How diversity training infuriates men and fails women
DECADES BEFORE ANITA HILL, Gretchen Carlson or #MeToo, American companies dreamed up “diversity training,” typically a course that lasts anywhere from an hour to a couple of days, with the goal of wiping out biases against women and others from underrepresented groups. For most of its history, diversity training has been pretty much a cudgel, pounding white men into submission with a mix of finger-wagging and guilt-mongering.
The first training programs surfaced in the 1950s, after men returned from World War II and were appalled and perplexed to find women in their offices. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the training took on more urgency. Within a decade, it had morphed into a knee-jerk response to legal actions, after a series of high-profile sex-discrimination suits, including one by the women of Newsweek magazine, who were stranded in a pink ghetto. “Women don’t write at Newsweek. If you want to
