?
[05:15] There are absolutely benefits to
[05:16] a standardized English but that
[05:18] same world creates those same benefits
[05:20] through certain kinds of biases.
[05:22] And they can be bad for many folks
[05:24] who simply are not going to be able to meet that standard.
[05:27] I'm simply saying that I don't think everybody
[05:28] needs to be held to it.
[05:29] If they're not held to it,
[05:30] how can they succeed?
[05:32] Yeah, I think that they do.
[05:34] I think that they can.
[05:35] He was much more measured than he’d been
[05:37] lecturing his fellow professors.
[05:39] I think you're toning it down for my audience
[05:42] here because you in your conference speech
[05:45] were all about this is an oppressive country
[05:48] and white racism, white dominance.
[05:52] I tried to be rhetorical
[05:53] and I tried to use the moment
[05:55] to make a statement.
[05:57] In other words, he played to the crowd.
[05:59] Your students who do not embody
[06:01] enough of the white habits of language
[06:03] that make up your standards,
[06:04] stand at your classroom doors
[06:06] and die for your comfort.
[06:08] That anger is the norm with DEI advocates.
[06:11] [Protests]
[06:13] At Stanford law school,
[06:15] a judge who’d been invited to speak
[06:17] was stopped by angry students
[06:19] and Stanford’s dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
[06:23] Absolute disenfranchisement of their rights...
[06:26] [Screaming]
[06:30] The diversity dean lectured this federal judge
[06:32] for 6 minutes.
[06:34] Is it worth the pain that this causes
[06:36] and division that this causes –
[06:38] do you have something so incredible
[06:40] and important to say about Twitter
[06:42] and guns and Covid that that is worth
[06:44] this impact on the division of these people?
[06:47] At least the law school president later apologized, saying
[06:51] this violates “Stanford’s commitment to free speech.”
[06:54] Good.
[06:55] I’m glad some sensible people
[06:57] push back against nonsense like this.
[06:59] [Yelling]
[07:03] And when it comes to DEI,
[07:05] this education reformer, Chris Rufo,
[07:07] proposes an alternative.
[07:09] “EMC” -- equality, merit and colorblindness.
[07:13] I like equality, and merit, and colorblindness.
[07:16] Merit is a good thing.
[07:19] But demanding it, we’re told, hurts minorities.
[07:22] Our students of color struggle and fail,
[07:24] even when we are there to help them.
[07:26] So some colleges drop admission tests.
[07:29] High schools eliminate honors classes.
[07:32] What is that going to do
[07:33] to an entire group of people?
[07:35] Nothing good.
[07:36] I mean, if you wanted to
[07:38] hold down a group of people
[07:39] without them knowing it,
[07:40] this “woke” thing is a good strategy.
[07:42] The gap between black and white students
[07:44] is widening.
[07:45] Minority and underserved students falling
[07:47] further behind.
[07:48] What’s the better way?
[07:49] Talking.
[07:51] People don’t say what they feel
[07:52] because they don’t wanna get cancelled,
[07:54] they don’t wanna get called racist.
[07:55] People are censoring
[07:57] and we have to stop doing that.
[07:59] [Swoosh]
[08:01] Erec Smith is right.
[08:02] Stop censoring!
[08:04] Instead… let’s debate.
[08:07] And in a future video, I’ll have a
[08:09] longer debate with Asao Inoue, the
[08:12] advocate for not asking kids to learn standard English.
Comments
Be the first to comment on this video.