In writing this blog, I clearly made the decision to remain anonymous. So, when I relate stories from my real life, my sharing will be always be limited by the first sentence.
With that said, I will soon be forced to participate in racial sensitivity training sessions. Not because of anything I've done, but because of a professional association with a company that has totally bought in on the idea of systemic racism. No doubt, I know to keep my thoughts to myself on this topic. The interesting factoid is that we were provided with some reading materials to review in advance. And my main takeaway is the following...
There is plenty of evidence if one looks at this country's history of grave injustices and governmental action that is clearly reprehensible. Those periods in time, those laws, those court cases, those policies, need no further explanation to see what they are and the motivations behind them. But, there is also plenty of history of our country recognizing these wrongs and then doing something to correct them, such that it is much better to be a minority, women, etc. today than at any other point in time.
But, what the advance readings seem to be doing, one and all, is referencing these histories, and then offering a data point about today, as if one is clearly caused by the other, but not doing any of the work to show you how. These works clearly choose to ignore the possibility that something else may be going on (h/t Thomas Sowell). For example, there was slavery in this country and the founding fathers owned slaves. You know what else, today black families have lower median incomes than white families. Two facts, not sure that they are necessarily related.
Over and over, the practice seems to be, here's the belief and conclusion that we want to draw, here's some data that could be interpreted in any number of ways, we offer no additional context other than what happened 150/100/50 years ago, go draw some conclusions. I guess that I would expect more from a theory that seems to be taking hold of our government, corporate boardrooms, and every single school and university.
But maybe I am asking too much.
