Moving Beyond Unconscious Bias

I'm going to have to call B.S. at this point about the two year flurry of unconscious bias training courses. First off, experts have determined them to be ineffective. Now think about how much money and lost time hosting one of these events for your employees cost. And it is probably racist as all get out. Do you invite your few BIPOC employees to it? Then shunt them off to the corner to be ignored as you all navel gaze over self-improvement? Have you actually empirically measured the outcomes? Where your White employees less biased? Where your Black employees more empowered? Did any policy or procedure changes emerge from your sessions? Well... you probably wasted your money. 
Furthermore, what is going to happen is eventually a Black employee is going to file a human rights complaint against you based on the $100000 you spent over the last five years on training for you White employees and $0 you spent on building up workplace resilience. 

Now let's dive a little deeper. Do we hold "unconscious embezzlement" training sessions? "The Inadvertent assault"? Or how about "accidentally misrepresented credentials". The idea of "unconscious bias" seems to be something ridiculous that really emerged out of the George Floy era of reconning, that allowed un-diverse organizations downplay a history of toxic culture as if they were unaware it was happening. Hint: It was happening, but employees were so traumatized they dared not speak up. Probably leaving in silence, trashing your reputation, draining you of experience and through word of mouth deterring good candidates from applying. Any you as a manager, probably through outdated views of efficiency rewarded workplace predators for their ruthlessness.

But there is good news. You don't really have to focus on DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) or when including accessibility, IDEA, as if it is this mystical set of skills. In fact, you are better off outsourcing those requirements so that your supplier can be brutally honest with you, without fearing reprisals. All of this, ALL OF IT, can be fixed by proper procedures, policies, training, tracking and Human Resource management. It just doesn't normally happen that way because HR is seen as the enemy. I would say for good reason, who usually hosts those "Unconscious Bias Training"? What is the diversity of your HR department? 

Like many other Black professionals that got sucked into the "We mean it this time" promise of a true equitable work place, I find very little safety in working for White led organizations. Simply because they do not see this as a journey that requires constant investment. I want to scream when I'm expected to be the fountain of knowledge for decade long initiatives like... say... the U.N. Decade of the African Diaspora... 

This company... the podcast... our focus is to do something different. To not Blackwash bad organizational policy. Bad policy is bad for everyone, not just marginalized employees, though marginalized people feel it more severely. It is simply put, a matter of risk. You as an employer or an employee are going to come into conflict with bad policy, with no clear resolution due to workplace culture and it is going to cost. Nobody gets away unscarred. Being "in it for the money", the purveyor of that belief has never filed a human rights claim, or had the very essence of their self worth crushed in the workplace... or maybe realized that as an executive that despite all the input to the contrary, that gut feeling hire they made ended up being a predator... 

It's time for real talk.